Syllabus components:

 

Welcome to CH111/181 Intensive General and Quantitative Analytical Chemistry Lab. This is the first semester of a year-long laboratory course intended for chemistry concentrators, biochemistry concentrators, physical/biological science majors, and interested students who require a one-year intensive course in chemistry.

By the end of this course students will (i) be able to properly use analytical glassware and associated lab equipment, (ii) understand the basic principles and operation of absorption spectrophotometers, (iii) be able to use basic statistics and graphing software to analyze experimental data, (iv) start developing an understanding of the chemical principles behind various analytical methods (such as gravimetric analysis and titrations), and (v) be introduced to concepts that are part of the process of scientific communication – preparing tables and figures, outlining an argument, and preparing a scientific report.

This syllabus is designed to answer many questions you may have. Please read it through and then keep it bookmarked to reference throughout the semester.

 

Course staff

This course is given by Prof. Binyomin Abrams:

The lab teaching fellows (TFs) and learning assistants (LAs) for this course are:

        
  • Hannah Skipper (L1 and L3)
  • Lenorah Stott (L2 and L4)
                  
  • Tyler Critz (L1)
  • Alice Fan (L2)
  • Sienna Wang (L3)
  • Alan Bunyatov (L4)

All members of the course staff are available for consultation during their office hours and by appointment. All students are welcome and encouraged to attend any of the office hours listed to discuss lab work and ask questions about the lab portion of the course (questions about the lecture/discussion portions of the course should be directed to those instructors).

Emergency questions that you may have about the lab portion of the course can be sent to ch111-questions@bu.edu. E-mails sent to this address will reach all of the course staff simultaneously.

Personal and sensitive matters should emailed directly to the course instructor.

 

Texts and equipment

Required materials

The required materials for the course are available at the Boston University Bookstore. All students in the course will need:

  1. Lab notebook for use in the laboratory (with duplicating pages). These notebooks can be purchased from the BU Bookstore.
  2. Lab coat (recommended: full-length, snap front; see bookstore)
  3. Approved face-forming safety goggles (UVEX Futura). Safety glasses are not acceptable.
  4. Face mask (at least 2-ply)
  5. Scientific (non-graphing, non-programmable) calculator (recommended: http://goo.gl/uRZQ8K).
  6. Top Hat account (see below)

All of the above items are required by all students. You must have procured these items before the first in-lab session (Lab 2).

Classroom response system and other electronic devices in lecture/discussion

We will be using Top Hat for pre-lecture preparation, in-class questions, lecture quizzes, and other assessment. You will be able to submit answers to in-class questions using Apple or Android smart phones and tablets (or the website).

Log on to Top Hat using the "Top Hat" link in the CH111 Lab Blackboard navigation panel. The course join code for the lab portion of CH111 in Fall 2021 is 336681, and your account for Top Hat must use your BU email address (ending in @bu.edu) in order for you to get credit for your work on Top Hat.

The Top Hat Overview provides additional details on how you will register for a Top Hat account, as well as provides a brief overview to get you up and running on the system.

Your first Top Hat "assignment" ("Welcome to CH111 Lab") is already posted. New assignments will be posted ahead of each lab lecture, and they are due before the start of lecture.

Taking notes, electronic devices, and Zoom

Recent studies have shown that taking notes with laptops or having your cellphone out in class leads to lower performance by students in classes and on quizzes and exams. For this reason, we strongly recommend that you take notes using the traditional pen and paper mode (or using a Tablet in Airplane mode).

All of the lectures, though live, will be recorded and posted after the lecture. This means that you can take the lecture time to take notes, solve problems, answer questions, and ask questions. If you miss something, you will always be able to go back and re-watch that part of lecture.

We will use Top Hat for classroom engagement. That said, while you may certainly choose to use your cellphone for answering Top Hat questions, please make sure to keep them "out, but down" when they are not in use so that you might best benefit from the lectures. If you will answer Top Hat questions using the Web app, please keep that browser window minimized when not in use.

 

Important Information

Communication

Periodic e-mails will be sent to the entire class using the BU-link (registrar’s online information system). Make sure that you check your BU e-mail address regularly so that you do not miss any important messages.

