Subject Code/Name: CHEM10003 Chemistry 1Workload: 6x 3hr Chemistry Practicals (scattered throughout the semester) and 3x Weekly 1hr Lecture and 1x Weekly 1hr Tutorial
Assessment: A 30-minute on-line mid-semester test (5%); ongoing assessment of practical work (20%); a 3-hour written examination in the examination period (75%). Satisfactory completion of practical work is necessary to pass the subject. Independent learning tasks need to be completed in order to pass the subject.
Lectopia Enabled: Not sure, never used it
Past exams available: Yes, ample past exams, 2 per year dating back to ~2004. There is so much revision work that it is an effort to complete it all in the run-up to the exams, so start before SWOTVAC (pre-exam study break)
Textbook Recommendation: 2x Textbooks are recommended, one for Regular Chem and one for Organic Chem. The Organic Chem textbook honestly isn't needed, but "Chemical Principles" by Zumdahl is really very useful. I would recommend buying at the very least an outdated version of Zumdahl (I can testify that they are all the same in content) because there are so many small, pedantic things that you need to study that aren't covered extensively in lectures, such as Molecular Orbital Theory and particular calculations involving Buffer Solutions
Lecturer(s): Too many to list/remember, but this course is run REALLY well, and none of the lecturers were bad. The department is efficient and pragmatic in their operation of Chem 1.
Year & Semester of completion: 2012, Semester 1
Rating: 5 of 5
Your Mark/Grade: H1 [80]
Comments: What a brilliant subject. Straight up, I have to commend this for being the best structured, easiest to follow subject. They have ~1,500 kids in the course which they need to look after, set up timetable pracs, and essentially make the course work for, and you know what? They pull it off with aplomb, much better than the Biology department, which had emails running amok, impromptu assignment boxes, and objectively ambiguous instructions for a slightly smaller and more managable amount of students.
Ok so basically I assume that the only reason anyone would pick this is because it's a pre-requisite for anything, and the only people who would consider picking this would be VCE students/UoM entrants who simply want to know what the course covers. As far as I know, you don't pick Chemistry to complement your other subjects in the same way that you might pick Calculus or Data Analysis to do so, with the only exception coming to mind being Biology. I therefore think that people wouldn't choose Chemistry on a whim; I can only imagine that someone who picks Chemistry would study it in it's own right and plan to major in a Chemistry discipline, or perhaps for a Biology discipline. For those reaons I'm not going to do a pros/cons of picking Chemistry - you either will or you won't, depending on what you want your course to do. Rather, I'll just explain what's taught.
You cover, in a nutshell1. Organic Chemistry (Less on the reactions/polymerisation side of things, and more into understanding molecules in 3D. You'll cover a bit more nomenclature relating to alkenes, a new type of nomenclature relating to stereogenic molecules, and you'll cover (although still introductory material in the world of Chemistry) a LOT more detail into atomic orbitals than you could have ever imagined yourself doing, much less understanding in first year Chemistry)
2. Thermodynamics from VCE level with a physics based understanding (more on predicting whether a reaction will be exothermic/endothermic, rather than just using the informations that it is or isn't)
3. Entropy (understanding where Equilibrium Constants come from; objectively the hardest part of the course. This deals with WHY endothermic reactions CAN be spontaneous, even though VCE says 'generally, they won't be, but there's some exceptions'. This is where fundamental understanding is critical to answering exam questions correctly. There are two approaches here; the first is to memorise all the formulae and learn how to apply them with no inherent understanding of what is happening, or alternatively blow your brains out trying to understand how probability applies to atomic particles in the three different states and using your knowledge of (primarily real/ideal gases) to figure out a lot of crazy conceptual stuff
intuitively4. A whole heap of arbitrary shit relating to Chemistry 1/2 (Electronegativity, Sizes of atoms/ions, Acids and Bases including pH/pOH and Buffers {what is simple in VCE becomes rather challenging}, Metallic Character, and the new stuff covers magnetism, certain chemicals (you're at an advantage if you studied the production of H3PO4 of H2SO4 in Unit 4) and their production, Structures of Ionic/Metallic Lattices (Very complicated)), and exceptions to the Octet rule (explains structures of molecules like PCl5 and XeF4)
In summary: You do all the same shit, but the new topics are:
1. Organic Chemistry: Stereogenic centres (mirror image molecules) / Geometric nomenclature (naming alkenes) / Understanding bonding and applications of understanding bonding
2. Thermodynamics is almost the same but is more physics based; if you've done physics, you'll have a laugh here. If you hate physics, it'll take some study.
3. Entropy is entirely new and is more of a headfuck than anything introduced in VCE. It's to do with equilibrium constants and how people came to them in the first place, and is heavily based around energy. Good luck to anyone who hasn't done VCE physics because I wholeheartedly believed it helped a lot.
4. Lots of Chem Unit 1 stuff expanded which will likely be the foundation for a lot of the stuff in Chemistry 2.
Now tutorials are not compulsory and I found them useless. You can teach yourself the same and more than you would learn in a 1 hour tutorial using YouTube in 30minutes and have a far more fundamental understanding of it. Sure, they work through problems, and by all means they teach one or two problems. However the person delivering the tutorial won't have time to get around to your problems; he'll stand at the front and deliver a lecture to a smaller group of people than a regular lecture and you won't be able to ask what you need to ask. If you have problems, EMAIL the people in the Chemistry department; they actually get back to you and are incredibly flexible with organising times. I also therefore recommend against buying the "compulsory" tutorial book. I didn't touch mine and wasted all that money on it.
By all means, minus the tutorials, this subject was incredibly enjoyable, the pracs interesting (liquid nitrogen, c'mon! Even polyiodide salts and synthesis of aspirin from 4-aminophenol is damn fucking interesting), and the lecturers clear.
P.S. The better you are at converting between units of magnitude (i.e. nanolitres to kilograms with a given density in the units tonnes per microlitre), the more prepared you'll be for the exam. It's something that you should start doing on your holidays before coming to UoM and taking Chemistry 1, because they always drop a few direct conversion questions on the exam.