CHEM1041: Higher Chemistry 1B: Elements, Compounds and Life

20% laboratory (made up of 10% core skills and 10% non-core skills), 10% midterm exam, 10% weekly quizzes, 60% final exam

CHEM1031

This course is very different from CHEM1031 because there aren't as many calculations in this course compared to that one, but even for people who aren't as mathematically inclined I feel like this course is harder than 1031 because of the need to understand the content rather than follow steps that you can get away with in calculations.

Many will find this course challenging in the organic chemistry section which I would say is the hardest part of the course. This part of the course it's really important you don't leave it until the last minute to study because it is literally impossible to do this due to the shear amount of reactions and potential questions you could get. The questions here involve detailing the mechanism for a chemical reaction or test the synthesis of a complex molecule from a more simpler one. The first part of the course, the isomers, rate theory and structural determination section, is relatively easy it just takes a little bit of time to remember and understand how to do the problems. The inorganic section of the course is fairly easy to understand and is explained relatively well in lectures.

For this course the best way to study the content is to do the tutorial questions they provide on the week you have the tutorial because there are no answers that you can look at afterwards. The textbook is also helpful for this as it has similar questions and they have answers so that is good for testing your knowledge.

The midterm exam is out of 15 multiple choice questions on the first part of the course (isomers, rate theory and structural determination) and is relatively similar to the past paper provided however, I would say slightly more difficult

The laboratories are relatively easy to perform if you follow the instructions and you should be able to get a mark of 15/20 even with an average performance. The mastery in experiments is hard to get sometimes because you have to get within 2% of the actual value but if you can get this a few times throughout the term then you should end up with a lab mark around 18/20

The weekly quizzes you have 3 attempts and they are not too difficult as they just test concepts in the lectures that week
The final exam is very challenging especially for the organic section on reaction pathways but if you study consistently and do the tutorial questions you should be able to get most of the questions correct

3 x 1 hr lectures, 1 x 2 hr lab, 1 x 1 hr tutorial

4

Yes

Prof Thordarson, Dr Nguyen, A/Prof Ball

Moodle, lecture notes, past papers (released closer to the exams), tutorial questions

3.5

Chemistry 3rd Edition (the book is fairly useful for the content but its more useful in terms of the practice questions because the tutorial questions apart from the ones with numerical calculations they don't give you any solutions apart from asking in the tutorial)

2018 Semester 2

88