Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Lecture #1 Course Material and Syllabus Overview

Today in lecture I went over the course details from the syllabus, shared a few inspirational quotes, and emphasized that understanding the concepts in the homework sets will be the key to success in this course. Take note that I said "understanding the concepts" in the homework sets, not simply "completing" the homework sets.

Some students get the idea that chemistry professors ask "tricky" questions on exams. We ask questions to see if students understand the material. At The Ohio State University we have a standard of excellence that we must maintain. Part of this is that the A students know the material inside and out. In order to evaluate your knowledge, and separate the A students from the rest of the pack, we need to ask challenging questions involving multiple concepts on the quizzes and exams. I always say that a perfectly written exam will end up with one student getting a 100% and will also separate all the students and give a nice distribution. If this is your definition of "tricky" questions, then yes, expect to see plenty of them on the exams.

I briefly touched over Ksp in the first lecture, but it is a concept that is nearly identical to the concepts covered in chemistry 122, so the lab example problems should have been easy to handle. If you want to get a jump on the material, you should have no problem completing problems 1-18 from the solubility homework set by the end of lecture tomorrow.

I was very happy to see some great evaluation comments from everyone and will post a detailed description of them later tonight. I hope everyone enjoyed the first day of class and had a great start to spring quarter :)

Songs Before Class:
Bruce Springsteen: Glory Days
Mase: Welcome Back

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