Real World Organic Chemistry

This is a stunning link to a video showing how sample preparations, natural product solvent extractions and precipitation of insoluble organic salts by reaction with mineral acids is accomplished in the real world. Just like in our lab, huh? Makes one wonder what their Health and Safety Committee thinks of their procedures.

Really though, as an organic chemistry student you can chemically make sense of everything that they are doing in this video.

Link to video

CH 2113 Class Assignment

So, who would like to know what was on the final exam?

This assignment has a number of parts. First you need to go over the end of chapter questions from the textbook (Chap. 2 - Chap. 8) and select one question from each chapter that you think is a good question. A good question would be one where the answer is not trivial, it requires thought to answer and covers at least one important principle taught in the chapter. The question may be from the syllabus set but may be any other end of chapter question.

Then log onto the comments section of this blog and state your selection. Your comment should include a statement of the chapter and question and a short reason why you think it would be a good exam question. Then read the other students comments as they come in and re-post if you change your mind.

Ultimately the class should agree on one question from each chapter that meets the criteria. At least two questions should be on synthesis.

Your mark on the assignment will be out of 20 and 10/20 will be my assessment of how well the final set of questions meets the criteria (all students that participate will get the same mark). The remaining 10/20 will be a participation mark assessed by the nature and quality of your own contributions to the discussion.

The payoff? I will select one of the seven questions from your list for the first question on the final exam and it will have a value of 10%. I reserve the right to make minor changes to the question but you will be able to recognize it.

The deadline for the final class list of questions will be midnight, Sunday, December 3. All students must make a contribution to the discussion by Sunday, November 26.

CH 1013 Class Assignment

So, who would like to know what was on the final exam?

This assignment has a number of parts. First you need to go over the end of chapter questions from the textbook (Chap. 2 - Chap. 8) and select one question from each chapter that you think is a good question. A good question would be one where the answer is not trivial, it requires thought to answer and covers at least one important principle taught in the chapter. The question may be from the syllabus set but may be any other end of chapter question.

Then log onto the comments section of this blog and state your selection. Your comment should include a statement of the chapter and question and a short reason why you think it would be a good exam question. Then read the other students comments as they come in and re-post if you change your mind.

Ultimately the class should agree on one question from each chapter that meets the criteria.

Your mark on the assignment will be out of 20 and 10/20 will be my assessment of how well the final set of questions meets the criteria (all students that participate will get the same mark). The remaining 10/20 will be a participation mark assessed by the nature and quality of your own contributions to the discussion.

The payoff? I will select one of the eight questions from your list for the first question on the final exam and it will have a value of 10%. I reserve the right to make minor changes to the question but you will be able to recognize it.

The deadline for the final class list of questions will be midnight, Sunday, December 3. All students must make a contribution to the discussion by Sunday, November 26.

Sad Days for Honeydew

It would appear that the usefulness of a blog in teaching has its limits and they are low. I have been looking around to see what other faculty are doing with their blogs and the time - effort - benefit equation does not seem favourable.

That said, there have been some recent news articles written about professor Honeydew and I might note that they are rather sad and disturbing.

LINK TO HONEYDEW ARTICLE 1

LINK TO HONEYDEW ARTICLE 2

Sort of makes you wonder if the internet is a reliable source of information afterall.

Slightly Cracked Honeydew

So ... when I was in my late teens I lifted a snowmobile out of a ditch and felt something "give" in my back. I was young and fit and just shook off the pain. Recently however there are occasional trigger events where I lift something heavy or awkward and when my back "gives" I am in pain for a week and for at least half of that time I simply cannot walk or straighten my back. That is what happened this past week and I thank you all for your cooperation with Sebastien as he carried the load by himself.

Fill in the blank time: The Wisdom of Wally

This is from a recent Dilbert cartoon and the original had the word "sadness" although from my contact with people addicted to caffeine I would also consider "stupid" and "indifference" as appropriate substitutes.
Anybody got some other words for the blank?

