Quote:
Originally Posted by bob jenkins
I disagree that it helps understand the newer rule.
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The first year that I taught Earth Science, I taught my students that blue stars were the hottest, and that red stars were the coolest. I even gave them examples of a piece of steel being heated up becoming, progressively, red hot, orange hot, yellow hot, white hot, and finally blue hot, before melting. A few days later, many, including several of my better students, got questions regarding star color, and temperature, wrong on an exam. I questioned them about the reason why they got such simple questions wrong. They replied that hot water faucet labels are often colored red, and that cold water faucet labels are often colored blue. From then on, I always warned them not to confuse water faucet label colors with star colors (it's counterintuitive, as previous students had done in the past) on Astronomy exams. After that, there were seldom mistakes made by my students regarding star colors, and temperatures.
Find Cool, Red Stars in the Night Sky This Thanksgiving
Or, teaching my students that the symbol for Argon is Ar, and the symbol for Arsenic is As, and that these are often confused by students. So remember that Arsenic is one of the few common elements that gets its symbol from the first, and third letter, of its name, it's more of an exception than the rule.