Subject Code/Name: CHEM10004: Chemistry 2Workload:Semester 2 OnlyWeekly: 3x 1hr Lecture, 1x 1hr Tutorial
Throughout the Semester: 6x 3hr Laboratory Practicals
Assessment:75% - Exam
20% - Laboratory Practicals
(note that each practical is worth 3.3%! That's substantial!)5% - Online Mid-Semester Test
Lectopia Enabled: No.
Past exams available: Yes, there is no lack of past exams available and solutions are provided.
Textbook Recommendation:Must Buy: Laboratory Manual (or retain from Chemistry 1; it's the same book for both), and therein, you'll need a lab coat and some protective glasses.
Do not need to buy:Tutorial workbook (E-Copy provided on the Learning Management System [LMS] so if you have a laptop, don't buy it)
The prescribed textbooks. There's one for general Chemistry (Zumdahl) and there's one for Organic (Mc. Murry). They are both EXCELLENT textbooks, and will no doubt be highly useful for you. But, on the flip side, they are both highly expensive. Do a cost benefit analysis - I did have both of them but only because I got them new for half price. I probably wouldn't have bought them both if they were full price, because I didn't use them all that much.
Lecturer(s):Professor Richard O'Hair - Organic Chem
Professor Carl Schiesser - Organic Chem
Associate Professor Trevor Smith - Quantum Chem
Associate Professor Michelle Gee - Kinetics
(she's awesome)Dr. Paul Donnelly - Redox Chemistry and Coordination Chemistry
Year & Semester of completion: 2012 - Semester 2
Rating: 4 of 5
Your Mark/Grade: Will update when results come out.
Comments:Despite everything you are about to read, I just really like Chemistry, and the subject was pretty well coordinated - the Chem department has done a good job of picking topics that are highly applicable and relevant to studies in Chemistry. The way the tutorials are structured is great. The Learning Lab is also fantastic. Really, there's not much to complain about. But I did have some major disagreements with the way in which some of the topics in this subject was taught. So what you'll read is mostly negative, but rest assured that this IS a good subject - I just want to voice my opinion.
Okay so basically, in contrast to Chemistry 1 which mainly elaborated on aspects of the VCE course, Chemistry 2 covers 5 topics - 4 of which are (for the most part) brand new.
The topics, in order of instruction, are:
1. Organic Chem (2 lecturers)
2. Quantum Chem (1 godawful lecturer)
3. Kinetics (1 awesome lecturer, such a chiller)
4. Redox Chemistry, and;
5. Transition Metal Chemistry (one lecturer for both and he's a pretty cool guy too)
So I'll elaborate on each and every topic, just to give prospective students a feel for what you can expect.
Organic ChemistryOrganic Chemistry was all about teaching us different mechanisms of reactions - where the electrons go, and some qualitative explanations for why they do so. Now the lectures for this section of the course weren't bad - the lecturers were clear, and the material made sense - but that was only in the lectures. Outside of the lectures (i.e. in SWOTVAC), the material became grossly complicated when nobody had any idea what the heck was happening in Organic.
A few things led to this problem.
The first was that lectures were not recorded. The second is that there were no lecture notes for Schiesser's part of the topic. The third is that there were very limited resources provided to learn the material. But, probably the biggest problem of all is that they didn't teach us anything surrounding the reactions; we learnt the reactions - then next thing you know, we're studying quantum. Nobody was there to teach you how all of these reactions led to organic syntheses, or indeed, dynamic problem solving when you get things wrong. There was no "This reagent probably should be used in preference to this one because of reasons x and y" - it was simply reaction mechanisms, so when it comes to guessing what's happening in the syntheses during the exam, it was literally just best guess.
You had to learn an odd 15-20 functional groups (no problemo) and then understand how and why they react in the ways that they do. In the examination, they normally give you a series of steps in a synthesis, and you need to identify missing reagents and structures in order to figure out the parts that they aren't giving you, based on what you are supplied with before and after. THIS WAS NOT TAUGHT IN THE LECTURES.
Whilst Organic Chemistry could have been very interesting, what was assessed was completely unfair; it was not taught, so they shouldn't be allowed to examine it. Hopefully this changes in future years.
The next topic was
Quantum Chemistry.And it was a shitstorm of useless information.
Now before I get slammed for launching a baseless polemic against the Chem dept, I want to use an analogy to show why I believe the university's methodology in teaching Quantum was fundamentally flawed.
My analogy is this: you don't need to know how a combustion engine works in order to drive a car. You don't need to be able to understand it's internal mechanisms in order to behold, utilise, and appreciate the result - that is, a highly useful outcome of being able drive a car.
This will apply in what what you're hopefully about to read. Still here?
Quantum Chemistry is concerned with understanding the development of atomic theory and our model of the atom. The outcomes are undoubtedly useful - energy is quantised, just as energy levels are quantised. The wave equation allows us to solve many things about the atom; for instance, the mathematically derived (and now well understood) shapes of orbitals that form chemical bonds and account for the chemical properties which you've (until now) taken for granted.
So it's all good and well to study Quantum Chem. But unfortunately, the way it was presented to us was completely redundant and superfluous.
The fundamental problem with it is that they tried to explain the trials and tribulations of the academics of yesteryear - those chemists who were debating the nature of the atom and establishing the groundwork of quantum mechanics - to first chem students without philosophical doctorates in particle physics. It's just not going to work.
In fact, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that first years are going to be able to understand what is wrong with Quantum Mechanics. It actually is impossible for this to occur without an appreciation of much more sophisticated theory.
Now why is this a problem? Because they
tried to teach it to us under the
pretense that we'd be able to understand. What do I mean?
