December 11:  FINAL GRADES ARE IN. I finished submitting grades to the University at 6:pm Friday.  The system will update some time overnight, and grades should be available online through UT Direct by Saturday morning, December 12.

You can pick up your notebooks from the stockroom beginning on Monday, December 14.

Good luck with any remaining finals, and have a safe and happy break!

Auf Wedersehen!

November 20:  Error in Post-Lab 10!  One of the answers in Question 13 says rate = k[C]²[A₂B₂], but it should say rate = k[C][A₂B₂].  So cross out that superscript 2 on [C].  Sorry 'bout that!

November 12:  This is it, our last experiment!  The lecture slides for Experiment 10 are online, along with a Post-lab 10 Help Sheet on the Freebies page.  I have also added an End of Semester FAQ page that has answers to the most common questions that arise this time of year.   If you don't see your question there, check the syllabus and then ask me or your TA.

This week we will wrap everything up like this:

In class:  Lecture, Course/Instructor evaluation (that's me), Final quiz (weak acids, pH, buffers)
In lab:     TA evaluations, Experiment 10, Lab drawer check-out

The following week (Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving week) there is NO LECTURE and NO LAB.  Your lab notebook and Experiment 10 Report are due at the start of your usual lab time.  Your TA will be at lab at that time to accept them, or you can turn them in early at the stockroom.   LAB 10 REPORTS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED LATE, so make sure it's on time.  Also please tear your Experiment 10 report from the notebook and turn them in separately.  Once you turn these in, this class is done!

November 8:  The Post-lab 9 Help Sheet will also help you with the calculations in Parts 3 and 4 of the Lab Report.  It's on the Freebies page.

November 7: In response to some questions asked during my office hours, I posted a Quiz Score Summary on the Freebies page. These numbers come from the last page of my quiz grade spreadsheet.  They include the average for every quiz and every section as well as a count of how many people got them all right each week and how many got a score 27/30 or better.  Right now the overall average of all students after dropping the lowest quiz grade is 81.8%.

The lecture slides for Experiment 9 are now online.   I will also post a help sheet for post-lab problem 5 on the Freebies page before the weekend is over.  In Post-lab problem 5 you need to calculate the pH of a buffer solution after a certain amount of strong acid has been added to it.  You will need to do two calculations just like that in Part 4 of this week's experiment.

November 1:  The lecture slides for Experiment 8 are online.  This week's experiment is really four small experiments, all of them about heat transfers between something hot and something cold.  If you didn't get a handout, you can pick one up from the brown shelves in the hallway next to the stockroom door.  There is also a Hess's Law help sheet on the Freebies page that explains Post-lab problem 4.

October 21:  Lots of announcements this time!  Keep reading through all the green headlines below:

If you got a low score on your accuracy grade on Experiment 4, you can correct your calculation and resubmit it for a regrade.  You cannot get back any lost points except for the 10 accuracy points for the concentration itself.  Just fix the calculations on a page in your notebook, tear it out and turn it in to your TA, and your results will be regraded.  You get ONE shot at a regrade, so make sure your calculations are correct this time.

We will not do Experiment 8 from the lab manual.  Instead we will do an experiment that will be handed out in class this week.

Experiment 7 is a long experiment with a long write-up.  But this Experiment 7 Tip Sheet on the Freebies page will save you time in the lab and also save you time on the write-up.  I will hand out a hardcopy in class, but it's also online as a pdf just in case.

The Experiment 7 lecture notes are now online.  This week we will cover spectrophotometry, Beer's Law, and dilution calculations.  It's a lot to cover in one week, so plan to take a little extra time with the post-lab to make sure you understand these topics before next week's quiz.  You do not have to learn the percent transmittance information in the introduction in the lab manual -- that means skip Equations 1 - 4 on pages 54 - 55.  We will only concern ourselves with Equation 5, Beer's Law.  Post-lab problem 1 in the lab manual has been dropped from the Quest Post-lab assignment, so don't waste your time on it.

This is the end of the October 21 announcements.

October 17:  This is the LAST WEEK FOR FLU SHOTS!  The flu shot vaccine is running out, and they have cut dates off the schedule.  You only have two chances left to become impervious like me.  If you fail to do so, you will be as helpless as an infant when the virus strikes and reduces you to nothing more than a feverish, runny-nosed human petri dish.

TUESDAY, 10/20
Student Services Building (SSB), Glenn Maloney Room G1.310
12 noon - 4pm  

WEDNESDAY, 10/ 21 - WHILE SUPPLIES LAST
McCombs School of Business (CBA), Hall of Honors
12 noon – 4pm or while supplies last

The lecture slides for Experiment 6 are online.  This is another short experiment, and everything you do in lab this week is something you've done before -- it's mostly Büchner filtering and three titrations.

There is also a Post-lab 6 Help Sheet posted on the Freebies page to help you balance the redox reactions. You must learn how to do this if you don't already know how.

