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What's New
(May 15 - FINAL GRADES ARE IN)
* new *
End of Semester FAQ
Syllabus
(pdf)
May 15: I submitted final grades to the University on Friday evening. The system will update overnight, so your grades should be viewable in UT Direct beginning on Saturday, May 16. Auf Wiedersehen meine Kinder! Dr. Anderson
April 25: MAKE-UP WEEK INFORMATION On Tuesday morning, all labs will be done in room 4.124. We can't fit all the waste bottles in one hood, so some of them will be in the hood in room 4.116. On Wednesday night we will split the make-up labs between rooms 4.124 and 4.116. TUESDAY: 9:am in room 4.124 Expt Section TA Student Name WEDNESDAY NIGHT: 5:pm in rooms 4.116 and 4.124 Expt Section TA Student Name Signs will be posted in the hallway.
April 24: Make-up week information will probably be posted on Sunday. I won't be around on Saturday to get anything posted. All make-up labs will be in rooms 4.116 and 4.124. There are no make-up labs on Monday. April 18: The end is near! The final set of lecture slides is now online. I have also posted an End of Semester FAQ that answers the questions that always start piling up in my inbox during the final week of class. Please check there first before sending an e-mail. THIS WEEK: Course/Instructor surveys in lecture. The last quiz. TA evaluations in lab. Experiment 10. Check out of lab drawers. ALSO THIS WEEK: We're playing Musical TA's. Herr Brewmeister Orf is out this week, and Lauren will be covering his labs. Lauren will be out Monday night, and Kate Edelman is covering her lab. NEXT WEEK: No class meeting. No quiz. Lab 10 reports and post-labs are due at the start of your usual lab time. If you need a make-up lab, it is at your uaual lab time in room 4.116 or 4.124. Signs will be posted so you'll know which room to work in. GRADES should be available by May 17 (details in the EOS FAQ). April 11: The lecture notes for Experiment 9 are online. There is also a cheat sheet on the Freebies page to help you with the calculations for parts 3 and 4 of this week's experiment. A hardcopy of the cheat sheet will also be handed out in class. Again this week be sure to record all data directly into your notebook. You'll be working in pairs again this week. And remember that this week's quiz will cover Hess's Law and calorimetry (hot side = cold side), so make sure you know how to do those kinds of problems. April 3: This week we'll do Experiment 8, working in pairs. The lecture notes are online. The cheat sheet for Experiment 7 is also on the Freebies page in case you lost your hardcopy. There are no data tables in your lab manual for this week's experiment, but you will be collecting a boatload of data. RECORD ALL DATA DIRECTLY INTO YOUR NOTEBOOK. Any data on loose sheets or in the margins of the lab manual will be confiscated and thrown into a volcano and you will have to start over. I will have office hours on Monday, April 6 from 9:30 to 11:am to make up for my missed hour last Friday. Lamentably, there is NO QUIZ THIS WEEK. Lament all you want, I'm still not giving you one. March 28: This is a very busy week for me outside of UT, and I'll be off-campus most of the week. I should have e-mail access in the evenings. I will not be here on Wednesday, so Herr Brewmeister Orf will give the Wednesday night lecture for me. Be nice to him because deep, deep down he's really not that bad a guy, and besides, he makes beer. I will not have office hours this Friday -- instead I will have office hours the following Monday morning (April 6) from 9:30 to 11:am. This week we're doing Experiment 7, parts 1 and 4. The whole procedure should take less than 2 hours, but don't rush it, because a dilution error can be fatal to your accuracy. This experiment has an unknown summary sheet on which you will report your results for Experiments 6 and 7. Remember to turn in your post-lab this week when you get to lab. Dr. Leytner has made up a cheat sheet to help guide you through the calculations necessary to determine the formula for your crystals. It will be posted on the Freebies page as soon as I get a pdf copy. A hardcopy of the cheat sheet will be handed out in class. This week's lecture slides are now posted. March 20: Spring break is ending too soon again, but at least this week's lab is another short one. We'll be doing Parts 2 and 3 of Experiment 7. Since Experiment 7 is being broken into two weeks, the due dates for the assignments will be a little different: This week: Turn in pre-lab 7, do parts 2 and 3 of the experiment. There is no lab report to write up. The lecture slides for Experiment 7 are posted on the Lectures page. March 7: This week you will be doing a vacuum filtration and three titrations, and that's about it. It'll probably take you two hours if you don't screw up and have to repeat something. The lecture slides for Experiment 6 are online. And now on to some other business: 1) I will be out of town on Friday, March 13, and will not have office hours this week. Check out the TA office hours online, and remember that there are additional CH204 TA office hours posted outside of Cubicle C. 2) You will have a quiz on Experiment 6 TWO WEEKS after you do the experiment. Historically, students don't do as well on this quiz because spring break falls between the lab and the quiz. Make sure you look over the lecture slides and your post-lab for this experiment when you come back after spring break. I have posted a couple links on the Freebies page to some web sites that explain balancing redox reactions in case you're looking for a review. February 28: There are a lot of ways to screw it up this week's experiment, and if you choose any one of them, you won't get good results, so make sure you follow the procedure carefully. This week we'll synthesize some green crystals, and then over the next three weeks we'll analyze the crystals