Welcome to CH101/103 General Chemistry. This is the first semester of a year-long course intended primarily for science majors, pre-medical students, engineering students who require a one-year course, and other interested students. This syllabus is designed to answer many questions you may have. Please read it over and then keep it handy to use throughout the semester. If you have questions about the material or the course, we encourage you to email them to ch101-questions@bu.edu. All of the CH101 staff receive email to this address and so this is typically the fastest way to get your questions answered.

Staff

The course is given by

Professor Alexander Golger (SCI/484A, 617-353-2124, golger@bu.edu) is the course coordinator and is in charge of the laboratory part of CH101.

Discussion sections are led by Lecturer Natalya Bassina (SCI/484B, 617-353-4716, nbassina@bu.edu), and graduate teaching fellows. Natalya Bassina also is in charge of class scheduling and other administrative aspects of the course.

Texts and tools

The primary exposition of the course is lectures, based on the materials below. The required materials for the course are available at the Boston University Bookstore and online.

  1. American Chemical Society, Chemistry, (W.H. Freeman and Company, 2005, ISBN 978-071-673-1269). This book is supported by web-based resources at http://bcs.whfreeman.com/acsgenchem. To use these resources, you need to go the the web address and register as a student. The various resources available are discussed in the preface to the textbook. These resources are an essential, required part of this course.
  2. Dill, Notes on General Chemistry, 3e, (W.H. Freeman and Company, 2008, ISBN 978-1-4292-2705-6).
  3. Golger, General Chemistry Laboratory Manual, (Hayden McNeil Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-0-7380-3531-4).
  4. ALEKS General Chemistry online personal tutoring. Instructions for you to purchase and to use ALEKS are at
    http://quantum.bu.edu/courses/ch101/aleks.html
  5. eInstruction interactive RF Higher Ed respond pad, ISBN 978-188-148-3717; used responsee pads are fine. The instructions for you to register your eInstruction response pad are available at

    http://quantum.bu.edu/courses/ch101/cps.html

  6. Exploring Quantum Concepts in Chemistry (2009 edition), for computer-based labs 6, 7, and 8; this must be purchased at the Boston University bookstore.
  7. laboratory notebook, Hayden McNeil Publishing, ISBN 1-930882-23-8.
  8. approved safety goggles and laboratory coat.

Be aware that it is a Massachusetts State Law that safety goggles are mandatory in the laboratory. In the lab, all students who wear contact lenses should wear prescription glasses under their safety goggles. Contact lenses are forbidden in the lab. Also, all students must wear the appropriate clothing: long pants, long sleeves and closed shoes (no sandals or flip-flops).

You are also required to have your own calculator for this course. It should display scientific (exponential) notation and have logarithm functions. Be sure to bring it to discussions and laboratory sessions. Note, however, calculators may not be used during exams and quizzes.

Course schedule

The detailed course schedule and calendar is at

http://quantum.bu.edu/courses/ch101/schedule.html

The course consists of five required components:

There are three hours of lecture meetings each week, and these lecture meetings are held in SCI/107 at three alternative times:

You are required to attend your assigned lecture meeting. You may attend one or more of the other lecture meetings if you unavoidably miss a lecture meeting or if you would like to experience a different presentation of the material.

There is a one-hour discussion each week, on Thursday or Friday. Discussions meet starting Thursday, September 3. There is one three-hour laboratory each week. Laboratory sessions are held in SCI/268 on Monday–Friday. The first laboratory session is on Monday, September 14. Some weeks there will also be a laboratory lecture, on Wednesday–Friday. These laboratory lectures are: Wednesday 2–3 pm MOR/101, Thursday 4–5 pm SCI/107, Friday 2–3 pm MOR/101. Discussion and lab lecture begin the first week of the semester. The first laboratory lecture is on Wednesday, September 2. Labs begin the third week of the semester.

The Monday 5–7 pm sessions are used for diagnostic tests, lab post tests, and lecture exams.

If you have not yet registered for all of the five (three for CH103) components of the course, please do so right away. All grade records are based on the registrar information, so we require that you be officially registered and that you attend the corresponding lecture, discussion and lab.

