Dr. Rick Toomey

Classes taught

• General Chemistry I and Lab
• General Chemistry II and Lab
• Physical Chemistry I
• Physical Chemistry II

Style & personality

A very good professor. He really gives you the idea that he knows the material well and is passionate about it. He rewards high test grades with certain percentages which he adds to your final grade which can be a big help.

DO NOT fall behind in his class because he will move very quickly, but will be willing to help you as much as he can, so long as you've been showing up to class (which is required of Academy students anyway) and reading the material.

He will require that you clear your graphing calculator's memory of EVERYTHING before you take a test or you will not be able to use it on the test.

He requires that you learn a lot of material, and when he tells you to learn something you will be using it later on some form of test.

He rarely gives homework in class, and when he does it's not for credit. The class grade comes from two places only: tests and OWLs. There are traditionally four 100-point, one-hour exams and one 100-point, two-hour final exam. The normal exams contain about 30 multiple-choice questions and the final contains about twice that. The final exam is made cumulative if and only if the class average for one of the one-hour exams is less than 70. Otherwise it covers only the material since the last one-hour exam.

The other portion comes from the OWL System. He will assign several problems in it every week which are a SIGNIFICANT part of your final grade and help you to maintain and learn the material.

Student opinions

He is a funny teacher and his stories are some of the best I have heard while at the academy. His class is worth taking for these stories alone. He is very respectful but demands respect back and will call you out if you refer to him as "Rick" or "Toomey" without including some part of his title. He does not allow people to sleep in class and will throw you out if he catches you. He loves debunking false advertising and loves to read ads for things such as ion fans and ion hair dryers.

Ben: Dr. Toomey is simply amazing. Whenever chemistry bores you, he won't, so don't worry about that. Class is always productive and interesting, as well as fast-paced, so you probably won't be tempted to skip very much. It's pretty safe to say he's probably one of the best in the department.

Davy: Dr. Toomey was an insanely good teacher. Granted, I loved chemistry in the first place, but he definitely made it better than I would've imagined. He's extremely funny and sarcastic, which makes the time fly by. He also is willing to do whatever it takes to help a student if you approach him, so he gets the humanitarian points, too. If you get a choice, put him at the top of your list for certain.

Aadhar: Not to make this page sound like a broken record, but Dr. Toomey was an amazing professor. I had no passion for chemistry before I came to the Academy, and I didn't really leave with a passion for it either, but while I was there, I loved the stuff. And that is all due to Dr. Toomey. He knows his chemistry, and he knows how to teach it. Easily one of the best professors I have ever had.

Quotes

• "Yeah, and breathing alleviates the symptoms of asphyxiation." (When criticizing a water that claimed to "alleviate the symptoms of dehydration".)
• "No, Jon, I don't think I'd write a test question like that... until now."
• "It's zinc - before you drink!"
• "Jon - do I look like a physics teacher? I'm a physical chemist. There's a difference - they're frustrated."
• "Please don't go tell the chair that I humped the teacher station."
• "We're chemists, we break things."
• "When you stop eating you die. When you stop breathing you die. So basically equilibrium equals death."
• "There's a big difference between chemists and engineers. Chemist discover it, and engineers put it to practical use. Basically we're useless."
• "This is a hair. This is an axe. This is Aadhar holding an axe. Aadhar is splitting a hair -- with an axe."