Exam 1

Exam 1 is Tuesday, February 16, 2016, 5:15 pm, following the holiday Monday, February 15. Exam 1 will not be given at any other time and failure to take the exam will result in a 0 score for the exam, so please make holday travel plans accordingly

Final Exam

The final exam is Thursday, May 5, 6 pm. It will not be given at any other time and failure to take the exam will result in a 0 score for the exam, so please make end-of-semester plans accordingly.

Welcome to CH102/104/116 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 use the course online discussion forum. Everyone in the course follows this forum and so this is the fastest way to get your questions answered.

Staff

The course is given by

Professor Alexander Golger (SCI/270C, 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 Senior Lecturer Natalya Bassina (SCI/270A, 617-353-4716, nbassina@bu.edu), and graduate teaching fellows, with help from undergraduate learning assistants. Natalya Bassina also is in charge of class scheduling and other administrative aspects of the course.

Required course materials

The text for this course is based on an abridged, custom edition of the Canadian text Mahaffy et al., Chemistry: Human Activity, Chemical Reactivity, second edition. We have arranged for the online edition to be available from its publisher for $88.30 (less than 1/3 of the cost of the original text purchased from the bookstore). Earlier editions of this textbook, including the custom first edition, are no longer being used and so may not be substituted for the required second edition. There are three options to buy this text package, listed in order of increasing cost.

Option 1, $88.30: This option must be purchased online directly from the publisher and includes the online version of the text only and access to online activities; it does not include a physical copy of the text. To purchase this option, go to http://www.cengagebrain.com/micro/BostonUChem101_102. Should you also want a printed copy of the current, second edition text, you must purchase instead Option 3 below.

You may augment Option 1 with a printed copy of the first custom edition; its ISBN is is 978-1133445449 and it is available used in various places. Please note the following, however: Whether you buy a hard copy of the earlier edition is optional. We will not be using or referring to the earlier edition, but if you do not want a hardcopy of the new edition (Option 3 below) then a used copy of the first edition may be helpful to you.

Option 2: $146: This is the same online-only Option 1 above (again, with no physical copy of the text) purchased from the Boston University Barnes & Noble Bookstore.

Option 3: $183.60: This option includes the printed version of the text in addition to the online materials in Option 1 above. It must be purchased from the Boston University Barnes & Noble Bookstore. Return policy: All returns to the bookstore for refund after January 29, 2016 will require proof of withdrawal from the course.

In addition to the text package above, the following seven items are required

  1. ALEKS General Chemistry online personal tutoring. The cost is $75 and is to be purchased online as described here.
  2. The Turning Technologies ResponseCard RF LCD bundle, purchased from Boston University Barnes & Noble Bookstore. Only this clicker can be used in our course. (Note: this is the clicker and associated 4-year license that is used in all courses at Boston University that require clicker devices and cannot be substituted for any other devices.) You will receive a coupon for a $15 rebate on the purchase price. This coupon must be redeemed at the Turning Technologies rebate website.
  3. Golger, General Chemistry CH102 Laboratory Manual, (Hayden McNeil Publishing, 2016,ISBN 978-0-7380-8217-2).
  4. laboratory notebook, Hayden McNeil Publishing
  5. approved safety goggles, item #9301, also required in organic chemistry
  6. laboratory coat, also required in organic chemistry
  7. A lock to secure your belongings in the locker when in the laboratory
  8. Finally, you are required to use the Texas Instruments TI-30X IIS 2-Line Scientific Calculator for this course, available from Amazon.com for $13.99 and elsewhere. This is the only calculator that we will allow you to use to do discussion quizzes and course exams. Using a different calculator on exams or quizzes will constitute academic misconduct.

Be aware that it is a Massachusetts State Law that safety goggles are mandatory in the laboratory. In the lab, all students who wear contact lenses should instead wear prescription glasses under their safety goggles. Contact lenses are forbidden in the lab. Also, all students must wear the appropriate clothing: long pants, long sleeves and closed shoes (no sandals or flip-flops).

