For applicants to Columbia College, please tell us what attracts you specifically to the field or fields of study that you noted in the Application Data section. If you are currently undecided, please write about any field or fields in which you may have interest at this time, but have not yet selected as a major interest (1500 characters). -- I am current undecided, and chose to write about chemistry.
It was the first academic day of my freshman year. I met many new classmates, and I even I tripped and fell once. Overall,I thought it was uneventful, typical first day of high school. That is, until I went to science class. My new teacher greeted us, and immediately directed us over to the fume hood. I hadn't had much experience with experiment based science classes in middle school, so this was all new and exciting. Our teacher told us he would place sodium in water, and asked us to predict what would happen. The general consensus of the class was nothing. We were very wrong. The sodium chunk skated around the water dish, suddenly catching on fire, and then exploding inside of the fume hood. It was awesome. After this display, he asked us to write the reaction, and then explain why it made sense that the sodium reacted so violently with the water. From this moment, I knew I loved chemistry. Life is ever-changing, unpredictable, and complicated, but chemistry gives us a way to describe our physical realities. Chemistry can explain why baking soda and vinegar react, or why silver readily oxidizes. I love this power to classify and demystify and to see a brilliant explosion and be able to transcribe it into compounds and elements on paper. Chemistry only can do that for one facet of life, while physics, biology, ecology, etc. pick up the rest. This is why I love science - I can investigate the layers of the world around me, and come to a deeper understanding of it.
I don't know if I am answering the question, or being specific enough, help?
It was the first academic day of my freshman year. I met many new classmates, and I even I tripped and fell once. Overall,I thought it was uneventful, typical first day of high school. That is, until I went to science class. My new teacher greeted us, and immediately directed us over to the fume hood. I hadn't had much experience with experiment based science classes in middle school, so this was all new and exciting. Our teacher told us he would place sodium in water, and asked us to predict what would happen. The general consensus of the class was nothing. We were very wrong. The sodium chunk skated around the water dish, suddenly catching on fire, and then exploding inside of the fume hood. It was awesome. After this display, he asked us to write the reaction, and then explain why it made sense that the sodium reacted so violently with the water. From this moment, I knew I loved chemistry. Life is ever-changing, unpredictable, and complicated, but chemistry gives us a way to describe our physical realities. Chemistry can explain why baking soda and vinegar react, or why silver readily oxidizes. I love this power to classify and demystify and to see a brilliant explosion and be able to transcribe it into compounds and elements on paper. Chemistry only can do that for one facet of life, while physics, biology, ecology, etc. pick up the rest. This is why I love science - I can investigate the layers of the world around me, and come to a deeper understanding of it.
I don't know if I am answering the question, or being specific enough, help?