Schedule

The detailed course schedule can be found here and at the end of this document. The course consists of three required components (all times listed are Eastern Time, GMT-4):

  • Lab lecture (section P1): Tuesdays at 11am in SCI 109

  • Writing conference (this is not yet on your schedule). This is scheduled with your writing fellow during the third week of the semester. This component is mandatory given that CH111/112 counts for the WRI BU Hub unit (Writing, Research, and Inquiry -- i.e., WR150).

  • Lab section:
    • Wednesdays 12:20-4:20pm (L1 in SCI 153, L2 in SCI 160)
    • Wednesdays 5:30-9:30pm (L3 in SCI 153, L4 in SCI 160)

Students are required to attend all of the lab meetings of their registered section and all lab lectures (where important details that will not necessarily be disseminated at any other times will be discussed). Class participation and engagement in lecture is part of the course grade. Make sure to plan holiday (Thanksgiving, spring break, etc.) travel so that you don't miss any scheduled course meetings. Recorded lectures will be posted to the Echocenter in the course blackboard website as soon as possible after lecture.

Professional Standards: Safety, course policies, and academic conduct

A discussion of professional standards (safety guidelines, course pedagogy, and course-specific policies) can be found in the Course Policies section of this website and in the first part of your lab manual (the PDF is posted under Course Documents on Blackboard). All students are required to read through those sections before the beginning of the first experiment. Additionally, helpful guidelines for preparing course assignments and laboratory notebooks are presented in (the PDF is posted under Course Documents on Blackboard). All students are responsible for maintaining the appropriate Professional Standards (including all course policies and regulations) at all times.

Attendance Policy

Attendance at all lab lectures and labs is mandatory.

Participation and engagement in lab lecture counts towards your lab performance grade. It is completely understandable that some students may miss a lab lecture due to unforeseen circumstances. Any student with more than 90% engagement and participation in lab lecture will receive full credit for lab lecture participation.

Students must attend their registered labs, and are expected to arrive on-time and prepared. Due to the nature of labs and the resources required to teach them, we cannot offer make-up labs for students who arrive late or unprepared. It is crucial that all students arrive at lab on-time and prepared.

Academic Integrity

Included in Professional Standards, all students at Boston University are expected to maintain high standards of academic honesty and integrity. Details about academic integrity, including specific details about laboratory courses, are presented in the Course Policies section of this website and the first part of the course lab manual. All students are required to read through those sections before the beginning of the first experiment.

Appropriate use of online resources

Students at Boston University are required to abide by all of regulations regarding academic integrity and conduct, including the proper use of technology and digital resources. Course materials are provided by faculty for your personal use in the course only. Any other use of these materials including, but not limited to, posting of materials online in forums or websites, is a copyright violation and a violation of the academic conduct code. Additionally, materials submitted for course credit (papers, exams, etc.) are similarly not permitted to be used or posted.

Policy on Religious Observances

Absences for documented religious observances will be excused according to the specifications of the University Policy on Religious Observance (details). Please make sure to communicate about religious observances as far in advance as possible (and no later than one week before the observance, per university policy) so that accommodations can be made.

Office of Disability and Access Services

The Office of Disability and Access Services (25 Buick street, Suite 300) is responsible for assisting students with disabilities. If you have a disability, you are strongly encouraged to register with this office. Lecture hall and discussion rooms are accessible and ADA compliant.

Learning and testing accommodation: Boston University complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. If you are a student who needs academic accommodations because of a documented disability, you must present your letter of accommodation from the Office of Disability Services directly to your professor as soon as possible. If you have questions about documenting a disability or requesting academic accommodations, contact the Office of Disability Services. Letters of accommodations should be presented as soon as possible to ensure that student needs are addressed from the start of the course. Instructors are not able to provide accommodations without documentation from Boston University's Office of Disability and Access Services. Please note that lab work is considered a fundamental requirement of the discipline and cannot be waived.

COVID-19 Responsibilities and Regulations

We are all in this together, and we are committed to offering the best learning experience possible given the need for safety. To do this, we need your help. We must all be responsible and respectful. Faculty, staff, and teaching fellows will wear masks during class and other meetings to protect you; and we expect you to do the same. If you show up without a mask, you will be asked to leave. We also require that you follow the safety practices recommended by the CDC outside the classroom, including all state and university guidelines regarding sheltering in place while feeling ill, testing, quarantining, social contacts, and gatherings. If you cannot follow these guidelines, be responsible and respectful: do not show up for in-person learning. Do not put your classmates, staff and instructors in danger.