Exams and quizzes

The detailed course schedule is at

http://quantum.bu.edu/courses/ch101/schedule.html

There will be three lecture exams, a lab exam and a course final exam as follows:

Please note that the third lecture exam is the Monday preceding Fall Recess; this exam will not be given at any other time and failure to take the exam will result in a zero for that exam, so please make Fall Recess travel plans accordingly.

The final exam, Thursday, December 17, 5–7 pm, will not be given at any other time and failure to take the final exam will result in an I (Incomplete) grade for the course, so please make end-of-semester travel plans accordingly.

In addition to the lecture exams, each week after the first week there will be a short quiz in discussion; the lowest two scores will be dropped. Unannounced lab quizzes may be given during lab lecture.

Finally, on Monday, September 28, there will be an assessment of your background knowledge and your learning styles (there is nothing to prepare for this assessment); on Monday, October 26 there will be a post test on the energy of light lab lecture workshop; and on Mondays, November 2, 16, and 30, there will be a post test on the preceding computer-based investigation. All of these tests will be given beginning at 5 pm in locations to be announced.

Please note that the November 30 post test immediately follows Fall Recess; this post test will not be given at any other time and failure to take it will result in a zero for that test, so please make Fall Recess travel plans accordingly.

The course grade will be computed with weighting 15% discussion quizzes, 30% lecture exams, 25% lab (CH103 students will be assigned the average lab score), 10% ALEKS, and 20% final exam.

Academic Conduct

All students at Boston University are expected to maintain high standards of academic honesty and integrity. It is the responsibility of every student to be aware of the Academic Conduct Code’s contents and to abide by its provisions, as detailed at

http://www.bu.edu/cas/students/undergrad-resources/code/

Please note carefully that we treat cheating with zero tolerance. The consequences of cheating are at a minimum that the score for work on which cheating occurs counts is zero, and a letter detailing the cheating is sent to the student's advisor, the dean of CAS, and placed in the student's academic file. Possible further consequences are referral to Academic Conduct Committee, and additional penalties, including possible expulsion from university.

Course Web and Email

The course Web at

http://quantum.bu.edu/courses/ch101

and email are used extensively in this course. If you have questions about the material or the course, we encourage you to email them to

ch101-questions@bu.edu

All of the CH101 staff receive email to this address and so this is typically the fastest way to get your questions answered.

Each student is required to have an email account on the Boston University computer network. It is easy to activate your account, if you have not already done so (there is no charge to use your account): Go to Information Technology, 111 Cummington Street, and they will set you up. Be sure to ask for their handouts on how to use the World Wide Web and email. Your email address will automatically be added to the course email address. Please note that use of university computing facilities is governed by the BU Conditions Use and Policy on Computing Ethics,

http://www.bu.edu/computing/ethics

Abuse can result in severe sanctions, including fines and academic probation or suspension.

 

What we will cover

We have designed the course as an introduction to general chemistry that integrates laboratory explorations with the development of the analytical tools necessary to understand and guide those explorations. Some particular aspects that we will emphasize are

Our goal is to help you share in our excitement for and the wonder of science, to challenge you to excel, to give you a sense of empowerment about science, and to encourage you to continue study in science—and hopefully chemistry. We intend to focus especially on what are the core ideas of chemistry.

Lecture

In the first semester we cover the first five chapters of ACS Chemistry and related pages in Notes on General Chemistry/3e. The detailed lecture schedule is here.

  1. Water: A Natural Wonder: ACS Chemistry chapter 1 and the following pages of Notes/3e:
    • 1--6 of chapter 1 (building blocks of matter)
    • 101--110 of chapter 4 (molecular models, Lewis structures, and polarity)
    • all of appendix 1, Significant figures in numerical calculations
    • all of appendix 2, Working with logarithms
  2. Aqueous solutions and solubility: ACS Chemistry chapter 2 and the following pages of Notes/3e:
    • 6--18 of chapter 1 (concentration, moles, and molarity)
    • 297--213 of chapter 8 (solubility)
    • 177--181 of chapter 7 (acids and bases in aqueous solution)
  3. Origin of atoms: ACS Chemistry chapter 3 and the following pages of Notes/3e:
    • all of chapter 13, Origin of atoms
  4. Structure of atoms: ACS Chemistry chapter 4 and the following pages of Notes/3e:
    • all of chapter 2, Quantum aspects of light and matter
    • all of chapter 3.1, Atomic wavefunction family album
    • 73--78 of chapter 3.2, Energies of electron on atoms
    • all of chapter 3.3, Why atoms don't collapse
  5. Structure of molecules: ACS Chemistry chapter 5 and the following pages of Notes/3e:
    • 111--116 of chapter 4 (hybrid atomic orbitals)
    • 117--123 of chapter 4 (bonding and antibonding molecular orbitals)
    • 124--129 of chapter 4 (recipe for π bonds in polyatomic molecules)

