Chem 201 Archive – Alan Shusterman

Category: Labs

  • New Stuff for Fall '10

    Classes won’t start for another 10 days and I will be making a number of changes to this web page before then. please check back from time to time to learn about the latest changes. Friday, Aug 20, 2010

    Pre-registration, wait lists, and all that …

    • You must complete the
      prerequisites for Chem 201 before you can preregister. That means if
      you took intro chem (the equivalent of Chem 101/102, lecture + lab) at
      another school this summer, you need to provide evidence of satisfactory
      completion of these courses to Reed’s Registrar’s Office before SOLAR
      will allow you to preregister for Chem 201. This requirement may create difficulties for some students because it often takes a few days to process transfer requests. Here’s a shortcut: bring me a signed note on Th-F, Aug 26-7, from your 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. posted Friday, Aug 20
    • New lab section – Friday, 1-5 PM. 69 students have preregistered for Chem 201 lecture, but only 62 for lab. The others have put their names on waiting lists (or so I hope). To accommodate everyone’s schedule, we have added a fourth lab section on Friday afternoon. It appears in SOLAR as #11096, CHEM 201 FL4. We will not be making any other changes in the lab schedule. For safety reasons lab sections are capped at 24 students so it is necessary for everyone to find a spot in the four lab sections that are now available. (see all Hours & Locations) posted Friday, Aug 20
    • New conference section – Thursday, 12-1 PM. 24 students have already preregistered for the noon conference and there might be more on a waiting list. Because “conference” can’t function in a useful way when there are more than 16 students in a room, we have added a second room (Chem 301). The Registrar will (re)assign students to particular sections and rooms to keep all conference enrollments at 16 or less. Please attend the conference + room that the Registrar assigns you to. (see all Hours & Locations) posted Tuesday, Aug 24

    Updates & New Stuff

    • Spartan Model 2 replaces plastic model kit as required item (also read) posted Friday, Aug 20
    • Luc Boisvert (visiting prof.) replaces Pat McDougal (sabbatical 2010-11) as conference and lab instructor posted Friday, Aug 20
    • A syllabus has been posted that provides information about each class and exam dates. Expect additions and other changes. posted Tuesday, Aug 24
    • The Exams page has been updated. It contains exam dates and ground rules. Links to old exams will be added later. posted Tuesday, Aug 24
    • All students should purchase a clicker on Friday, Aug 27 (if you forget, you can still purchase one the following week). Bring your clicker to all of the 9 AM lectures starting with the first class on Mon, Aug 30. See Clickers and Books & Materials for more information. posted Thursday, Aug 26

  • Last Semester's Paperwork

    I spent a good chunk of winter break buried in paperwork. The stack of final exams, lab reports, and late homework assignments was almost 10 inches thick, but I eventually got through it.

    Now I want it to go away, all of it. Well, not just go away (I could have dumped it in the recycling if I just wanted to make it go away), but actually get it back into your hands where it might do some good.

    Please stop by Kathy Kennedy’s office, room 303, and collect your papers before next Friday, January 29. Thanks.

  • The Paper Trail

    I will try to keep you up-to-date by email, but here is where things stand:

    HW #1-7 – everything that I have ever received has been read and returned. If you don’t have your assignment, check the box outside my door. If it isn’t there …

    HW #8 – I am currently reading these and adding them to the papers outside my door. I expect to finish them before I leave work today, but I can’t promise that.

    Exam #1-3 – everything that I have ever received has been graded and returned. If you don’t have your exam, check with Kathy Kennedy, Rm. 303.

    Lab reports – I have returned all lab reports except for the isopentyl acetate (banana oil) and acetylferrocene. I will begin returning some of the isopentyl acetate reports today and that will continue through the weekend. I hope to have them all read by Sunday afternoon, but we will see … You will not be allowed to revise either the isopentyl acetate or acetylferrocene reports. What’s done is done.

  • The Fume Hood


    with gratitude to PHD comics, the most inspired observers of the modern “scientific condition” …

    click on image for full picturephd053008s.gif

  • Printing Acetylferrocene NMR – 2009

    Instructions for completing the acetylferrocene lab were posted online in 2008 and they still look relevant to me, so let’s try them again. The 2008 NMR printing instructions are posted here. I do not have a due date yet for the acetylferrocene lab, but it won’t be due *this week*.

