Introduction
Chemistry is the common language in all areas of science
which attempt to understand Nature at its most basic, easily manipulated level. To
develop a fluency in this language, you must develop the necessary vocabulary
and practice using it. During this semester we will do this in the lecture
and laboratory sessions, but if you wish to do well in the course it is critical that you practice outside of class.
Work to do on Your Own
You are to work all of the problems with the purple numbers at the end of each chapter.
These questions have answers in the back of the text and are
worked out in the solutions manual. You should get to the point
where you can work any problem in Exercises section in five minutes, or less,
and any problem in the Feature Problems and the Integrative and
Advanced Exercises sections in ten minutes, or less, without looking back in the text or your notes for help. The
study guide also has
problems that you can work. It is important that you spend no more than
five minutes on these problems, because that is all the time you will have on
the exams. If you get stuck on a problem, flag it as one to ask me about,
and then go to the next one (this is also a good test-taking strategy!). If you
get through a problem, but do not get the correct answer, first look to see if it
is a simple math error or something similar. If it is, then you should
feel confident that you understand that material, but you should be more careful
in working the problem. If you can't find your mistake, don't spend more
than five minutes looking for it; ask me about it in office hours or stop by
C3
to ask another faculty member.
Remember that I will draw most quiz questions and some exam
questions from the Exercises. Every exam
will have at least one question similar to those found in the Feature
Problems and the Integrative and Advanced Exercises sections (sometimes more).
I have included links to some questions
from old exams, homework and quizzes
(all in PDF format) and grouped by lecture. These should give you a feeling for the types of questions
that I will ask. The keys are separate so you can print out only the
question set, work the problems and then evaluate your answers without the temptation of
peeking at the answers. The order of topics has changed from
when questions were written, so parts may refer to material that we have not
covered yet. You may skip these and come back to them once we have covered
the material.