Each lecture meeting will cover approximately four sections of the text. You should read the textbook sections and do the problems pertaining to those sections, found at the end of the chapter, before the lecture meeting on those sections.

Laboratory

The laboratory part of the course will let you see first-hand chemical principles and processes in action. It will also give you experience with some of the methods scientists use to do chemical research. Your laboratory will consist of seven experiments, which have been scheduled as nearly as possible with and supporting discussions in regular lectures; experiments 1, 2, 3, 4 and 9 will be done in SCI/268. Experiment 5 will be done at a workshop in lab lecture.

The detailed laboratory schedule is here.

  1. Measurement of atoms and molecules in solids, liquids and gases. You will find the size of atoms and molecules in experiments with solids, liquids and gases. You will also produce the film of oleic acid, which is only one molecule thick and measure the length of this molecule. And finally, you will find in an experiment the value of the universal constant, the number of things in one mole of anything—Avogadro’s number.
  2. Chemical composition of inorganic salts. By investigating the behavior of different hydrates you will explore the law of fixed chemical composition. You will see that chemical changes can be reversed and learn how to distinguish chemical substances from physical mixtures. You will also develop the laboratory analysis technique, which allows you to determine molecular formulas.
  3. Preparation of solutions and verification of their concentration. This lab experiment will give you experience in the preparation of solutions using different laboratory techniques: dissolution, dilution and mixing. You will also learn how to use spectroscopy to measure the concentration of a chemical species in a solution.
  4. Qualitative analysis (two lab periods). You will use an important application of solubility properties: a powerful method of separation and analysis of different compounds called "Qualitative Analysis."
  5. Energy of light (workshop), We will explore experimentally how energy is exchanged between light and matter.
  6. Properties of waves and orbitals (computer-based investigation). An electron in an atom is represented as a special kind of wave. In this investigation you will learn to read the properties of waves based on how they change in time and space. This will allow you to interpret electron waves in atoms.
  7. The role of time in atoms and light (computer-based investigation). A great puzzle of atoms is why they do not collapse. You will explore how the answer traces to the special way that time works in atoms and in their interaction with light.
  8. SOE: Symmetry, overlap, and energy (computer-based investigation). Molecules form by interaction of electron waves on different atoms. You will explore the relative symmetry, spatial overlap, and relative energy control which electron wave interact and how strongly.
  9. Lewis structures and molecular shapes. You will apply what you have studied about Lewis structures and the VSEPR method to a set of molecules and construct the physical models of them as well. Using quite simple and general concepts you will be able to draw the structures of real molecules and to construct their 3-D shapes with the molecular model kit.  The lab time is to be used to help you perfect your skills at deducing Lewis structures and became acquainted with various molecular geometries.

Grading

Each lecture exam will be graded on a 100-point scale. No makeup exams will be given. The lecture exams count for 30% of your course grade.

Each discussion quiz will count equally and the two lowest quiz scores will be dropped. These quizzes are meant to assess your understanding of topics covered in previous lectures and homework. If you are absent, the missed quiz counts as 0. No makeup quizzes will be given. The discussion quizzes count for a total of 15% of your course grade.

For CH101 students, the lab score counts for 25% of your course grade. The various components of the lab will be graded as follows: The lab experiments (30 points for each lab period), lab quizzes (10 points each), lab lecture quizzes (5 points each), and the lab exam (60 points). Lab quizzes are given at the beginning of each lab to check your familiarity with the basic features of the lab to be done. CH103 students will be assigned the average lab score.

A missed lab counts as zero. If, due to unusual circumstances, such as prolonged illness, you miss more than one lab, please contact Dr. Golger (golger@bu.edu) as soon as possible so that special arrangements can be made to catch up with your work. The lowest lab score for labs 1-3, 5-9 will be dropped. If you miss lab 4, you must make it up during the week of November 2.