Prolonged absences due to Illness

We hope that all of you will remain healthy throughout the semester and are able to fully engage and participate in the course. If you did unfortunately become ill, we require that you follow the protocols mandated by the University under those circumstances. The course attendance and engagement policies already reflect substantial flexibility to allow for absences of short to moderate length due to illness. Please make sure to contact your lab course instructor immediately about any absences so that you can attend your scheduled lab section remotely. In the case of a prolonged illness that is not already covered by the course absence policies, we will work with the CAS Dean's office to determine the best course of action for any given student.

 

Lab components and assessment

Pre-lab assignments

Pre-lab assignments are at the end of each lab in the lab manual - PDFs are posted on Blackboard. These assignments should be completed on the pages provided, scanned, and uploaded to Gradescope before the beginning of the lab section. Late pre-labs are not accepted. In general, pre-lab assignments will typically consist of a few calculations, or questions, that are relevant to the lab that is about to be performed. Doing well on these assignments is a good indicator of preparedness for the lab - make sure to work on them in advance (and it is advisable to keep copies of your work for reference when doing the post-lab).

Lab notebooks

Use of the lab manual in the lab is not permitted; students arriving without an appropriately-prepared notebook will not be allowed to complete the lab. All work in the lab must be done directly from your notebook – the correct academic, and industrial, lab practice. Notebooks with duplicating pages are used and the duplicates are submitted at the end of the lab. The use of proper lab notebook technique will be part of your assessments. Detailed instructions for preparing lab notebooks to be used in lab can be found in the PDF on blackboard.

Post-lab assignments

Post-labs are submitted on Blackboard and are due 2 hours before the beginning of your scheduled lab period. In some cases, the system will take submissions after the due date. Late submissions will either not be graded or will receive a substantial penalty.

Receipts from Turnitin: Turnitin will send a confirmation email that your submission has been received. Make sure that you've received this email, or your assignment has not been received. Also, make sure to only submit PDF files or Turnitin will cause major (bad) structural changes to your paper -- submitting a PDF makes it so that the instructor will evaluate the paper as you intended them to see it.

These assignments will be either (1) a series of questions related to the lab and your data, or (2) a scholarly paper with related data analysis. Detailed instructions and guidelines for preparing post-lab assignments can be found in the PDF posted on Blackboard.

Writing Scholarly Papers

A detailed guide to writing successful science research papers is found at the end of the lab manual -- PDFs are posted on Blackboard. We will not use the entire guide, but will reference individual sections in the first several chapters as the course proceeds. The remaining chapters are useful reference, but will not be assigned.

Lab material on exams

There will be a significant amount of lab-related questions on all lecture exams (roughly 20-25%), and they will cover the material covered in pre-lab lecture, the lab manual, and in the laboratory (including post-lab assignments).

BU Chemistry Writing Program

Through a joint initiative of the Chemistry department and the CAS Writing Program, students completing the CH111/112 sequence will receive the following Communication BU Hub units: Writing, Research, and Inquiry (i.e., WRI or WR150) and Research and Information Literacy (RIL). The writing assignments are an integral component of the CH111 course and students are required to complete them in order to pass the course.

 

Grading

Overall lab grade

In addition to the lab material that will be featured on the exams, the lab is worth 25% of the overall CH111 course grade. The approximate breakdown of the points is:

Component Points
Labs and Writing 750
Engagement and Participation (i.e., Top Hat) 150
Lab Performance 100

Letter grades are not assigned to individual labs or to the lab component of the course. As this is a more advanced freshmen chemistry course, do not expect “High School”-type scores; in other words, an “A” is not a 93, an “A-” is not a 90, etc. Moreover, there can be a relatively steep learning curve when starting analytical chemistry. The most important thing is that you should work as hard as you can and strive to continually improve your learning and performance throughout the course.