OK... So this made me laugh

Link to Cartoon

And not that girlish giggle that I am known for but my rather uncharacteristic harsh, barking, mean-spirited laugh. The more I look at what is on the internet the more I realize how this cartoon is true.

So what CAN I do with my BSc when I graduate?

Here's some ideas for jobs for BSc grads that probably have positions available all the time.

Link to Science Jobs

So ... who has been talking about me ?

I guess to be fair the professor would have to be much larger and wearing a sweater - vest but really people this stereotype of the Science professor is just a stereotype. Some of us don't have labs in the basement or assistants with humped backs (got too expensive and wouldn't drink the juglone solution).









Link to actual strip

Chemistry Week

It has been an exciting time in the chemistry world ...

This week past we celebrated the discovery of element 118 (for real this time).

In honour of Chemistry Week (October 22 - 28) and Mole Day (Monday, October 23) I offer for your pleasure the following link to The Element Song.

Link to the Element Song

But that alone, of course, does not make you smile with the workload that you face. For that reason I am going to declare that for the first year students the lab report for the gas lab (#5) will be a voluntary submission. You will not lose marks if you do not submit a report for the lab. For the second year organic chemistry students I will declare the juglone lab (#5A) to be a voluntary submission with the same comment. If you do submit a report by the deadline then the marks you earn will be added as bonus marks directly to your lab mark. No late submissions accepted.

Now ... go listen to the element song again and see if it doesn't somehow sound "happier".

Have a good weekend.

CHEM 1013 Class Assignment #2

In the fall of 1989 I taught Intro Chemistry at Dalhousie University. The November 15 mid-term test had six questions of equal value and the following was one of them. The students in 1989 had 12 minutes to answer this question. As before, the class is expected to agree to a final answer for the question and all students that participate will get the same mark. The deadline for participation is midnight, October 22. Show all calculations and follow the rules of significant figures.

A 5.810g sample of an iron ore was dissolved in 20.00 mL of concentrated HCl (12.3M) then diluted with water and titrated with permanganate solution (51.42 mL, 0.11678M). If the mineral in the ore was Iron(IV)sulphide what was its % mass in the ore?

5 Fe(2+) + MnO4(-) + 8 H(+) --> Mn(2+) + 4 H2O + 5 Fe(3+)


BONUS: If the total volume of solution after the reaction was 523 mL what was the HCl concentration after the reaction?

CHEM 2113 Class Assignment #2

As before the class will work together to answer a question and the entire class will get the same mark as long as each student participates.

Answer end of chapter questions 4.57 and 4.58. Final answers will be assessed at midnight October 22.


You will need to be able to insert ISISDraw structures into your answers. The simplist route that I have found is to draw the structure and paste it into a regular drawing program such as Paint and then save as a bitmap. You can then treat the image as a regular picture. That is how I created this image. By the way, for a bonus find the number of bonding errors in the image. For superbonus marks draw the same image without any bonding errors and determine its formula. For ultrabonus marks [maximum mark on assignment (20/10)] find a better way to insert ISISDraw structures into these comments.

Check out the end of an internet era

Two popular chemistry blogs are closing down and you will need to drop in in the very near future if you want to check them out. It seems that the bloggers have discovered that the internet never sleeps and with the modern search engines the internet never forgets either. In both cases it would appear that the contents of the blog may impact the future of the blogger. The question for the future employer would be "why would I hire someone who may reveal secrets, embarrass or ridicule me on the internet?". It is odd that people would combine the catharsis of a private diary with the adrenaline rush of public performance (let's face it that's what a blog is) and yet never think that they might someday be accountable for what was written. In both cases it appears that the blogs became too popular and the identities of the bloggers became public.

Link to chemistry blog I

Link to chemistry blog II

Problems with this blog

I have had a couple of students come by and they noted that they had problems getting to the assignment on this blog. Has anyone else had similar problems?

Chemistry Weirdness

This is a link to a wonderful site where some German chemists have figured out how to use clown balloons to make large scale chemical structures. It is simply amazing but what is absolutely astounding is what appears to be the authentic endorsement of the site by Francis Crick (one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA)!

