CHEM2041: Analytical Chemistry - Essential Methods

10% Stats moodle exam, 15% Lab core skills, 10% Laboratory report, 20% Lab results, 5% structural determination assignment, 40% final exam

First Year Chem courses (CHEM1031 and CHEM1041)

I really enjoyed this course as it was very well designed and the assessments are designed to try to maximise your learning but while having fair marking and helpful feedback. The lectures were on the most part really good for this course, all were very knowledgable on the topics they taught. This course will favour people who did well in the structural determination aspect of CHEM1041 as it goes into more detail (I.e. C-13 NMR and other forms of spectroscopy) for Les Field's section. Other topics covered include chromatography and mass spectrometry (what the different types are and how the machines work), electrochemistry (how pH electrodes, ion selective electrodes work) and nano-particle characterisation (different techniques and machines you can use to measure the size of and structure of nano particles)

The final exam for some people was tough but myself I found it fairly easy and straight forward as I made sure I covered all aspects of the course in depth. One thing I would recommend to study for the spectroscopy section is to do the problems in Les Field's Organic Spectra textbook. The questions are hard and difficult to understand at first but after a while of maybe 30 problems I figured out the different tricks you can use to figure out the structure of the chemical. This is a really important section to be good at, as the final exam had 10/40 marks for this and the questions are very similar to his textbook (you might get lucky and he chooses one you have done already).

The 10% stats exam is really easy and a free 10% as they give you the questions prior, which are the same in the exam but with different numbers. You may struggle initially if you haven't used Excel for calculating things but if you have prior experience requires very minimal studying

The 5% structural determination assignment is a bit more difficult but consists of a Moodle quiz (that you can do at home at your own pace) where you have about 40-50 marks of questions. I found this section relatively easy as I spent the time going through the spectroscopy textbook as mentioned above and the rest of the answers you just have to use your application of content in the lectures

The laboratory component is a large amount of marks at 45%. However, many of those marks are not extremely difficult to get. You get 15% for core skills (just have to complete all the tasks involved in the first 4 pracs - very easy just have to turn up to class. do 2-3 min pre labs and write up a section of a practical report such as an introduction or results section - which you do in groups which makes it even easier), 10% lab report on one of the practicals you are assigned to in the remaining weeks. The marking is fair and transparent as they tell you how much each section is worth. If you follow the scaffold they give you, you should do well as they provide a decent amount of feedback in the earlier pracs. The last 20% a little more difficult to get as it relies on the accuracy of the results you get but 8% of that mark is for getting the pre lab questions right so 12% on results which you can get unlucky in if your practical doesn't work perfectly but seeing as the rest of the course up until then is easy to get marks shouldn't bring down your overall too much
In all I really enjoyed this course and learnt a lot from it and in my opinion of the courses I have done so far for chemistry it has been the most useful in terms of increasing my knowledge on the subject

3 x 1 hr lectures, 1 x 4 hr lab

3.5

Yes, but some lectures write on the whiteboard

Alex Donald, Les Field, Chuan Zhao, Pali Thordarson

5

Fundamentals of Analytical Chemistry by A.Skoog (a good book but not entirely necessary I used ChemLibre Texts and it had the same content), Organic Structures From Spectra L.Field (a very good book for practice questions for the structural determination spectroscopy part of the course)

2019 Trimester 1

96 HD (for any future student that cares this was the mark for 1st ranking)