Same here. I knew people who memorized their way through their mid-term and final exams, but couldn't explain any of what they'd memorized.
That applied to some of the professors also -- one even put a question on a mid-term for biochemistry asking for the rate of a reaction at equilibrium (no joke). When questioned about this, the TA proctoring the test simply didn't understand what was wrong with the question.
My chemistry is extremely rusty, but I thought that even if the reaction was at equilibrium, there is still a rate of reaction--it's just that the forward and backward reaction rates are the same, so there's no net change.
(anyone with a better knowledge of chemistry please correct me if I'm wrong)
The rate of the reaction would be the net, which is by definition 0 at equilibrium, as you described. So the answer SHOULD have been 0, but to be a question worth putting on a mid-term for biochemistry, the question should have specified starting concentrations of the various components (reagents and products) in the solution.
More to the point though, the person who wrote the exam didn't understand why the equilibrium part mattered...
That applied to some of the professors also -- one even put a question on a mid-term for biochemistry asking for the rate of a reaction at equilibrium (no joke). When questioned about this, the TA proctoring the test simply didn't understand what was wrong with the question.