16.+Learning+Continuously

While I believe a personal knowledge in a subject is crucial in developing a more sophisticated version of the idea, nothing is more important to me than learning continuously. Knowledge would not be given all at once, it would instead reach an individual through repeated trials, many errors, and countless beneficial surprises. One of these surprises manifested itself in the form of our chemistry lab: when we were to dissolve silver in nitric acid.

What I had believed before, that silver would readily react with concentrations as low as 1 M of nitric acid, at a vigorous level, to produce silver nitrate, was simply wrong. When we actually dropped a bar of silver in this acid, no visible reaction had occured even after 1 minute. Had I closed off all learning after accepting the fact that silver could react at a fast rate, I would not have realized that perhaps silver reacted slower than I had originally thought. Overall, by letting myself learn continuously, I was able to accept certain laboratory conditions that let me move on and be flexible with a scientific lab, instead of denying original facts.

Nitric Acid does not React with Silver at Room Temperature. Figure 16.

Thus, learning continuously not only was integrated into our chemistry class, it also helped become part of me. I believe I have progressed in this habit of mind, enough to report it as so.