Questions about grading

Any question concerning the grading of a lecture exam, lecture quiz, or laboratory report must be brought to the attention of your discussion or laboratory teaching fellow during the class session in which it is returned to you; material will not be accepted for regrading afterwards.

Indicate on the face of the exam, quiz or laboratory report the questions you wish re-graded and your reasons for believing that they were mis-graded. The entire work will be re-graded. Be sure you have made no alterations in your work. We occasionally photocopy your graded work as a check. Please note that the penalties for academic misconduct are severe, as detailed in Boston University's Academic Conduct Code, available from CAS Academic Advising, Room 105.

Course grade

The course grade will be determined as follows:

Contributions to overall course score
Lecture exams 30%
Final exam 20%
Discussion quizzes 15%
Laboratory 25%
ALEKS 10%

We do not assign letter grades to exams, labs, or quizzes. Your overall course letter grade is assigned based on your total score for the course. There are no fixed percentages of A grades, B grades, etc. Rather, we assign course letter grades based on our assessment of how someone should have performed to receive an A, B, etc.

Suggestions for success

Learning chemistry requires persistence, diligence and hard work. We suggest that you plan to spend about 30 hours per week on this course over and above the scheduled contact hours. If you are willing to devote this time, and you spend it wisely and effectively, you will be able to perform your best in this course. Here are some specific suggestions that we have found helpful.

Lecture preparation

You will get the most out of lecture if you have studied the textbook readings, related web exercises and assigned problems beforehand.

A particularly effective way to do this is to first read through several pages of the material in the course texts. Next, when you think you have understood what you have read, set the texts aside and then make a written summary of what you have understood. It is important to carry out this step without looking at the texts. Finally, compare what you have written with the material in the texts, to identify those parts that are unclear or where your understanding is incomplete.

If you follow this procedure, you will have a quite detailed idea of what will be covered in each lecture, and, most important, you can be particularly alert to those parts that are unclear for you and, if the lecture still doesn't clarify things, you will be able to ask questions right in lecture. You may even want to collect your summaries in a journal that you can then update and refine throughout the semester. and so make an excellent set of notes for review prior to the final exam.

Lecture follow up

After each lecture, you should work through your lecture notes to be sure you understand everything that was covered. You may even want to rewrite your notes. That way, as you do so, you can test your understanding. If material is still unclear, then be sure to ask for specific help with it, in email, office hours or discussion.

Homework

Chemistry is a quantitative science and understanding of its concepts is obtained by solving problems. The text and supplementary materials offer many problems. For success you should do as many of these as you can and if you run into difficulties ask your teaching fellow or professor, in email, office hours or discussion. You will get the most out of lectures if you have worked through problems related to material to be covered before lecture.

Discussions

Discussion is a particularly good time to bring up problems you haven't been able to solve. Chances are others are experiencing similar difficulties and you will be able to learn from their questions too. It is essential that you have worked on your own to solve your problems, because then you will be most able to understand their solution.

Exams will be returned and discussed during these discussions. Any questions about exams or problem sets should be addressed to your discussion TF during this time.

Office hours and tutoring sessions

Your professor will hold office hours each week. We will announce the times and locations of these office hours after the first week of class. In addition, each teaching fellow will lead a scheduled tutoring session each week. Details of office hours and tutoring session are at

http://quantum.bu.edu/courses/ch101/help.html

If you have concerns

If you are experiencing difficulty, please come to see your lecture professor or Professor Golger without delay. Often, students in this course perceive that they are doing poorer work than they actually are. Particularly for first-year students, we recognize that it may be difficult for you to judge your academic standing in the course, since we do not use the same type of grading scheme with which you may be familiar from high school. That is why it is important for you to speak to us before making any major decision, such as dropping the course.

If dropping the course appears to be in your best interest, we still would like to work through the decision with you. We are also happy to advise you on appropriate choices for your academic program. If you drop the course by Wednesday, October 7, no record of it will appear on your transcript. After that date, until the end of the day Thursday, November 12, you may drop the course but with a W grade (withdrawn). If you must drop the course, note that CH101 will be given during the Spring and Summer sessions of 2010.