Chemistry

Chem127L

General Chemistry 127L Laboratory Homepage Fall 2012

This page is designed to serve as the homepage for the General Chemistry Laboratory Course being taught in the Fall of 2012. The page and course are maintained by Prof. Graeme Wyllie (wyllie@cord.edu) so email if you have any questions. This page serves all 7 sections of the General Chemistry lab here at Concordia and any important announcements, handouts or changes to the syllabus will be posted here.

Weekly Update Bulletin from Dr Wyllie. (Updated 10/12/12)

Titration Practical is this week - there is no Pre-lab quiz as described in the manual, simply get on with the experiment and hand in the sheet given. In addition, we will finish the copper lab by weighing our sample and completing that post-lab quiz.

Additional Note on Lab reports

The idea of the lab report in 127 is to teach students a (high) minimum standard in record keeping that will serve throughout your academic career at Concordia and beyond if you continue in the sciences, health professions or anything with data handling - obviously with technology advancing, will handwritten reports still be the norm in 5 years is an interesting question but that's mine to muse on. Basically you should have a report written by the end of each lab period because 1) less to do outside the lab 2) you need final results for the post lab quiz 3) reports such as the lab ones are raw, unpolished, straight from the experiment - not insanely neat and tidy - if it helps, consider them as first draft - a formal report or published paper is final draft but there is a skill to that first draft and I'm providing a structure to make it easier for those without 20+ years of experience to write these reports

Consider the following:

Before Lab - have title and purpose and source in book - do not write experimental up in advance - things change, things don't work etc so you have to write this as you go

During experiment - do it, write it! In other words, do a step or two then write it up (past tense) with any added observations

Once experiment is done - do results and data analysis - some of this can already may been dealt with in experimental as sometimes you do something and the result of that affects what you do next. i.e. if manual asks you to test 4 solutions and use the most concentrated one for the next step - you would have to have the results of the test in experimental to proceed. Once results and data collection is done, a brief summary just helps you bring it back together to a close - it should be the other bookend to your purpose - look at the purpose in other words and in two or so sentences - did you do it?

Remember, the structure is a skeleton to help you flesh out a lab report but sometimes it's needs a little modification - just ask if it does not fit well but remember the central idea of the report is

what's the aim? (purpose)
what did you do? (experimental)
What did it tell you? (results)
what does it mean? (discussion)
did you succeed? (summary)

One other reason for this report is if you are in Gen Chem II -chem128, 2nd semester you design a lot of experiments and do a 7 week project you and your group design - knowing how to keep good notes helps so much in writing that final report.

Documents:

Course Syllabus (click here for pdf)

Lab Schedule/ Making Up a Missed Lab

Unfortunately, due to reasons of illness, scheduling conflicts etc, sometimes you will miss a lab. To schedule a time to carry out the lab, you should contact Dr Wyllie as soon as possible. If you know in advance you are missing a lab, let Dr Wyllie know the week before, if you miss the lab itself such as for illness, contact Dr Wyllie as soon as you can. Unless there are exceptional circumstances, labs must be made up the same week they are missed. The regular lab times are listed below on the course webpage and you should try to make up the lab in one of these, if these times do not work, include this information when you contact Dr Wyllie.

Scheduled Lab Times

Monday 2:40-5:40
Monday 6:30 - 9:30
Tuesday 8:30 - 11:30 am
Tuesday 2:40 - 5:40
Tuesday 6:30 - 9:30
Wednesday 1:20 - 4:20
Thursday 1:20 - 4:20

The procedure for making up a missed lab is given below, if this is not followed, you will not get the credit for the lab you make-up. You should email the following information to Dr Wyllie

Name:

Experiment to be Made-up:

Your lab section (Time / Instructor) :

What lab section you plan to make it up:

Dr Wyllie will then email you a confirmation and you should attend the stated section for the make-up. In the lab, there will be a form you will get from the TA with the above information which you will attach to your entrance and exit quizzes and have signed by the instructor at the end of the lab. This is left in the lab to be collected and distributed to your instructor by Dr Wyllie.. You cannot just turn up to any lab for making up an experiment, we have a very large class so we have to manage resources and lab space. In addition, it allows better tracking of lab make-ups so you can be sure your grade is being credited for the lab.

Semester Overview:

Posted 08/28/12

Week 1	Sept 3 – Sept 6	Lab #1: Laboratory Equipment and Notebooks
Week 2	Sept 10 – Sept 13	Symposium Week - No Lab
*Concordia Symposium Sept 11^th/12^th (http://www.cord.edu/Academics/Events/Symposium/)* “Beyond Genocide: Learning to Help and Hope”
Complete Prelab Assignment #1 – Spreadsheets + Write Up Lab #1before Lab #2
Week 3	Sept 17 – Sept 20	Lab #2: Densities of Water / Propanol Mixtures
Week 4	Sept 24 – Sept 27	Lab #3: Isotope Abundance and the GC-MS
Week 5	Oct 1 - Oct 4	Lab #4: The Reactions of Copper
Complete Pre-Lab Assignment #2 – Stoichiometry prior to Lab #5
Week 6	Oct 8 – Oct 11	Lab #5: Acid Base Titrations
Week 7	Oct 15 – Oct 18	Lab #6: Laboratory Practical on Titrations / Copper Pt II
Week 8	Oct 22 – Oct 25	Mid Semester recess – no labs
Complete Pre-Lab Assignment #3 – Spectroscopy prior to Lab #7
Week 9	Oct 29 – Nov 1	Lab #7: Aqueous Spectroscopy of the Permanganate ion
Week 10	Nov 5 – Nov 8	Lab #8: Synthesis / Pyrolysis of Oxalate Salts
Week 11	Nov 12 – Nov 15	Lab #9: VSEPR
Week 12:	Nov 19 – Nov 22	Thanksgiving Week Break.
Week 13:	Nov 26 – Nov 29	Lab #10: Gravimetric Assay of Caffeine
Week 14	Dec 3– Dec 6	Lab #11: Determination of the Gas Constant, Written Lab Final
Week 15	Dec 10 – Dec 14	Finals Week, No Labs