All or nothing thinking

Black and white thinking - thinking in all or nothing terms. The world is seen in terms of dichotomies, such as people are either all good or all bad, 100% successful or a failure, strong or weak and so on. Shades of grey do not seem to exist for black and white thinkers. 

Many students think of acid-base reactions as all or nothing. They erroneously assume that if the reaction is favorable (e.g., NH3 + HF, which is downhill by 12 pA a units of energy) then all NH3 and HF molecules will be consumed during the reaction. This is not the case with this reaction (and, in fact, no reaction goes 100.000...etc. percent to completion. There is always an equilibrium point where the concentration of products causes the reaction to stop. At this point there are always some reactant molecules still around. The more the energy difference between reactants and products (the more downhill the reaction), the fewer reactant molecules remaining when the equilibrium point is reached. 

Strayer Yea, like 1 said, you know, all the guys thinks they re fast in a mine and they can get out of the road in time but for as fast as that roof come like 1 said, 1 just turned around and 1 didn t even get chance to jump or nothing, the whole place was down.- ... 

All the way home in the stale-air-and-diesel grumbling of the mini-cab I think of Adam, because that s what I do when I m too tired to stop myself, though what I think of is nothing I could draw, or speak of, or write about. I can t hear his voice or feel his touch, but what fills me is too real, too whole, to call memory or even remembrance. 

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