Well, the subject was basically taught to us as a chronological progression of the historical evolution in atomic theory. First there was Democritus and his infamous cronies, and it all made sense up to the Bohr Model. They logically explained every shift in thinking and the experiments which disproved the previous versions of the atom.
And then what happens? Quantum Mechanics. Why? Neither the lecturer, nor the textbook(!!!) made us privy to the answer. To paraphrase the textbook, the transition from Bohr to Planck/Quantum Theorists basically said at the start of the chapter "It was becoming apparent that the Bohr model was incorrect."
And that was all that was said on the matter.
The rest of Quantum continued in a similar fashion - learning abstract equations which held little relevance to a first year Chemistry student (and indeed, rote learning for the sake of salvaging a Chemistry 2 score), and it was shit all around.
Now back to my analogy:
If the farmer who earns his dosh from his tractor can utilise the end result of the scientific revolution that was the combustion engine without much understanding of it's internal mechanism - then great, the world is a better place. Let me liken the farmer to the first year chemistry student. The farmer has no way of knowing, living rurally without an education, how the combustion engine works, just as the philosophical doctorate deprived first year chem student doesn't have the groundings to understand how quantum mechanics is going to work. There's simply no way in hell that either of our two friends are going to understand it. So what are the options:
1. You can teach them from the ground up how it works, or;
2. You can show them the end result and how to utilise it without understanding how or why, because it will still yield a useful outcome.
The university went in between both of these options. They tried to teach us everything from first principles, but there were gigantic Grand Canyon sized gaps in understanding. It was taught to us under the
pretense that it all makes sense to us, when really we didn't have a chance of getting it. This has special significance for the next topic, because Michelle Gee did in fact realise that her audience of first year's didn't have a chance at understanding some of the material she was to present to us, so she went with the second option.
Finally, Quantum was shit because the lecturer couldn't explain anything. The infamous "Photoelectic Effect" was elaborated on and explained over the duration of about 4 weeks in VCE Physics, and given less than a 1hr lecture in Chemistry 2 - and even then, it was OBJECTIVELY ill-explained. I was paying special attention to the lecturers explanation of the Photoelectic effect, and he didn't adequately explain it at all - everything he said was ephermeral and incomplete; there was no logical introduction to what it was, how scientists arrived at the conclusion, and what the implications of it were - yet it was still assessed in it's finest detail (most definitely not covered in the lecture or the lecture notes) by the lecturer. Thank you, VCE Physics, for allowing me to have some chance at guessing the Multi Choice for this topic.
But I'm ranting heaps - let me progress onto the next topic, which was
Kinetics.
Kinetics was relatively well taught - simply by virtue of the fact that the lecturer was switched on to her audience.
Kinetics is the branch of chemistry that is concerned with how fast reactions progress due to their intricate mechanisms - which are often much more complicated than they seem thanks to Collision Theory. She taught everything so well from first principles that EVERYTHING was left making sense.
Now, Kinetics has a fundamental prerequisite of differential equations - something not touched on in VCE or Calculus 1. This meant that 90% of her audience wouldn't have had the faintest clue of what she was actually doing when it came to integrating what's known as rate laws. You could copy exactly what she did, but it didn't mean you understood it.
Now, she recognised that it was beyond the scope of the course to learn differential equations and differential integration. So what did she do? Well, she couldn't have gone with the first option and taught it from first principles. So she just decided to give us the answer to the problem and yield and utilise the ultimate result - formulas that come from differential equations. Students were given 6 formulas to remember if they couldn't derive them - which was perfectly fine. One, apparently, does not need to understand how differential equations work in order to calculate useful rate information about chemical reactions. This is like our farmer friend who doesn't need to understand the combustion engine that propels his tractor in order for him to do something useful. It was fantastic that she actually realised this, unlike the Quantum lecturer. Kinetics was an eye opener and highly enjoyable if you like Chemistry - it's the only real section where algebraic calculations came into play. I'd liken the problem-solving aspect to Stoichiometry - you need to analyse what you've got to figure out how to get what's asked for in the question using similar techniques.
Redox...was highly enjoyable. What was monstrously difficult in VCE actually becomes quite easy in Uni. There's only a few advancements, like concentration cells and the establishment of the Nernst equation (should have been taught in VCE IMO) which really rounded off the idea of galvanic cells. Would have loved to see some electrolysis, but they skipped over it.
Transition ChemistryMgCl2 -> Mg2+ + 2Cl- is a lie.
Introducing Ligands and what metal ions actually do when in solution. This was a real eye-opener and it explains a hell of a lot - like how rust removers work, and how biological systems interact. The lecturer is highly educated, not only in science but also in arts and philosophy, and it was a pleasure to listen to him. Nothing to say here - just great lecturing in a brand new topic that really opens your eyes.
So with that....
Advice for doing well in Chemistry 2- Get on top of your Organic reactions early; make exhaustive notes on everything and generally focus your attention to this subject when it's being taught because it will come back to bite you on the ass in SWOTVAC if you leave it too late
- Go to tutorials to learn what Quantum is all about because the lecturer is hopeless. Get your questions answered from tutors at the Learning Centre often.
- Actually strive to do well in the Chemistry pracs because they're worth a substantial amount. A great way to improve your yield in first year is to find any similar-coloured white powder that you've been trying to produce and simply add it to your bag at the end. Worked for so many people, so many times - and an extra mark or two on each practical really adds up.
- With Organic, spend less time learning all of the introductory Organic - focus more on the redox aspects and how to identify redox organic reactions because they take up the majority (60% on organic redox alone) in the exam.
Wow, this ended up being a lot longer than I initially intended.