Welcome to CH102/104 General Chemistry. This is the second 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 ch102-questions@bu.edu. All of the CH102 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 Professors

Professor Alexander Golger (SCI/484A, 617-353-2124, golger@bu.edu) is the course coordinator and is in charge of the laboratory part of CH102.

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.

  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 1-4292-2705-2).
  3. Golger, General Chemistry Laboratory Manual, (Hayden McNeil Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-0-7380-3531-4).
  4. ALEKS General Chemistry I online tutoring. Ordering options are at
    http://quantum.bu.edu/courses/ch101/aleks.html

  5. eInstruction interactive RF Higher Ed respond pad, ISBN 978-188-148-3717. The instructions for you to register your eInstruction response pad are at
    http://quantum.bu.edu/courses/ch102/cps.html
  6. laboratory notebook, Hayden McNeil Publishing, ISBN 1-930882-23-8.
  7. approved safety goggles and laboratory coat.

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 is at

http://quantum.bu.edu/courses/ch102/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, January 15. 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, January 26 . Some weeks there will also be a laboratory lecture; these laboratory lectures are: Tuesday 1–2 pm SCI/107 or Wednesday 2–3pm COM/101. The first laboratory lecture is on Tuesday, January 20.

The Monday 5–6:30 pm sessions are used for lecture and lab exams, review sessions, and lab lectures on Monday substitute dates.

If you have not yet registered for all of the four (two for CH104) 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

Answer keys for exams and quizzes will be posted on the bulletin board at SCI/484.

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

The final exam will not be given at any other time and failure to take the 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 there will be a short quiz in discussion; the lowest two scores will be dropped. Unannounced lab quizzes may be given during lab lecture.

The course grade will be computed with weighting 20% lecture quizzes, 30% lecture exams, 30% lab, and 20% final exam; CH104 students are assigned the average lab score.

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/academics/programs/conductcode.html

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/ch102

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

ch102-questions@bu.edu

All of the CH102 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 this second semester we cover the last six chapters of the course text Chemistry:

and corresponding material from Notes on General Chemistry/3e, chapters 5--12, as detailed at

http://quantum.bu.edu/courses/ch102/assignments.html#topics

Each Monday-Wednesday-Friday class meeting will cover approximately two sections of the text; each Tuesday-Thursday class meeting will cover approximately three 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.

  1. Chemical thermodynamics: Calorimetry (two lab periods). An experimental method called "calorimetry" will be used to study heat effects, which accompany physical changes and chemical reactions.
  2. Colligative properties. In this experiment you will discover how to control the freezing temperature of any liquid. The more chemicals will be added to the liquid, the lower its freezing temperature.
  3. Gas laws. You will establish the relationship between the volume, pressure, temperature and the number of moles of a gas sample. Combining them together, you will derive from your experimental data the Ideal Gas Law and the value of the molar gas constant. Besides, you will find in this experiment the lowest possible temperature, which can be reached in nature: −273.15 0C!
  4. Equilibrium formation of ferric thiocyanate complex. What happens in a reaction depends not only on the reactants, but also on the conditions under which they are combined. This gives us some control over the outcome of chemical reactions. In this experiment you will investigate the sensitivity of the reaction equilibrium to the ratio of reactants and to the temperature of the reaction mixture.
  5. Acid-Base titration. How can you tell when a reaction is finished? This question is very important in all areas of chemistry. You will evaluate several titration methods for determining when an acid-base reaction is finished.
  6. Solubility: The common ion effect. In this experiment, you will explore the nature of solubility equilibria and investigate the solubility of one sparingly soluble salt in different solvents. This lab will be an open project experiment, so we hope you will enjoy your research work.
  7. Electrochemistry: Electrochemical cells (two lab periods). You will study some practical applications of electron transfer reactions constructing various voltaic cells and investigating different approaches for reaching the highest possible cell voltage. The second part of the lab is the open project, which gives you a chance to apply all your lab experience gained in the course of General Chemistry.
  8. Kinetics: Iodine Clock Reaction . You will explore how fast chemical reactions proceed, what factors influence reaction rate, and by what molecular mechanism a reaction occurs.

Grading

Each lecture exam will be graded out of 100 points. 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 CH102 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. CH104 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 Professor 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 1–8 will be dropped.

Your ALEKS assessment and learning system score will count as 10% of your course grade.

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 16–20 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

You should be registered for a 1 hour required discussion section per week. This 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/ch102/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 Thursday, February 19, no record of it will appear on your transcript. After that date, until the end of the day Monday, March 30, you may drop the course but with a W grade (withdrawn). If you must drop the course, note that CH102 will be given during the Summer I, Summer II, and Fall sessions of 2009.