<p>Do any current MIT students have feedback on which of the two intro to lab chem courses to take?</p>
<p>I'm not a chem major, so 5.310 would be the default choice, but I've heard the experiments are very basic (acid base titration etc.) and my AP Chem course in high school had an extensive lab component, so it might be things I've seen before. The curriculum for 5.35 looks more interesting, but I will be taking a lot of other courses, so if 5.35 is graded a lot harder or more time consuming than 5.310, I probably won't go for it...</p>
<p>No one has taken both classes, so you won’t get an exact comparison. But from what I’ve seen, 5.310 has a lot more busywork/tedious assignments (e.g. you have to hand-write the protocols in your notebook and can’t look at the lab manual during lab time) but the experiments are overall more straight-forward. If you’re diligent, you can get out of lab early pretty much every day and even not go on a lot of days. You can get an A easily.</p>
<p>5.35 is in theory more interesting, but in practice it’s actually just super annoying. For example, in module 1 you learn exactly how NMR, IR, and all these other techniques work, but when you actually have to do the experimental part, they will rarely work. The lab equipment is just too old/crappy/beat-up. Another example: in module 3 we had to make organic LED’s, which sounds cool, but was actually very boring. At the end of the module only one of the groups’ LED (out of maybe 10 groups) lit up. We all ended up using their data to write our reports. As a rule of thumb, the kids in 5.35 will stay in the lab longer than the 5.310 kids, and they will have maybe 1 (if any) free days. In the end, everything works out and if you work well, you should be able to get an A.</p>
<p>I took 5.35 because I’m course 5. If I weren’t, I would’ve taken 5.310.</p>