October 12:  Dr. Anderson will not have office hours on Friday morning this week.  Instead he will be available WEDNESDAY MORNING from 9 - 10.  Check out the Post-lab 5 Help Sheet on the Freebies page if you have questions.

October 8:  Attention procrastinators! QUEST WILL BE OFFLINE from 8:pm Saturday until noon on Sunday.

The lecture slides for Experiment 5 are online.  Be very careful in lab this week, because it's a multi-step reaction, and one mistake anywhere along the way can kill the whole thing.  There's not much of a preliminary write-up this week, since the only data point you have is the starting mass of your iron salt, but you'll be recording lots of observations throughout the experiment.

I posted help sheets for Post-lab 5 and Pre-lab 6 on the Freebies page.  We'll talk about these in class.  The problems aren't active yet in Quest, but they will be once we've talked about them.

Don't forget to get a flu shot!

October 6:  An updated Grade Calculator is now posted on the Freebies page.  The update drops the lowest Report score when calculating your overall lab average.  (It was supposed to do this before, I just forgot to subtract out the min when calculating the average.)

October 4:  $5 flu shots start this week at UT.  GET A FLU SHOT.  If you get the flu, it will put you so far behind in all your classes that it will most likely end up affecting your grades.  The schedule is here and on the Freebies page.

October 3:  Lotsa stuff today.  First, I'm seeing too many people coming to lab unprepared, and too many people still doing high school chemistry in college, so I'm laying down the law:

If you do not do the preliminary write-up before coming to lab, you will lose 5 points from your lab report grade.   And starting with Experiment 4, If you record data anywhere other than your lab notebook, you will lose 5 points from your lab report grade.

You're supposed to be learning good lab practices in this class.  If you refuse to learn, we'll slap your wrist every week until Thanksgiving.  The 90% of you who are already doing this correctly can just continue being awesome and not worry about the change.

There is an Excel Grade Calculator posted on the Freebies page.  We'll talk about this in class.

I also posted a Post-lab 4 Help Sheet on the Freebies page. All five problems this week can be done in exactly the same way.

The lecture slides for Experiment 4 are posted on the Lectures page.

September 28:  On the Freebies page I posted the answers to the two post-lab problems we did in class.

September 26:  The lecture slides for Experiment 3 are now online.  Experiment 3 is the easiest one we'll do all semester, but the write-up can be difficult if you are not good at balancing equations and naming inorganic compounds.  Ask for help if you need it, otherwise you'll waste a lot of time struggling with the report and discussion questions.  This week's portion of the final exam will cover calculating percent mass, determining the density of a liquid when given lab data, and understanding physical and chemical properties.

September 20:  Multiple entries in Quest is screwed up for some classes.  We're working on it.  There is no need to panic.  I'll let you know when I find out something from the Quest people.

September 15:  Lotsa stuff to mention this time:

1)  PRELIMINARY WRITE-UP FOR EXPERIMENT 2:  You do NOT have to copy the big table on page 16 into your notebook.   Only copy the first column, where it says "Your data." (because you ALWAYS have to record your own data into your notebook).  We'll do the rest of the table in Excel.

2)  There has been a PROCEDURE CHANGE in the experiment.  In Part 3, steps 1 and 2 you heat up the sample to boiling, and then cool it down again.  We're going to do the whole thing at room temperature and skip the heating and cooling steps.  This will save us about 20 minutes in the lab, and should have no discernable effect on the results.

3)  The two post-lab problems that I did in class are posted as a pdf file on the Freebies page as Post-lab 1 Help in case you need to look that over.

4)  The lecture slides for Experiment 2 are now online.

September 5: Remember, there is NO CLASS AND NO LAB ON MONDAY AND TUESDAY THIS WEEK .  We will meet again on September 14 and 15 to do Experiment 1. Make sure you do Pre-Lab 1 in Quest before coming to class.  To get to Quest, go to http://quest.cns.utexas.edu.  You should already be entered into the system, and the assignment should show up in the list (although so far it is a list made up of only that one assignment).
          The lecture slides for Experiment 1 are posted on the Lectures page.  This week's lab usually takes about 90 minutes.  Make sure you get lots of practice with the pipette and burette, because you'll be using them again.
          Also make sure you complete a Preliminary Lab Write-Up for Experiment 1 in your lab notebook before coming to class. For more details on the preliminary lab write-up, see the syllabus.

August 28: The lecture slides for our first class meeting are now online. This week we'll be talking about the course in general and going over things like grading and lab safety, and then you'll go up to the lab to check in to a drawer. You will need a combination lock this week.

August 26:  The Monday and Tuesday labs will meet on August 31 and September 1 for check-in.  We will not meet the following week (September 7 and 8) because of Labor Day.  We will meet again on September 14 and 15 to do Experiment 1.  I'll get next week's lecture slides posted as pdf files on the Lectures page sometime this weekend if not before.