  • Lab schedule Th & next week

    Lab continues to meet this week as normally scheduled.

    Lab lecture on Thursday night, Nov 19, is cancelled.

    The only lab operations scheduled for the following week, M-W, Nov 23-25, are wrapping up the acetylferrocene experiment. If students are unable to finish this experiment this week, they can perform any and all operations — run the reaction, separate the compounds on a column, analyze the results by TLC, measure melting points, or make NMR samples for us — they can do that next week during the scheduled lab periods.

    Special request – my lab assistants will be in the lab starting at 1:10 PM. I will let them leave the lab, however, if no students show up by 1:30 PM. So please come on time. If you need to make up lab work, but can’t get to the lab until after 1:30, please send me an email now so that I can pass this info along to my lab assistants. Thanks

  • Isopentyl acetate report – due date & extra info

    As reported in lecture this evening, the lab report for this experiment will be due at the “end” of Monday, Nov 16. FYI “end” means before I arrive on Tuesday morning.

    I forgot one vital piece of information concerning the lab report: what information needs to be printed out in your NMR spectrum.
    (more…)

  • Lab this week – NMR Workshop

    Those of you who check the online lab calendar have probably wondered what is an NMR workshop?

    Simple. It’s classroom time devoted to studying Loudon, Chapter 13, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy.

    The students in each lab session this week will spend 2.5-3 hours working on ChemActivities dealing with Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy. This will prepare you to print out and interpret your NMR spectrum of isopentyl acetate in the final hour of the lab session. So, in short, we will be doing classroom work and computer work this week, but no wet lab work.

    The Monday and Tuesday lab sections will meet in Rm. 105 at 1:10 PM. The Wednesday lab section will meet in Rm. 301 at 1:30 PM (there will be a Chem 101 conference finishing up around that time so we will wait in the hallway until they are finished). After the classroom work, each lab section will move to the computer lab (Rm. 203) during the final hour of the lab.

    One or two students may also need to wrap up work on the synthesis of isopentyl acetate this week. I’d appreciate it if these students would remind me of their situation so the instructors and lab assistants can plan accordingly.

  • pKa of Bromcresol Green lab – feedback

    I made two marks on each lab. Report indicates whether the written document was prepared properly. In-lab/Models indicates whether you followed directions reasonably well during the two lab periods.

    A number of “unsatisfactory” Report grades were issued. Most of these were related to the graphs. Perhaps a graph was missing. Or perhaps the wrong data was plotted on one of the axes. Or sometimes the data table was missing. (There were many other smaller omissions, like missing lab partner name or missing/substandard reference for published value of pKa, but I didn’t mark off for these.) If your Report grade was “unsatisfactory”, submit a new and improved report to me by Friday, Oct 16, and I will reconsider your grade.
    (more…)

  • Updates – Salicylic acid, banana oil labs, and more…

    Salicylic acid experiment. You should go into lab on your own and perform the two activities needed to complete this experiment:

    1. weigh your product
    2. measure its melting “point”

    These operations may be performed on any week day (9 AM – 5 PM) between now and the due date for the lab report: Friday, Oct 18, 5 PM. Work outside of these hours, or on weekends, is not permitted because of safety concerns.

    Banana oil experiment. We will start, but not complete, the experiment next week. You can expect to get through the work-up and into the early phases of the distillation. Perhaps you can do even more. Most students will complete the distillation and subsequent characterization steps after Fall Break. To prepare for this lab, you should:

    1. Do the usual: read background section in lab manual, prepare your lab notebook, print and complete pre-lab activity sheet
    2. Acquaint yourself with the concepts of workup, extraction, washing, drying, proper use of separatory (“sep”) funnels. The MIT video: Workup I (18 minutes) should be watched carefully. There is also helpful material in Padias.
    3. Acquaint yourself with the concept of distillation. My slides are here. There is also helpful material in Padias.

    Homework. The answers to HW #4 have been posted. My readers will do their best to get through these lengthy assignments asap, but they are both taking the Graduate Record Exams (GREs) this weekend and they need to prepare. I have given them additional time to read your work and this may delay return of your problems sets by 24 hours? We’ll see.

    The next problem set will be posted sometime tomorrow, but it will not be collected. Answers will be posted next week.

    Bring model kit to lecture tomorrow. And please arrive on time since we will be performing a ChemActivity related to Chapter 6.