to determine their chemical formula. The Experiment 5 lecture slides are posted. The post-lab for Experiment 5 has a lot of problems dealing with limiting reagent, theoretical yield, and percent yield. You'll be doing these calculations a lot if you take organic lab next year. (You'll also be doing them when you take the quiz during week 6.) So make sure you're comfortable with these calculations. Quiz Grading Error Alert! Peter Clark in Scott's Monday afternoon section pointed out to me that one of the questions on Quiz 2 actually has multiple correct answers. If you had a white quiz, it's question 1c, and if you had a yellow quiz it's question 2c. The value for NaCl on this question could be higher, lower, or the same, depending on the original percent composition of NaCl in the sample. So if you got NaCl marked wrong on that question, bring your quiz to your lab TA, and they will award you that point back. If you have not turned in the Unknown Summary Sheets for experiments 2, 3, and 4, make sure you get them in asap. February 21: The lecture slides for Experiment 4 are online. That is all. Friday the 13th: The Lecture 3 slides are online. It's a fairly short and easy lab this week, but don't blow off the write-up until late, because the report will take more time than you expect for a lab this simple. I have also posted a CH204 Grade Calculator spreadsheet on the Freebies page. You can download this spreadsheet and enter your grades as you get assignments back from your TA, and it will calculate a running percentage of where you stand in this class. If you are in Lauren's lab, she will not be here this week. Your antagonist this week will be a tall, festive fellow who goes by the name Orf. As a small housekeeping matter, the chemistry department recently moved all the class web sites to a new server. The new URL for the class web site is http://anderson.cm.utexas.edu/courses/ch204. You can continue to use the previous URL, and you will be automatically redirected to the new site, but if you want to take the direct route, use the new URL. February 6: The lecture slides for Experiment 2 are up already! Experiment 2 is a long one, and it's kinda messy at times, and there's an unknown summary sheet, which means you're gonna be graded on your accuracy. This is a big step up from measuring masses and volumes, but thousands of students have done it before you, and you can too. In Experiment 2 we will give you a mixture of salt, sand, and chalk dust, and your job is to separate the mixture into the three components and tell us how much of each one is in the mixture. There are a couple of new Excel spreadsheets posted on the Freebies page. One of them helps explain how to use Excel to do the calculations for this week's experiment, and the other shows you how to determine the error in a slope and y-intercept in a straight line. We'll take a look at them in class, and you can download them if you want them. Also, THE FINAL EXAM STARTS THIS WEEK! Look over your post-lab. Review the lecture slides from last week along with whatever notes you took during class. Make sure you understand significant digits and how to calculate density. And remember to bring a calculator to class! January 31: The lecture slides for Experiment 1 are now online. Also, I've put an Excel spreadsheet on the Freebies page that will help you with some of the concepts involved in this week's lab, such as significant digits, average and standard deviation, and linear interpolation. We'll talk about all of these in class. There is also an old sample quiz on the Freebies page to give you an idea of what to expect one week after Experiment 1. Make sure you're dressed appropriately for lab this week! If you show up in shorts or sandals or a too-short shirt, you'll have to wear a bunny suit in the lab. If you want to wear shorts on campus on lab day, bring a pair of sweat pants and leave them in your drawer. January 30: Dr. Anderson's office hours will start 30 minutes later than usual today, and will go from 11:30 to 12:30. Sorry for the inconvenience. January 25: The TA office hours are now online. Note that the TA's have to schedule their office hours in between their classes and their scheduled teaching times. This semester that has resulted in a lot of office hours scheduled on Wednesday. The office hours listed on this web site are only those for the TA's who are working with me. For office hour times for the CH 204 TA's who are working with Dr. Leytner, see the schedule posted outside Cubicle C on the first floor of Welch. You can go to any CH 204 TA for help. Between my TA's, Dr. Leytner's TA's, and my own office hours, there is someone available to help you every day Monday through Friday. January 24: This week's Lecture Notes are online in PDF format. The TA office hours haven't been set yet, but we'll have that page up on Monday or Tuesday. Bring a combination lock to class this week. Bring your lab manual to class if you have one, and go get one right now if you don't. See you this week. January 19: Most of the TA information is online on the Teaching Assistants page. Look up your unique number for this class and write down your lab room number and your TA's name. You'll need to know these on the first day of class. January 18: Our first class day will be January 26. There are no lectures and no labs until January 26. On that day be sure you have a lab notebook, a lab manual, and a combination lock. Make sure you have a combination lock! The first week's lecture will cover expectations in this class and grading, and then we will go up to the lab and check in, and you will need your combination lock. We're still in the process of assigning TA's to individual labs, scheduling TA office hours, and other such tasks. More information will be added to this web site as it becomes available.
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