'We must trust to nothing but facts: these are presented to us by nature and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.'
- Antoine Lavoisier CHE1031, General Chemistry I, is a rigorous 1-semester general chemistry course providing an introduction to the major topics covered in most inorganic chemistry courses. The course is intended to prepare engineering and technology students for the Fundamentals of Engineering exam and preparing diversified agriculture students for organic chemistry, CHE 2060.
This course requires students to complete a few problems following each lecture and additional homework problems for each chapter or topic covered. Labs are conducted each week and brief lab reports are required. Quizzes are given roughly every other week during recitation and four hourly exams are given over the course of the semester. The lowest homework and quiz grades are dropped. The final exam is comprehensive and allows students to replace earlier exam grades with higher from corresponding sections of the final exam. This fall we have added recitation hours to CHE1031 to increase student success. I'm using an OER (Open Educational Resource) text that is available for free as a pdf: OpenStax 'Chemistry 2e'. How this course site works: The course is divided into 11 modules and their materials can be accessed using the CHE103 pull-down menu on this Weebly site. The pull-down menu brings you to the webpage for each module and that page is organized in left- and right-hand columns. Left-hand column: a variety of resources that you may find helpful but don't have to use. Right-hand column: a group of assignments (marked with*). I won't assign all of them but will choose assignments as we go through the semester. The drop-down menu will also bring you to CHE1031 pages for labs, a library of chemical safety data sheets (SDS), a mock final exam, a page of keys posted for all assignments after their due dates, and an FE exam review. I use Canvas by linking from it to this Weebly site and by using the Canvas topics list, calendar, email function, forums and the grade-book. The Cornell note-taking system is a powerful method of taking and reviewing lecture notes that aims to help you review notes and prepare for exams.You'll find some useful videos on YouTube. See the last link posted in the right-hand column of this page.
Wonderful and fun chem stuff:
> 'Beautiful chemistry': amazing micro-scale videos and images from the world of chemistry > 'Compound Interest': stories about chemistry in the real world and great summaries > 'Elemental haiku': very short poems about the elements > Tom Lehrer's classic periodic table song (1959) > The new periodic table song (2015) |
Chem resources for students:
> CHE1031 syllabus for S'20 > Course structure > CHE1031 lab report format > CHE1031 lab report grading matrix > CHE1031 good example lab report > Recommended lab notebook > Downloadable periodic table > Interactive periodic table > FE Exam review lecture > The Cornell note-taking system > Lab safety presentation > Lab safety quiz |