Students took the placement assessment – a 50 question math and chemistry test used to determine readiness for this course. Students who score less than 20/50 on this test are strongly recommended to take Basic Chemistry 121. In cases where the student just finished Basic Chemistry – a low score indicates lack of retention of important concepts. The student should consider spending the summer reviewing Basic Chemistry and taking Chemistry 201 in the Fall where the pace of the course is not so fast.
We went over all the first day documents; syllabus, grading policy, course objectives (student learning outcomes) and spent some time looking over the website.
To do tonight: Continue to explore the website and follow the various links to learn what is available to you.
We briefly discussed atomic structure. Remember that Rutherford’s famous gold foil experiment showed that an atom is mostly empty space.
We went over some expectations for the laboratory notebook. Sample notebooks were passed around. This checklist is a good summary what should be included in a laboratory notebook. We performed the laboratory “Mystery White Powder” where students use a variety of tests to match an unknow substance to one of five know white powders: salt, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and potato starch.
The textbook is highly recommended for this course. We will be covering the first two chapters tomorrow so you might want to read them tonight. If you don’t have the textbook you may want to look over Mark Bishop’s website.
Vocabulary words: Qualitative Analysis, Empirical