You will receive substantial feedback, guidance, and evaluation on each post-lab assignment that you submit. Your teaching fellow will also clearly indicate their assessment of the quality of the work:

  • High-quality work with correct analysis, good chemical understanding, and that follows the guidelines provided is said to meet their expectations (this is the goal);
  • Work that is good, but is still not at the highest level, will typically be below their expectations;
  • If your instructor finds too many mistakes in the work then they will likely rate it as needing substantial improvement; and
  • Work that is substantially below the standards appropriate for the course is unacceptable.
  • Occasionally, students will display a level of mastery of the material that is above and beyond the scope of the course. In these cases, the teaching fellow will note that the work exceeds their expectations -- this is highly praiseworthy work.

In general, in the lab portion of the course, an “A” grade represents excellence and consistently meeting the expectations of the course on assignments -- i.e., mastering the course material; a “B” corresponds to a very good command of the material, which means that the student is mostly meeting the course expectations or below expectations; a “C” represents being consistently below expectations or needing substantial improvement; and a “D” corresponds to insufficient mastery of the course material. In all of these cases, your work on all components of the lab portion of the course will be considered, including: post-lab assignments, pre-lab assignments, notebook pages, data quality, and participation and performance.

Your teaching fellow will meet with you periodically throughout the course to discuss your progress in the course, and give you additional feedback and guidance. We do not expect students to enter the course with mastery of the material -- that's why you're taking the class; rather, we expect students to continue to grow and apply new and more advanced skills as the course progresses.

Individual labs

Typical experiments will be graded based on some, or all, of the following components: pre-lab assignment, notebook pages, data, and post-lab assignment. Exact breakdowns will be lab-dependent.

Performance

Your performance during the labs will be evaluated by your supervising teaching fellow (TF). These assessments will include proper lab etiquette, following course policies, demonstrating proficiency with techniques that are taught, and instrumentation use. It is important to remember that you should work efficiently and safely at all times. Exceptional performance will lead to an increased assessment score. Infractions in lab safety and etiquette will result in a lowered assessment score. Repeated infractions may result in your ejection from the lab.

Note: not following explicit instructions of a TF or LA, or talking back to them, is completely unacceptable. Students not following the instructions of their TF will be ejected from the lab. This is unsafe and irresponsible. If you feel that your TF is wrong/incorrect: have them contact the course instructor immediately.

Questions regarding grades

Students are expected to review their evaluated work soon after it is returned, and to use the feedback they are given to improve later work. It is critical to your success in the course that you do not delay in processing your feedback, and your teaching fellow will be happy to give you additional suggestions for improvements -- please see them in office hours or at the end of the lab.

In the rare event that you believe that your teaching fellow has made a mistake in evaluating your work, please make sure to bring the graded work to the attention of the lab course instructor within a reasonable amount of time (no more than 1 week after the evaluated work is returned).

 

Tips and hints

While many students enter college already well-versed in chemical theory, they often find themselves lacking in some of the fundamentals of experimental techniques - that's perfectly ok! This course is designed to walk a student through the basics of quantitative chemistry, analytical chemistry, and experimental design. There is no pre-requisite knowledge of lab techniques, but they will build-up quickly.

Make sure to use the course staff (and their office hours) and study groups to get the answers to any questions that you have. The best approach is to always make sure that you know what you are doing, and why you are doing it, and if you don’t understand something then ask questions.

In the past, students have best been able to manage their workload with good time management. Students should be reading the textbook and lab manual before their lecture on Mondays. Pre-lab assignments, and notebook pages, are best completed soon after lecture in order be prepared for lab. Break-up working on the post-lab assignment: consider doing the data analysis in the day or two after the lab period, and then polishing/completing the assignment (sometimes with help at office hours) later in the week.

Tutorial sessions (a.k.a. office hours)

You are strongly encouraged to attend office hours frequently. They are a great opportunity to work through problem in groups, get support from course instructors, and ask questions. Note: you do not need to have a question or an appointment to attend these open hours. Rather, come frequently and maximize your effort by getting support. These tutorial sessions are helpful for all students.

An important note about getting answers to your questions: e-mail is not a replacement for office hours. While instructors will certainly respond to personal, private, and urgent matters by email, they will not be regularly answering content-related questions by email. To get answers from instructors, please attend any of the office hours.


This is a tentative syllabus and is subject to change at any time. Students are expected to conform to these instructions and any other instructions given throughout the semester.


Updated Friday, August 20, 2021 6:01 PM