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Laboratory Times
Course Objectives
To foster independence and critical thinking skills in the laboratory.
To foster an appreciation of chemistry as a physical science that is based on accurate, precise measurements and mathematical models.
To gain experience in preparing manuscripts for publication to the American Chemical Society’s standard.
Course Requirements
The information given below is specific to this course. Please see my general syllabus for information on my policies regarding: Students with Disabilities, Attendance, Make-Ups, Promptness, Late Penalties, Extra Credit, FERPA, Academic Honesty and Unnecessary Equipment.
You and your laboratory partner(s) will prepare formal laboratory reports for three of the laboratory exercises that you will complete this semester following the format given on the ChemLab web page. Helpful hint: this page gives you a template to follow, use it! Failure to follow the template will mean a grade of D for the course, at best. These reports are to be less than ten (10) pages long, excluding tables, figures, references and supplemental material.
Some notes on specific sections of the laboratory report. There should be a brief (less than three pages), but thorough, Introduction that informs the reader of the problem to be solved and which may present the important formulas to be used. The Introduction should start from a big, general picture and end with a specific statement of what is to be studied, how it will be studied and what will be learned. Note that the methods that you are using are not the main focus of your report. Rather, you are using instrumental and chemical methods to address a chemical problem, which is the main focus of the report. For example, if you are attempting to measure a solubility of a slightly soluble salt using electrochemistry, electrochemistry is not the main focus of the paper (the solubility of the salt is). However, it is appropriate to give the reader some background on the methods to be used. In the same way, you do not need to derive any formulas in the Introduction, except if the derivation is crucial to the reader’s understanding. In some cases, you can even present the equations in a Results and Analysis section.The Introduction is followed by a brief Experimental section. You should state where you got your materials, what instruments you used and what, if any, literature procedures you followed, but you should not give a step-by-step instructions on how you did everything. If you followed the given procedure exactly, say so, and reference the literature method. But if you changed the literature procedure, describe what was changed. If you substantially changed the procedure or came up with one of your own then write a new Experimental section.
The next section is the Results section where you describe your results in words (simply stating numbers is insufficient!) and any issues you encountered that might affect your final result. Include at least one example of each spectrum, kinetics run, graph, etc. that you obtained or made (if you must have all of them, put the others in Supplemental Material). The last section is the Discussion of Conclusions (click here for a description of what to include in this section, and some handy outlines, too). This section will be the longest, but still not more than four pages, or so. You may combine the Results and Discussion into a Results and Analysis section, if that allows you to present your results in a more meaningful way to the reader. For your references, be sure to follow the standard short ACS format (no titles in journal articles) and you must have four references beyond what is given to you as a hardcopy or on the Physical Chemistry web page. At least two of these must be from the primary literature (i. e., not a textbook, instrument manual, or a compendium of information such as the Merck Index, the CRC or Wikipedia).
You are expected you to turn in at least two revised drafts of each report. You may ask other students or the Writing Center to read a draft of your report and the reader must sign and date their revised copy. Be considerate! When you ask someone to read your formal report, tell them the date that you will have the manuscript to them and then give them the final draft (with all figures and tables) on the arranged day!
You are expected to do a standard statistical analysis on your data and to perform a formal propagation of error analysis whenever possible (see the Data Analysis page on Chemlab to review statistical data treatment and propagation of error analysis). When a formal propagation of error analysis is not possible, quantitation of uncertainty and a discussion of its effect on the final calculated value is expected. If I don’t see evidence of people doing the statistical and propagation of error analyses, I will ask for these to be turned in with the formal reports.
Formal reports will be due in lab two weeks after the laboratory work is completed (see the class schedule for the exact dates). The last formal report will be due no later than the Friday of Finals Week.
Grading
| Source | Points | |
| Attendance/promptness (10 points for each week in lab distributed as follows) | 30 | |
| Comes early | +5 | |
| On-time | +3 | |
| Late (or notebook not signed) | 0 | |
| Leaves by end of session | +5 | |
| < 5 minutes long | +3 | |
| 5 – 10 minutes long | +1 | |
| > 10 minutes long (or notebook not signed) | 0 | |
|
Laboratory citizenship (5 points for each week in lab) |
15 | |
| Outstanding (P+) | 5 | |
| Good (P) | 4 | |
| Iffy (~) | 3 | |
| Poor (P–) | 2 | |
| Very Poor (–) | 0 | |
|
Laboratory notebook (for each of statement of purpose, background and procedure) |
10 | |
| Outstanding (P+) | 4 | |
|
Good (P) |
3 | |
|
Iffy (~) |
2 | |
|
Poor (P–) |
1 | |
|
Missing (–) |
0 | |
| Format of formal report (all sections present, in proper order) | 5 | |
| Abstract | 5 | |
| Introduction | 10 | |
| Experimental | 5 | |
| Results | 10 | |
| Discussion of Conclusions | 15 | |
| Grammar/style | 10 | |
| Precision/accuracy of results (compared to literature values, which must be stated) | 10 | |
| Error analysis performed and used | 10 | |
| Rough and revised drafts of formal report (two or more) | 10 | |
| References | 5 | |
|
|
Total |
150 |
Your final grade will be determined by calculating the points that you earned out of 100.0% using the grading scheme shown below to determine the final letter grade for the course. If the actual average is significantly different than 70.0%, the grading scale may be adjusted at the instructor’s discretion.
As this is a major’s laboratory course, I expect that the majority of students in the class will earn an A or a B. However, I will use the entire grading scale.
| Grade | Total Points Earned | Cut-off |
| A | > 900 | average + 2s |
| B | 800 – 899 | average + s |
| C | 700 – 799 | average |
| D | 600 – 699 | average - s |
| F | < 600 |