Subject Code/Name: CHEM20018 - Reactions and Synthesis Workload:3 Lectures/week
1 Tute/week
NO PRACS. NO PRACS. NO PRACS. DO NOT EXPECT CHEM PRACS. I feel this is important - yes, there is a chem subject without pracs.
Assessment: 20% Online Tests, 80% Exam.
Lectopia Enabled: Yes, screen capture works, but on that note the chem lectures are forced into the only room on the entire campus that doesn't use the conventional lectopia. It still works through ECHO, but there are often glitches, and the some lecturers are unsure of how to work the system.
Past exams available: Sample exams can be found on the digital repository, but they don't provide solutions for they believe students should revise using tute questions. Here's a quote from a near-exam period LMS announcement:
Several students have requested solutions to past CHEM20018 papers. School policy is that beyond 1st year, past exams solutions or exam tutorials will not be provided. In higher years, it is expected that students should be able to prepare for exams with the support of the extensive online notes, CA tests, and tutorials with solutions. You should attempt the past exams then consult with the lecturers for each part of the course.
Textbook Recommendation: Don't need to buy anything, just borrow the various books from the library as you need them.
Lecturer(s):Chronological order as semester progressed:
Organic Chem - Jonathan White (no problems)
Thermodynamics - Ken Ghiggino (no problems)
Inorganic Synthesis: Enthalpic and Entropic Drivers - Stephen Best (major problems, this guy shouldn't lecture, most students found him hard to understand)
Inorganic Synthesis: Coordination Chemistry - Paul Donnelley (stellar lecturer)
Option 1: Theory of Advanced Materials - Angus Gray Weale (I can't vouch for his lecturing in this subject because I didn't elect to do ToAM, but he is a great lecturer regardless)
Option 2: Biological Organic Chemistry - Spencer Williams (another great lecturer)
Year & Semester of completion: Semester 1 2013
Rating: 4 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: Will update when results come out
Comments: This subject is used by plenty of people going into various majors.
People pick CHEM20018 to:
- major in chemistry
- major in medicinal chemistry
- major in chemical systems for chemical engineering (coincidentally last chemistry subject they need to do with the chem major students)
- some people who major in pharmacology (depends on how they set up their major; some 3rd year subjects require chem)
- others who decide they like chem and pick it as an elective
The subject difficult, in that it is incredibly fast paced. Expect a big step up from first year - here, if you aren't studying each lecture properly (for at least 2+ hours until you understand everything in it), then you're not doing it right and will probably fail. And given that it's an 80% exam, your really will probably fail.
First up - the lectures. The lectures are not bad, but they are very fast paced. I can honestly suggest that if you're on top of your game, you really owe it to yourself to pre-read. I found myself constantly 1-2 weeks behind in this subject because it would take me longer to learn the lectures than the lectures were actually happening, and I could only catch up when cramming for assessments. It was definitely my hardest subject, and by a ridiculous margin as well - the workload is really massive, and they get the ball rolling from Day 1.
The lectures cover a wealth of material; it starts with organic chemistry where you learn everything you possibly could about C=O, reaction mechanisms, and bond formation and breaking. Then it progresses into thermodynamics where you are expected to start using integrals - everything in this is basically physics and maths, and it's essentially the study of physical chemistry and why it is important. You will find this section a lot easier if you properly read the relevant info in the textbook; in my opinion, the lecture notes are too brief and you'll end up really confused if you don't try to learn this properly. From there, you use all of the information in this unit as pre-requisite information in the next which is inorganic chemistry, and it's probably the worst taught component of the course.
I'm going to give inorganic chemistry it's own little paragraph, because I really feel like I ought to explain why it's shit. It's shit because the lecturer is shit (in the sense that he can't communicate the information very effectively), the parts of inorganic chemistry he selected to teach us are shit (he could have picked much better topics), and the assessment (which is based on the shit topics he selected) is also shit (in that it tests very pedantic pieces information). It's no surprise really that it was the section people did worst on for the Online CAL tasks (which I will discuss). You learn about oxide/peroxide/superoxide formation (of all fucking things, great, useful, and helpful right? not.), then you move onto lattice energy and enthalpy of hydration and just generally learning really well how to work with Hess' law. The second half isn't so bad, because it is interesting. I'll give it that. But it still is super shit for the random things that you are expected to memorise.
Then, you move onto coordination chemistry, which, being taught by Donnelley, is a pleasure as always. Super clear lectures, super interesting stuff. You learn obviously about metal complexes and revise a whole bunch of first year stuff, but you actually move a little deeper into redox. By the end of inorganic, you'll have a generally good understanding of how chemistry works - why reactions happen and linking everything to everything. Linking salts dissolving in water to energy transformations to pH to redox to transition metal chemistry. It's a pretty good outlook. Except for pourbaix diagrams - that shit's hard.
Finally, there's an
option!. You get to pick from two different topics - biological organic chemistry or synthesis of advanced materials.
I picked biological organic chemistry, which was great. It's a pity it was the last topic in the course, because it made me realise I should have picked Biochem over physiology. You learn about the major groups of molecules - sugars, fats/polyketides, and proteins. It's incredibly eye opening and if you have any interest in expanding on the general structures of organic molecules that you learned in Year 12 chem, then this is really a good pick, and I'm sure it would complement any subject (it helped with Physiology for example because I was able to see how a couple of hormones, like prostaglandins, were actually synthesised). Note: I think there MUST be overlap with biochem, because from what I've seen of my peers' biochem work, it was pretty similar.
I'm fairly sure that Synthesis of Advanced Materials is about getting you to be able to look at anything and tell you everything about what it's made out of. E.g. you look at all of the macroscopic properties of materials - stretch, density, reactivity with atmosphere, how easy it is to fracture, etc. I'm not so sure, but that's the general gist.
Now for the CAL tasks:
There are 5 topics and there are 5 CAL tasks, but only your top 4 grades count towards your 20%. That means that your top 4 out of the 5 CALS are worth 5% each. It's not as easy to get 100% in the CALS as in other subjects, but you get two attempts at each one and the questions do not change, so anyone technically SHOULD be able to do it. I did get 100% for all of the topics except one - can you guess which?
Spoiler
that's right, fuckin' inorganic
. The questions are mostly fair and model the lectures and tutes pretty well. Which is good.
I think the best part of taking this subject was that it actually links all of the main ideas in ways you've never before seen; you begin to think about the world in terms of thermodynamics and whether processes will or will not happen and you also begin to understand connections between phenomena you always thought were unrelated, like pH and redox stability and energy transformations and enthalpies of just about any process you like. The other good part about this subject is it leaves you reflecting that you have learned so much, but you realise that you've only scratched the surface of what Chemistry really is - a lot of the mechanisms you learned are simplified (and still incredibly hard), and a lot of theory still needs to be covered.
The worst part of the subject were
a) inorganic
b) the workload
Might edit this a bit later for readability / might feel like adding stuff