Chem 201 - 202

Chem 201 will experiment with a new schedule in Fall 2012 (but Chem 202 will stick with the traditional schedule). So for 201 only:

• Two lecture sections to choose from: MW 3:10-4:20 OR TuTh 10:30-11:50. They will cover identical material. The only difference is when they meet. Students are asked to attend only the section that they have signed up for, but this rule will be relaxed in case of student illness. So preregister for one section.
• No conferences (but Chem 202 will have Thursday conferences)
• Lab days are MTF, 1:10-5:00 (no W lab in the fall). Students are asked to attend only the section that they have signed up for. It is not unusual for students to swap lab sections during the first week of the semester (and if enrollments are sufficiently high, we will add a fourth lab section, but we aren't there yet). Preregister for one lab section.
• Lab lecture has moved to F 9:00-9:50. Attendance at lab lecture is not required and I will permit students to sign up for other 9 AM classes that might conflict with the lab lecture. That said, you are still responsible for all of the material presented in lab lecture and I strongly discourage students who have a conflict from taking the F afternoon lab.

The prerequisites for Chem 201 are Chem 101/102, lecture + lab, or their equivalent. Students who have not completed the prerequisites cannot preregister for 201. This includes students who plan to take the equivalent of 101/102 during the summer.

Students need to provide evidence of satisfactory completion of summer (or other transfer) courses to Reed's Registrar's Office before SOLAR will allow them to preregister for Chem 201. No exceptions. However, I will allow students to use the following loopholes at the end of the summer/start of the Fall semester so that they can pre-register and settle their schedule and so that we can get a more accurate count of enrollment:

• End-of-summer loophole #1: if you bring me a signed note on Th-F, Aug 23-4, from your summer introductory chemistry instructor (email is also acceptable) that says you have completed the entire intro chem sequence, lecture and labs, with grades of C- or better, I will override SOLAR's prerequisite requirement so that you can preregister for Chem 201. You will still need to file your transfer documents with the Registrar's Office ASAP.
• End-of-summer loophole #2: if you are taking intro chem at PSU this summer, your final exam will probably be held Aug 24 so you probably won't have a final grade until classes start at Reed. If you believe that you are earning a passing grade in lecture and lab going in to your final week of PSU classes, simply ask the instructor(s) of your third term lecture and lab to email me your academic status ("status" means confirming that you passed the first two terms of intro chem lecture/lab + confirming that there is a highly likelihood that you will pass the third term lecture/lab). You will still need to file your transfer documents with the Registrar's Office ASAP once they become available.

I used to get information from books, but more and more, I turn to Wikipedia.

If you ask me a question, I probably won't even look at my bookshelf. I will get online. And when I do, I look for an answer in Wikipedia.

• When was Hoover Dam built? Between 1931-6
  
• Who shot James Garfield? Charles Guiteau
  
• What is the boiling point of isobutane? 261 K

Not only do I expect Wikipedia to have the answers, I expect them to be right. Or, at least I did until I read about a survey of Wikipedia contributors (find the full results in Wikipedia).

• Gender bias - over 85% of the contributors were male
• Age bias - Average contributor age was 25. More contributors were 18 than any other age. 25% of contributors were under 18, 50% were under 22, 75% were 30 or less.
• Education bias - the highest level of education for contributors was primary school (11%), secondary school (45%), undergraduate (71%). Only 3% of contributors had a PhD.

It would be interesting to compare these results with information on the authors of college chemistry textbooks, but I'd say (just off the top of my head) that 85% of textbook authors are male, 99+% are over 30, and 99+% have PhDs. The same probably goes for the editors of the CRC Handbooks, the scientists who put together the NIST Database, and the physical data collected in the Sigma-Aldrica catalog.

So, you might ask yourself, if I have to learn chemistry (or history, or religion, or ...) from self-important guys, do I want to learn this from someone with training, education, and experience, or would I prefer to get my information straight from the thumbs of a teen-aged boy who (maybe) hopes to attend a school like Reed some day?

A college education is all about opening minds. Even when I am presented with two open pathways for growth, the possibility that a life-changing experience lies behind the red door dictates that I open it as well, right?