Course schedule

The course consists of five required components:

There are three hours of lecture meetings each week, and these lecture meetings are held in SCI/109 at three alternative times:

You are required to attend your assigned lecture meeting.

There is a one-hour discussion each week, on Thursday or Friday. Discussions meet starting Thursday, January 21. There is one three-hour laboratory each week.

There will also be a laboratory lecture, on Tuesday and Wednesday. These laboratory lectures are:

Pre-Lab lectures begin the second week of the semester. The first laboratory lecture is on Tuesday, January 26. You are required to attend your assigned pre-lab lecture meeting.

Labs begin the third week of the semester on Monday, February 1. You are required to attend your assigned lab.

The Monday 5–7 pm sessions are used only for the three lecture exams and the lab exam. On lecture exam days there will be no lecture (sections A1, A2, and A3) and the preceding Thursday or following Tuesday evening lecture (section A3) will be shortened to 30 minutes; the section A3 lecture that will be shortened will be announced the week preceding the exam. For the lab exam, lectures will be held as usual.

If you have not yet registered for all of the five components of the course (three for CH104), 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

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

Exams are given only at the scheduled time. A missed exam counts as 0. In particular, please note the following:

Quizzes will be given during most lectures. These quizzes are meant to assess your preparation for and understanding of the material covered that day in lecture. If you are absent, the missed quizzes count as 0. No makeup quizzes will be given. The lecture quizzes count for a total of 10% of your course grade.

Unannounced quizzes will be given in discussion. Each discussion quiz will count equally. 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.

No electronic devices in classes

We require that no electronic devices (cell phones, computers, tablets, etc.) may be used in lectures, discussions, and labs.

Why?

To help you get the greatest benefit you are able to during these class times.

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/academics/resources/academic-conduct-code/

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 as 0, 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 the Academic Conduct Committee and additional penalties, including possible expulsion from the university.

Course Web and online discussion

The course Web at

http://quantum.bu.edu/courses/CH102-Spring-2016

and the online discussion forum Piazza are used extensively in this course. Sign up for Piazza at

http://piazza.com/bu/Spring2016/CH102Spring2016

All posts to Piazza go to everyone in the course and so this is the fastest way to get your questions answered and to help your classmates with their questions.

Finally, should you have personal concerns, please email them to CH102-questions@bu.edu.

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 list. Please note that use of university computing facilities is governed by the BU Conditions of Use and Policy on Computing Ethics,

http://www.bu.edu/tech/policies/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 this semester we cover Mahaffy et al., chapters 11 through 18. There are 37 MWF lectures and the schedule below refers to these lecture numbers. The lecture numbers are displayed on the course schedule here.

Mahaffy et al., chapter and notes Start date MWF lectures
11. States of matter
Kinetic molecular theory, PDF, 5 pages, http://goo.gl/njf3em		 First class 1–5
12. Solutions and their behavior
Jan 29 6–7
13. Dynamic chemical equilibrium
Logarithm tutorial, PDF, 5 pages, http://goo.gl/RtLg9X		 Feb 5 8–10
14. Acid-base equilibria in aqueous solution
Titration-region & buffer calculations, PDF, 9 pages, http://goo.gl/Da7l33		 Feb 10 10–18
15. Solubility, complexation and precipitation
Mar 4 19–20
16. Electron transfer reactions and electrochemistry
Oxidation numbers and balancing redox equations, PDF, 6 pages, http://goo.gl/MMEUCs
Standard Reduction Potentials, PDF, 2 pages, http://goo.gl/kBdf8W 		Mar 6 20–26
17. Spontaneous change: How far?
Spontaneity: Second law of thermodynamics, PDF, 14 pages, http://goo.gl/wyjmb2
Spontaneity is due to blind chance & dumb luck, PDF, 14 pages, http://goo.gl/MsyfFj		 Mar 30 26–...
18. Spontaneous change: How fast?
Michaelis-Menten theory of enzyme action, PDF, 7 pages, http://goo.gl/nbq7rk		 Apr xx yy–zz

Laboratory

The detailed laboratory schedule is here.

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 the following seven experiments (see below the textbook's pages which go along with the lab description).

