Welcome

Welcome to my ever-evolving blog. It started out as a blog on Beachbody workouts and products, mainly when I was a Beachbody coach. I no longer coach, not because I don't believe in Beachbody's programs (I subscribe to Beachbody on Demand and use their workouts every day), I am just not a salesperson and hated that aspect of it. I am more than willing to answer questions about my experiences with their products and the various workouts, and I feel freer to do so without the appearance of giving a biased review of something.

I have also started adding reviews for various things I have purchased like movies, books, CDs, and other products. This was brought about by a fight with Amazon in which all of my reviews were removed over a completely bullshit allegation that I posted a review that violated their terms of service. After going back and forth with the morons in the community-reviews department (even after they admitted that my posts did not violate their guidelines) they restored my account (which took them six months to do), but I have been posting my reviews on my blog to have them preserved in case something like that happens again. And here, I will post uncensored reviews so I will swear from time to time and post reviews that may be longer than Amazon's character limit. Everything I post here on any topic or product is my personal opinion, and I take no compensation for any product reviews I post. I am a member of Amazon's vine program and because I get those products for free, I keep those reviews on Amazon only, but everything I have purchased with my own money, whether from Amazon or some other store/website/outlet, I will post here.  

I also plan to do some longer blog posts on various topics, such as how to learn physics, how to get through calculus, and longer reviews of workout programs as I do them. Basically, whatever strikes me as interesting at the time.  As you can see if you navigate around the blog, I had many years in between postings. During that time I was going back to school to get an engineering degree, and learning material that I avoided my first time through college was a different experience and one that gave me a lot of insight into how to do well in those classes, which I will try to impart here for those who are looking to get a science or engineering degree. 

Saturday, May 7, 2022

Study Aid Review: The Unit Conversion Tutor - 4 Hour Course

 


This is, in my opinion, one of the most important sets that Jason has put out, and one of the most important topics to learn if you plan on getting a science or engineering degree. Unit conversion/Dimensional Analysis is something that you will absolutely use in classes like chemistry, physics, and nearly every engineering class you take. In some classes, it is used more than others, but it is something that you will see all throughout your studies. In most chemistry and physics books, the very first chapter is devoted to the concept, but very few teachers ever lecture on that chapter or assign problems from it. Instead, students are expected to figure it out and be able to follow what the teacher is doing when going through example problems that require converting units. The problem is that the chapters in the books tend to make things way more complicated than they need to be and discuss the most obscure units that you will never see in a "real" problem. This is where Jason's set is extremely helpful and useful.

Jason starts out discussing Scientific Notation, then gets into the Metric System and SI Units, which is the foundational system of units that will be used in every single class. Then the lessons go into, Unit Conversions Involving Length, Unit Conversions Involving Area, Unit Conversions Involving Volume, Unit Conversions Involving Speed, and Unit Conversions Involving Mass and Weight. All of those will be essential to solving physics problems and the last topic is also used extensively in chemistry. The final lesson is on Unit Conversions Involving Density, which is mostly used in chemistry, but will come up in physics and classes like engineering thermodynamics as well.

The reason I say that this is one of the most important topics is that if you know how to do it well, you will reduce the number of mistakes that you make on homework problems, quizzes, and exams, and it will always lead you to the correct answer because your answer always has to be in the correct units by the end of the problem. If you do the unit conversions first, you will save yourself a lot of time when working out problems and it will be a lot easier to figure out if you have made a mistake and find the mistake. So, this is a topic that is essential to learn well and be able to do quickly. Nothing that Jason shows here is extremely complex, but it is very helpful. I definitely recommend getting this if you want to learn any branch of science or engineering.

No comments: