Subject Code/Name: CHM2922 - Spectroscopy and Analytical Chemistry Important Note
Important Note: This review was written in January 2020, after a subject review was requested, but I completed this unit back in Semester 2 2017, well and truly after my uni chemistry days were over. Unfortunately, a series of misfortunes have happened between completing this unit and writing this review (most of my Semester 2 2017 digital notes were unrecoverable), so this entire review is based on whatever paper notes I have remaining (of which there are very few) and whatever memories I have of this specific unit. As a result, this entire review will seem quite vague and may be inaccurate. To add to the list of tragedies, I recall this unit was about to change its teaching structure from 3 lectures to fewer lectures and more self-learning in 2018 onwards, so things may have changed a lot since. If you want a more accurate review, I would recommend
DisaFear's 2013 one or
Nerdgasm's 2013 one.
Workload: - 3 x lectures (pretty sure this got cut down signficantly after 2017, as there was talk of this and it appears to have happened, because in 2020, there are no lectures and instead there's 2 x workshops)
- 1 x tutorial
- 1 x 3- 4 hr lab
Assessment: - Mid-semester test: 20% (hurdle requirement)
- Practicals: 30%
- Assessments: 10% (pretty sure this was in tutorials and Moodle quizzes)
- Exam: 40% (hurdle requirement)
Recorded Lectures: Yes, with screen capture (may not be available post-2017 due to changes in the unit)
Past exams available: Yes, from memory, there were 1 or 2 practise exams provided. Can't quite remember if answers were provided or not. (Refer to Important Note above.)
Textbook Recommendation: Principles of Instrumental Analysis by Skoog et al. (7th ed.) - If I recall, I personally borrowed this a few times from the library, simply to reconsolidate some information taught or get a bit more in-depth at times, when I could. Not really necessary, but was recommended if you were going to do 3rd year from memory.
Lecturer(s):- Associate Professor Mike Grace
- Dr. Toby Bell
- Dr. Jie Zhang
Year & Semester of completion: Semester 2, 2017
Rating: 3 out of 5
Your Mark/Grade: It was pretty average, but I felt it was good given my circumstances at the time.
Comments: OverallThe subject overall was a challenging, but doable unit given the effort and time (both of which eluded me as a third year genetics student juggling this unit on top of two third year GEN units, two jobs and GEN3990 [research project unit] simultaneously, trying to get into genetics Honours) and might be made easier if you have any background in physics for some aspects (e.g. Raman spectroscopy), which I personally lack. It was a leg up from CHM2911, but also felt like a lot of different topics and content were crammed into a semester, making CHM2922 a terrible choice if you’re after a bludge unit and this unit is certainly not a unit you
want to fall behind in. The reason I gave it a 3/5 was because I have mixed memories of this unit (refer to Important Note) and, due to the situation I was in at the time, having very little time to dedicate to this unit, so it was purely a personal rating. However, even without the personal factors, I still think my rating wouldn't have changed much, as it was a very dense and compact unit that it was pretty easy to fall behind and struggle with very quickly. (Basically, I'd highly recommend that you revise regularly.)
A lot of the topics were about things that you probably haven't covered 100% well in previous units. If you did CHM2911 before this unit, you'll find that this unit might be more of a 'switch of gears', in that this unit is all about analytical techniques, not chemicals, their properties and theory like previous CHM units. As previous reviews have mentioned, the emphasis of this unit was of analytical techniques used in a forensic setting and how these machines work.
Lectures (Note: From 2018 onwards, I think they removed the lectures.)
Lectures got split up into three main sections, each with their own lecturers. I don't have much recollection of these lectures now, so I won't really review these, but Nerdgasm does a good job of it in their review (minus a few of the equations here and there). Lectures, however, may not even be applicable post-2017 due to changes in the unit.
TutorialsCHM2922 tutorials were quite helpful in understanding some of the calculations needed for the exams, as well as being a good time to ask questions, if you have the time to do so, and a good time to consolidate some of the theory.
Laboratories and PracticalsThe analytical techniques were primarily dealing with the 'cooler' machines you got introduced to very briefly in previous units and then some newer machines that were mostly self-explanatory or somewhat guided if you asked a TA (if they ever got to you). Techniques and machines like UV-Vis, GC and HPLC will seem rather familiar, but others were new, such as the Raman spectroscopy machine.
I don’t think that IDEA experiments returned, so if you enjoyed those in first year, bad luck. However, since some of the steps were sometimes omitted from the lab manual and most of the machines didn’t come with instructions (apart from asking a TA), CHM2922 labs felt quite independent regardless and it all makes sense when you get to the moot court in Week 12 anyway (more on this later). (You had to use the same procedure and analytical technique, because that's how they standardise it so that you can talk about the same case for the moot court.) Also, you got a different TA each time you did a new technique in CHM2922, so sometimes it was a bit of luck how helpful they were.
I remember having to make a video on an analytical technique at one point for a 'practical' and that many practicals were 1 – 2 week projects. Again, lots of the pracs were dedicated to various forensic cases e.g. was this olive oil adulterated with coconut oil? As Nerdgasm discusses, there's a lot more involvement in the practical reports and I remember spending quite a bit of time on them. One thing that did change between Nerdgasm's time and Sem 2 2017 was that practical reports had to be typed, including your graphs, and all pages of your lab notes had to be signed by your TA and scanned into the same file and sent via Moodle. When you finished the proforma, it was already most of the report filled out for you anyway, so you'd just have to add in the final few aspects yourself, type, graph, scan everything and, finally, hand in electronically before the due date.
The final lab session was the infamous 'moot court exercise' most chem minor/ major students remember when they talk about this unit and located at the practise law court in the Law Library. The moot court was effectively a giant scientific debate about a TA-allocated court case from one of 6 cases that you'd have completed using one of the various techniques you would've learnt and done as a practical across the semester. You were also allocated a specific side (for or against) and wouldn't know what the case was truly about until assigned your groups, court case and side in Week 10/ 11 (I think it was the latter), to be presented in Week 12. This is always noted to be a bit of fun.
Mid-semester, end of semester exam and other assessmentsThe mid-semester I can't remember much at all either, unfortunately, but it only assessed the first 5 weeks of content, which was a lot of the stuff you'd probably discussed in VCE Chemistry, if not in first year Chem. My recommendation is to take the mid-semester test seriously, as it is a hurdle requirement.
The end of semester exam, as like many of the other chem units, is a lot more difficult than the practise exam. The practise exam was reasonable at getting the basics down pat for the exam, but not quite the same difficulty as the real exam turned out to be. From memory, the end of semester exam only covered topics after a certain point (if I recall correctly, for my cohort, it was the content taught in week 5 onwards as somehow we got ahead of time).
As for the 10% online assessments/ assessed tutorials listed above, I can't remember anything about them. I have a vague memory of the online assessment not having a tutorial mode, unlike what Nerdgasm had back in 2013, but I could also have simply forgotten about it.