  1. Gas laws, 1 period lab (Mahaffy et al., pp. 416 - 423): You will establish the relationship between the volume, pressure, temperature and the number of moles of a gas sample. Combining them together, the Ideal Gas Law and the value of the gas constant R will be determined. In one of these experiments, the lowest possible temperature that can be reached in nature, −273.15 oC, will be found!  
  2. Colligative properties, 1 period lab (Mahaffy et al., pp. 466-474):  In this experiment you will discover how to control the freezing temperature of any liquid.  You will investigate the freezing point depression effect, which lowers the freezing point temperature of a solution when some chemicals are added to the pure liquid.
  3. Equilibrium formation of ferric thiocyanate complex, 1 period lab (Mahaffy et al., pp. 491-507; 511-515): 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.
  4. Acid-Base titration, 1 period lab (Mahaffy et al., pp. 532-535; 573-578): 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 completed.
  5. Solubility properties: The common ion effect, 1 period lab (Mahaffy et al., pp. 595-608): 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.
  6. Electrochemistry: Electrochemical cells, 2 period lab (Mahaffy et al., pp. 624-649; 686-696): You will study some practical applications of electron transfer reactions by constructing various voltaic cells and investigating different approaches for reaching the highest possible cell voltage.  The second part of this experiment is an open project, which gives you a chance to apply your lab experience gained in the course of General Chemistry.
  7. Kinetics: Iodine Clock Reaction, 1 period lab (Mahaffy et al., pp. 721-750): You will explore how fast chemical reactions proceed, what factors influence the reaction rate, and by what molecular mechanism a reaction occurs.

Grading

Your scores for each part of the course will always be available to you on Blackboard, at http://goo.gl/LKSSne. Also you will find there the running total of your overall course score, computed as described below. You may use this to compare your performance to the class average.

We do not assign letter grades to exams, labs or quizzes. Your course grade will be determined based on your overall course score. This score is determined as follows:

Contributions to overall course score
  CH102 CH116 CH104
Lecture exams 30% 22.50% 37.50%
Final exam 15% 11.25% 18.75%
Laboratory 20% 40.00%  
Lecture quizzes 10%  7.50% 12.50%
Discussion quizzes 15% 11.25% 18.75%
ALEKS mastery 10%  7.50% 12.50%

For CH102 students, the lab score counts for 20% 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), pre-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.

For CH116 students, the lab score counts for 40% of the course grade; details of lab grading will be provided to you separately. The components of the lecture part of the course contribute relatively in the same proportion as the lecture portion of CH102

No makeup quizzes will be given. A missed discussion quiz counts as as 0. The lowest discussion quiz score will be dropped. A missed lab counts as 0. The lowest CH102 lab score for one of the 1 period labs will be dropped. The missed two lab period experiment can be made up at the make up lab week at the end of the semester. If, due to unusual circumstances, such as prolonged illness, you miss more than one lab, please contact Dr. Golger (golger@bu.edu) as soon as possible so that special arrangements can be made to catch up with your work.

CH104 (lecture-only) students will be graded based on their relative score for the lecture-only part of the course: Lecture exams count as 30/80 * 100% = 37.50%, the final exam as 15/80 * 100% = 18.75%, lecture quizzes as 10/80 * 100% = 12.50%, discussion quizzes as 15/80 * 100% = 18.75%, and ALEKS as 10/80 * 100% = 12.50%.

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. Based on past experience, it is likely that the average grade in the course will be in the C+ range.

Questions about grading

Any question concerning the grading of a lecture exam, 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 misgraded. 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,

http://www.bu.edu/academics/policies/academic-conduct-code/

Suggestions for success

Learning chemistry requires persistence, diligence and hard work. We suggest that you plan to spend about 15 hours per week on this course over and above the scheduled class 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 an effort to provide some more specific guidance, we offer detailed suggestions here:

http://quantum.bu.edu/courses/CH102/help.htm#helpingYourself

The teaching staff will hold office hours each week. These and many others resources are detailed 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 Tuesday, February 23, no record of it will appear on your transcript. After that date, until the end of the day Friday, April 1, 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 and Fall sessions of 2016.