The question is not whether we multitask (we all do), but how much do we do and what effect does it have on us? Is switching quickly from email to homework problem to text message to Facebook to YouTube to homework problem just another way of being efficient, or does it have more dire consequences?

The first-ever study of chronic multitaskers was published back in 2009. A team at Stanford gathered 41 subjects. HEAVIES were identified as heavy multitaskers based on the large amount of multitasking they reported doing each day. The other 22 subjects were identified as LIGHTS or light multitaskers because they spent significantly less time each day multitasking.

Once the subjects had been ranked in this way, their ability to process information was tested. But before I give you the results, let me give you a chance to guess the outcomes.

1. Which group, HEAVIES or LIGHTS, would you expect to be better at filtering out relevant information from a background of information?
2. Which group, HEAVIES or LIGHTS, would you expect to be better at filtering relevant information in their memories?
3. Which group, HEAVIES or LIGHTS, would you expect to be better at switching rapidly from one cognitive task to another?
4. Which group, HEAVIES or LIGHTS, believes it is better at multitasking?
   

Vote, then check out the results.

I'm fascinated by how our brains and minds work. We like to think of them as loyal computers, reliably eating up the information we provide, and then issuing the ideas and directions we need to guide our lives. Long before we get to college, we have learned to trust our thoughts as showing us how "things really are," and our plans and decisions as the way "things should be."

Of course, from time to time, little breakdowns tell us that our brains and minds aren't as reliable as we think (if this sounds circular, it should). A song gets "stuck" in my head. No matter how hard I try to stop thinking about it, I can't. Or, a careful plan that I make for my evening goes awry when a conversation or a visit to the internet gets out of hand. What happened? Where's my will-power? My self-discipline?

Even when these things happen, I may draw the wrong conclusions. I'm so committed to the "computer" model of how my brain works, I might just see these events as occasional malfunctions, something like the software conflicts that hang up my computer from time to time. However, an article, "Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?" (NY Times Sunday Magazine, Aug 21, 2011) by John Tierney reveals that our brains are not the robot-like bits of gray matter that we expect them to be. Thoughts do not logically flow from input data. Instead, an array of factors like time of day, blood sugar level, physical and mental fatigue, the number of decisions that have already been made that day, all influence how our brain operates. A simple decision like, "I should do the next thing on my to-do list: study, arrange a meeting, sleep, exercise, wash my clothes," can be subverted by factors that we are barely aware of.

Note: The Tierney article opens with a description of Israeli court decisions and how they vary with time of day. For more on this, see "Extraneous factors in judicial decisions," S. Danziger et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 108, 6889 (2011).

I have found that many more students talk to me after an exam than before. Many more.

The conversations span all kinds of test-related topics, chief among them, anxiety. For example, any number of students will tell me, "I'm not a good test taker." The bolder ones will flat out say, "anxiety kept me from studying properly before the test" or "anxiety kept me from doing my best on the test."

So it's good to know that help for anxious test-takers may finally be at hand.

Have you seen the movie trailer for Inception? If you have, you will be able to appreciate the movie trailer for Mechanism.

You could say that Mechanism is an organic chemistry student's worst nightmare, but if you did that, you just might have to face something even worse: Synthesis.

What happens if you cross Lady Gaga with an underpaid biology graduate student? The Hui Zheng lab at the Baylor College of Medicine has the answer and it turns out to be a tricky combination of dominant and recessive genotypes.

Can I get your attention for a sec? Just a sec. I know you're really here to do some o cheming, but just hang on to that thought for a moment and take a quick look at this:


Maybe worth a chuckle, but see my point? See how far you are from whatever brought you here? The mind naturally drifts, gets stuck, drifts. What's unnatural is sitting still for 30 minutes to study o chem, write a paper, learn a part for the spring play. But that unnatural activity is a big part of the job description for a Reed College student: "will sit still and focus for up to 30 minutes at a time and repeat." Expect more posts on the unending war between study and distraction. I'll tag them "distraction" and/or "study habits".

I've posted a copy of the 2010 final exam and a copy of my answers on the Exam page.

I am still reading and marking exams (about 40% done). When I finish, the exams will be sent to students by campus mail. If you are continuing in Chem 202, please review your exam carefully - this material will continue to be relevant even as we continue to explore new functional groups next semester.