Too much attention to detail? :S

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I tend to have extremely difficult times with language and problems on exam's and things like that. Mainly the problem revolves around specifics. A lot of the time I am told that I'm making it " too complicated " ... which I never understand, because how can I 'de-complicate' something if the very problem is that I over complicate? Seems like it wouldn't be a problem if I could do that

This is my most recent example ... I was going over some old chem open book quiz problems for fun and as somewhat of a review specifically for my problems with wording and ' over complicating '. Anyway... the problem asks the reader...

[ A 2.200g sample of quinone (C6H4O2) is burned in a bomb calorimeter whose total heat capacity is 7.854KJ C^-1. The temperature of the calorimeter increases from 23.44C to 30.57C. What is the heat of combustion per mole of quinone?]

My problem with this is that I am able to do this simple experiment in my head as though I were doing it in the lab, and with a computer next to me to see what happens on the atomic/thermodynamic level... well actually I will just set up a sort of bullet list to describe what I was thinking.

1. Alright, is the " whose " in the first sentence referring to quinone or the bomb calorimeter? (Side Note: isn't " whose " supposed to refer to a person?)
2. Okay... total heat capacity could mean the total amount of heat required to raise the temperature of the water in the bomb calorimeter by one C. So it would take 7.854KJ of heat, from the sample of quinone, to raise the water temperature by 1 degree C or K.
3. But what if the " whose " is referring to the sample of quinone?
4. If that were the case... then the heat released from one mole of quinone (C6H4O2 = 108.095grams in one mole) would be 7.854KJC^-1( 7.854 kilojoules released per degree of celcius or kelvin).
5. If ' whose ' refers to quinone... the right way to do it would = 2.2 divided by 108.095 to = .020352 moles of quinone... then .020352 mol would have to be multiplied by 7.854 KJC^-1, because 7.854KJ would be the total heat produced by 1 mol of quinone (108.095g quinone = one mole ... 2.2g = .020352). So .020352 multiplied by 7.854KJ = 1.13969KJC.
6. So do they want to know how much heat per mol meaning .020352(2.2g) mol of quinone ... or one mole of quinone meaning the natural atomic mass of C6H4O2 = 108.095? (Side note: At this point I am waaaay too disoriented and mindless to follow back all my steps " which I never write down " and I can either settle with this answer, or start my thought process over... and step 1-6 probably took about five-ten minutes, which is really bad considering that this is supposed to be like a two minute question.... I'm also horrifically disoriented in general... and my roommate is throwing another tantrum over something ridiculous.... bleh.... )


K...first, sorry if that was confusing... I have a headache from just trying to describe my thoughts. Anyway, I would have had zero problems if they had worded the problem this way....... [A 2.200 g sample of quinone (C6H4O2) is burned in a bomb calorimeter. The total heat capacity of the calorimeter is 7.854KJC^-1. At the start of the reaction the temperature of the water in the calorimeter was 23.44C. Once the reaction finished the temperature of the water was 30.57C. What is the heat of combustion per mole of quinone?]

So does anyone else have similar problems? I'm beginning to think this is yet ANOTHER thing that I've managed to sneak past into three years of college now... and definitely not normal. I ABSOLUTELY HATE getting poorer grades on exams and quizzes and homework for things like this, where I know how to do the problem backwards with my eyes closed, but constantly mess up by answering a different question. The fact that I do most of the work in my head, and only write down a few large numbers here and there, also both lowers my grade and makes it damn near impossible on a college level to explain to the grader what I did and why -5 points on an 8 point problem where the only thing I did wrong was accidentally flip a 6 into a 9 on the second step out of ten. And the " well just show your work for now on " line doesn't help anything since the way I teach myself, and the only way for me to really do most math, is to visualize it and punch numbers into the calculator. The more things I have to transfer onto paper or from my calculator to the paper = the more chances I have of miss reading my hand writing, or accidentally writing a three instead of two... then I have to go back and check everything, stop, retry it, etc etc until my brain is goo.

It's frustrating

I have the same problem, my son has it too (misinterpreting questions, 'bad' formulation, analysing every detail)
it's very aspie i think
I saw a sentence in the Dutch comic book that described this process:
http://www.epo.be/uitgeverij/extrainfo. ... 64454837-A

The sentence is not there, I'll try to remember how it was:

The boy is next to a girl (in class I think), she has never really spoken to him and she approaches him and she says something like 'Don't you think that they let us work more than necessary'
(it is not the same sentence, but I can't remember what it was exactly)
and the boy analyses the sentence as following
Don't you : she wants to know whether I do or whether I don't
Think: it's a question about my mental activity
They: who is 'they'
let us work: 'us' who is us, she and I, the class, the people at school, the ones present on this floor, ... ? let work? for the class? compulsary? is it a possitive of negative action, ... ?
more: what is the standard then? what is it compared to? what are the limits?
than necessary? what is necessary and for what?

I did not a very good job here, I could have thougt about it more carefully, but maybe the idea is clear.
It occured to me that it is how I understand things (although there are a lot of automatic things due to the years of experience (i'm 41))

Last year I failed my best class, and I still don't know whether it was because of bad formulation or simply because they wanted to get rid of me
(I was a student that studied part time, this year the section I studied doesn't exist any longer. So it means that they should have kept it open for me and no one else for the next three years. So maybe that might have been an explanation too)