Lecture #22, Monday, February 22nd

It's hard to believe that the quarter is already over 2/3 of the way complete and we only have 8 lectures remaining after today :(

Today I finished the main concepts in the electrochemistry unit by going over electrolysis and stoichiometry of electrolytic processes. These concepts are very similar to the ones found in the second day of the electrochemistry lab.

After discussing the electrochemical cells, I then introduced the "Powering the Future: Alt. Energy Sources Solar Cell" lab that I have been referring to throughout the quarter. The youtube video I played in class can be found at the following URL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVwzJEhMmD8

and it will be the total emphasis of the next four lab periods. I am currently in the process of putting the lab "procedure" together and it will be posted at some point later tonight or tomorrow. The reason I use the term "procedure" in quotes is because I want this experiment to be as similar as possible to a research experience. In a research experience we do not know the answers we are going to get, but hopefully we can have an educated guess on how to arrive at the correct answer. For some of you this will put you outside of your comfort zone, but in the long run I hope you can look back on this experience and say "That was really useful," and also learn a great deal about chemistry at the same time.

I'm really excited about this portion of the class (not that I wasn't excited about the earlier sections) and I think this lab will turn out well.