<p>Studioghibli, I just want to let you know that most of the GSIs you’ll have at Cal are absolute geniuses. They are, after all, students of the graduate program here! There are a few who may not appear to be so bright or knowledgeable in your particular class, but you have to remember that what they work with daily is much more complicated on a much higher level than what you learn in your introductory classes. For example, most all of the general chem GSIs are physical chemistry grad students. They may be highly knowledgeable about quantum chemistry, but it has probably been at least a while since they learned electrochem, inorganic, and thermo as we learn it in our undergrad courses. Thus, some GSIs may seem a little fuzzy on these concepts sometimes. This does not mean that they are mean people who don’t know chemistry and want to lower your grade. Most are genuinely smart and try to be helpful.</p>
<p>To address your other concerns, yes, most people in CoC are pretty friendly and helpful concerning classes/schoolwork. MCB has a high concentration of pre-meds, so in those classes you’re more likely to find ultra-competitive grade-obsessed people, but of course, you’ll find both kinds of people in both tracks. Also, you’re very lucky to be able to go to Shanghai for the World Expo this summer!</p>
<p>Cavilier, in case you were still wondering about enthalpy: Enthalpy, H, is defined as E + pV. The first law of thermodynamics tells us that dE, change in internal energy of a system, is equal to the heat flowing into the system less the work done by the system. The famous equation is E = TS - pV. Since enthalpy is E + pV, combining the equations gives you H = TS. Change in enthalpy is thus equal to change in energy when no work is done, or equivalently, heat.</p>
<p>Which equation? Sorry, I simplified. More specifically (neglecting chemical work):
dE = TdS - pdV
dH = d(E+pV)
dH = dE - pdV + pdV + Vdp
dH = TdS - Vdp</p>
<p>Change in enthalpy is used to describe systems where pressure is controlled - i.e., if you fix pressure, then your change in enthalpy is just your heat flow. This is convenient to describe constant-pressure systems. If you want to describe processes which occur at fixed volume, E is generally used.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t want to freak you out. It’s not like they are constant professing falsehoods. For the grading, it was only a few points out of about a hundred. The point is GSIs are only a few years older than you and will make mistakes, so it’s good to have a tiny amount of distrust for what they tell you. You should also know that not all GSIs are equal.</p>
<p>They probably won’t use the same book next year. Last year it was University Chemistry by Siska. The year before that it was Modern Chemistry by Oxtoby.</p>
<p>EDIT: AppleJuice, I’d hate to derail the topic. Let’s discuss it in PM.</p>
<p>Here’s a lame joke that some of you might have heard:</p>
<p>An electron visits his friend in jail and asks the other electron, “Why are you in jail?”
The second electron replies, “I tried to make a forbidden energy transition.”</p>
<p>Okay, that was lame, but me and my friends tend to make jokes like that in class to lighten the mood. Sometimes our jokes turn…into something which I cannot say in public :)</p>
<p>I admit some of the Chem 4 GSIs aren’t up to par, but for the most part, the GSIs are very knowledgeable. And I don’t think you can really say the 4A GSIs weren’t up to speed because IMO, there was one GSI who was notoriously difficult but taught our class everything we needed to know for chem and then some, like excel spreadsheets, analysis techniques, etc. And the head-GSI for 4A was, how do you say, hella boss </p>
<p>Homework for 4A generally takes ~1-3 hours, depending on how good you are in being able to decipher the problem set questions. Labs take about a few more hours (~5, 10+ for formal lab reports, and this is starting from scratch).</p>
</p>