LINK TO BALLOON MOLECULES

The next link is just one of those crazy but true chemistry sites where some people decided to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the creation of Play-Doh by recreating that blast of volatile organic molecules that we all remember when we opened a fresh can of the stuff.

LINK TO EAU DE PLAY-DOH

And then there are these people who have devoted their lives to making a periodic table coffee table with encased examples of the elements. So little time, so many elements.

LINK TO PERIODIC TABLE TABLE

The Brooker Limit

I have been asked about the “Brooker Limit”.

In the early 1990's I was blessed to work in a relatively large chemistry department as a tenure-track assistant professor. I had been hired (and it was made abundantly clear in my job interview) to do research. It was made clear in my tenure review assessments as well that I was expected to focus on research and publication. Therefore, my natural inclinations towards discussions about teaching were mostly limited to content issues. There was this one conversation that I had though ...

Murray Brooker was a blocky, gruff senior faculty member who taught and did research in physical chemistry (vibrational spectroscopy). He had a heart for helping the high school chemistry teachers in the province and did some good work in the area. He had taught introductory chemistry for a few years and we happened to have a conversation about teaching first year chemistry.

After a few comments Murray reflectively noted "You know, when you start out teaching first year chemistry you tend to make mistakes and repeat yourself. But, if you don't change anything, each year you get more and more efficient at delivering the content. You get to the point where you are not making any mistakes and you are covering the maximum content possible. It makes you wonder if that is such a good thing. Perhaps we should be changing the content and textbooks regularly so that the faculty will be better at teaching and worse at delivering chemistry." (paraphrase)

I have since used the expression "Brooker Limit" to describe my courses where I have delivered the same course year after year so that I can simply “pull the string” and the content will come out. The negative power of the Brooker Limit is that it resists change because any change will reduce the efficiency of content delivery. I have come to the realization that most textbooks are written by professors at the Brooker Limit for other professors at the Brooker Limit. This has resulted in the trend of identical first year chemistry textbooks of near encyclopedic content and size. I can believe that there are professors out there that can deliver the content of these texts but I defy them to teach the content of these texts.

Stuff that makes me laugh (Part I)

Recent stuff I came across that made me smirk, smile or laugh.











My recent attempts at blogging make this one rather pointed.








The definitions of academic dishonesty just keep changing ...







As does the opinion if something is good or bad

Windows Journal for the Tablet PC

This semester I will be using a tablet PC to write my lecture notes in class instead of chalk as I have for the past 15 years. There are a number of reasons for this. I had reached the Brooker Limit for lecturing chemistry using a chalkboard and it was time for a change. Over the years a number of students noted that physically taking notes in my classes was so limiting that they did not really think about the material. This semester will be a test of that assertion because the lecture notes will be saved on the course webpage for student reference. Students that want to pay attention and not take notes will have access to a complete set as the course proceeds. So taking notes will be the students choice. That is partially dependent on my frustration level with the technology especially since the tablet PC will be useless if the projector does not work and I will be interested to note how much of my class will be taken up dealing with the technology. I have made a personal commitment on this but I can also see myself going back to chalk after I have lost a lecture or two. We will see.

Students that want to be able to read the lecture notes will need to install the free Windows Journal Viewer (follow link below).

LINK

If you were a muppet?

I am not a big fan of these internet memes but they are pretty pervasive and I seem to get a constant rain of them from people I hardly know. This one however might help you pick a blogger identity if you want to avoid giving out your personal information on the web. I did it and I turn out to be a Dr. Honeydew.

LINK

You Are Dr. Bunsen Honeydew

You take the title "mad scientist" to the extreme -with very scary things coming out of your lab.And you've invented some pretty cool things, from a banana sharpener to a robot politician.But while you're busy turning gold into cottage cheese, you need to watch out for poor little Beaker! "Oh, that's very naughty, Beaker! Now you eat these paper clips this minute."

The Muppet Personality Test

Honeydew on the Internet

Prof. H. is discussed in detail in this wiki devoted to the muppets. If you follow the links back you can find out about Muppet Labs and Beaker as well.



LINK