Review of topics for Chem 1210

So my goal was to put together a blog and podcast over the topics that you should be aware from high school chemistry prior to taking Chem 1210. I’ll start by listing a set of vocabulary words and topics, hopefully you will recall many of these from high school:

 

Elements, atoms, compounds, molecules, dimensional analysis, significant figures, nuclear atom, proton, neutron, electron, atomic weight, molecular weight, the mole, atomic mass unit scale, chemical reactions, balancing reactions, stoichiometry, limiting vs. excess reactants, percent yield, aqueous reactions, acids and bases, acid-base reactions, oxidation vs. reduction, redox reactions, heat capacity, enthalpy changes of reaction, electron configurations, periodic trends, ionization energy, electron affinity, atomic and ionic radii, Lewis structures, electronegativity, bond polarity, covalent vs. ionic bonding, molecular shape, molecular polarity, ideal gas law, intermolecular forces, dispersion forces, dipole-dipole forces, hydrogen bonding.

 

The more of these words you recognize, obviously the better! All of these terms though are defined within our textbook and we will discuss and use these terms often in class. You can often go more deep into a topic and understand it better the second or third time you see it, so hopefully seeing this list and thinking about these words is a good chance to maybe give a second chance of thinking about these terms and our lectures will be yet another opportunity.

 

You can read or listen to more about these terms, though I went into more depth than I was thinking I would. It’s about 45 minutes or 7 pages… Use as little or as much of this content to help you prepare for this course.

 

My recommendation to those who have heard very few of these terms or have very little memory of these topics is to make sure to read ahead of topics to be discussed in lecture (see the lecture schedule posted on Carmen), make sure to come to every lecture, and frequently re-read the sections covered and work as many problems as it takes to understand them.

 

Be on the look out for a survey in the next week or so to come by email so I can get a chance to get some feedback on this blog and the podcasts. I’d like to know some ways you think this feature can help you throughout the course – so think about what things I can write or make podcasts about to help you succeed in this course.

 

So the podcast was so long I had to use another means of uploading it!

 

Podcast on review topics

 

Here is a text version if you would rather read more about these review topics:

 

Review topics-blog

 

And finally, here is another document on some topics for review before taking Chem 1210:

 

Key concepts of chemistry from high school chemistry

 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *