<p>How are the chemistry labs in college? How many lab partners do you have to work with? How are they graded?</p>
<p>Varies by school. </p>
<p>In general, college science labs are much longer and more complicated than high school labs.</p>
<p>I'm a mom, but when I took alot of chem in college, the labs were 4 hours ( 8 to 12 or 1 to 5) and each person worked individually.</p>
<p>Another Mom who was a chem major - our labs were 4 hours, and we worked in a variety of ways - some times individually, sometimes in pairs, and occasionally in the later classes, as a small group. In organic, we had a few experiments that we had to babysit for longer than 4 hours, but generally, if you were organized, and worked efficiently, you would be done well before lab period was over - leaving time to work on your reports or notebook while you were in lab.</p>
<p>Kiss of death in college chem lab = Not reading experiment ahead of time. Even when the instructions didn't make much sense, it really helped, you could do the puzzling over the words on your own time, without wasting precious lab time working on it.</p>
<p>BTW, our lab grades were dependent on the lab report submitted. As I recall, there were no brownie points for organization or technique, but these things will be directly reflected in the final results and report.</p>
<p>cangel is correct that organic labs can last longer than 4 hours (all that cooking time!), and being organized so that you can start promptly is helpful. It would be nice if you could schedule your labs so that you don't have anything immediately afterwards (like I took mine Saturday morning once), so that if you have something in progress you can complete it.</p>
<p>Our lab grades were based primarily on our reports, although we also were partially graded on our percent yield (how much we got compared to how much we, ideally, could have gotten). Unlike the posters above, we were told that we had to leave the lab after the four hours were up (I suspect, though, that our TA's wouldn't have enforced that rule, but it wasn't ever a problem). And definitely come to lab with a pretty good idea of what you're doing that day. In our labs there was always a pre-lab lecture (30 minutes or so) which explained it in greater detail, but we were responsible for knowing what we were supposed to do.</p>
<p>I've only heard of general chemistry labs being 3 hours long. Organic labs are four or five hours long. Pchem labs can be up to six hours long!</p>
<p>my org. chem class is 3 cr hrs and my org. chem lab is 3 cr hrs. For a total of 6 cr hrs!</p>
<p>I'm taking Materials Science instead of General Chemistry, and my lab session is scheduled for only 2 hours.</p>
<p>Whats the difference between general chem and pchem? Why are the labs longer?</p>
<p>pchem is physical chemistry, an advanced chemistry course. i don't why its labs are longer, probably because they're more advanced then gen chem ones.</p>
<p>So the difficulty is pchem > organic chem > general chem ?</p>
<p>Is pchem basically just advanced general chem? And can you explain how a pchem lab can take up to 6 hours?</p>
<p>Do you have to clean the equipment after your done with the lab too?</p>
<p>LOL, no you don't have to clean up...the chemistry maids do that! JK, of course you have to clean up! But it sounds like a service for an entrepreneureal individual!</p>
<p>***, you have to clean up? In high school the teachers would clean off the equipment and everything but we only had 1 hour for labs. How does cleaning equipment help you learn anything?? I thought the professors clean up. Is your grade affected if you don't clean up??</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>College labs are about 3 times longer than high school labs. There's plenty of time to clean up! A clean lab area is safer than a dirty one. It's just more considerate to clean up after yourself. You don't want to leave your professor a bad impression of yourself because you didn't clean up, right? Cleaning equipment helps you learn better because a dirty lab area can cause errors in how precise and accurate you calculate your data.</p>
<p>Why don't the professors do it themselves since its 'their lab' ? Cleaning a chem lab is hard, dangerous work.</p>
<p>Hiko,<br>
It is YOUR lab. Cleaning up is not one of the TAs' responsibilities (professors do no oversee labs, as far as I know). Be organized and clean up as you go. It's not that difficult.</p>
<p>we do have professors overseeing our labs, but neither they nor our TA's are expected to clean up after us. It isn't their lab. There are separate labs for classes and for professors to conduct their research. And you'll be the one who gets screwed if you don't clean up. Your results will be off because there will be contaminates. That's assuming that you're not working with a dangerous material that will cause more damage than simply messing up results. And as for being dangerous work, they tell you what to be careful with while your working/cleaning up, so you're not in a whole lot of danger when you're washing out your glassware.</p>
<p>WOW i'm scared...i don't remember ANYthing from high school chemistry :(</p>
<p>What the heck, Hiko. That one should clean up after oneself is not something you should be just learning in college! Even in the so-called labs in my high school chemistry (regular chem, not AP), we cleaned up the beakers, test tubes, flasks, etc that we used after we were done.</p>
<p>You should not be worrying about how long physical chemistry and analytical chemistry labs are. Those are advanced chemistry classes that only chemistry majors will take. They (the labs) take longer because the experiments done in them are advanced and time-consuming.</p>
<p>Alex, you'll probably be fine. I'm sure you remember more from chemistry than you think you do. All your chemistry knowledge is just stuck in the back of your mind somewhere; it'll come back out when you take gen chem.</p>