<p>I haven't taken a chemistry course since 2003. Needless to say I'm a little hesitant about taking CHM 2046 and 46L. I was wondering if anyone out there would be willing to give me some pointers about succeeding in 46L. Thanks!</p>
<p>I had been taking chem courses at UF for a year and had taken almost 2 years of chemistry at one of the most prestigious secondary schools in the world before I took CHM2046L at UF. Nonetheless I still had no idea what was going on in that class a good portion of the time. Its not so much what it is you are learning you as much as how it is Horvath’s book is going about teaching it to you, the lab manual is hard to read. You only have so much time to finish that book and along the way you have all the unknowns you have to do within your lab sessions. So here are some tips that helped me out:</p>
<p>-Find your unknown schemes on the internet. For real, they are everywhere and have been passed down again and again. There is only 1 way to write the schemes 100% correctly for each unknown and it is not worth the waste of time and strain to try and do it yourself from the book and have it constantly corrected and looked at by your TA or CLC lab people so that it is right. Just change the order/font/words around enough to make it look original.</p>
<p>-Race through the book. When in lab you are in high gear, I dreaded this class because it was 3 hours nonstop. When Dave tells you to clean up… keep going until the last minute. They (the lab managers) only care about getting you out and the next people in so they can go home. They do NOT care about your grade. Only your TA will, and that is if he/she is nice. You want/need to be able to finish at least some extra assignments at the end so that you can get extra credit to not have to take the final and make up for a bad unknown.</p>
<p>-Rehearse unknowns at home before you do them. Mentally think about and jot down notes about what you are going to do before you do it. Unknowns are crunch time. You have to do everything right and everything right the first time. Keep as much stuff on your counter as possible so that you are not always going to the rack.</p>
<p>-Don’t make dilutions if you can get away with it. Seriously, i didn’t dilute 70% of the time outside of unknowns. I would just uncork that bad boy 6M NaOH and use it straight. The only reason the book says to is to save chemicals. Most of the time you are looking for the presence or absence of a precipitate and whether or not the solution you are adding is 1M or 6M won’t make a difference, in fact the 6M will probably make a more noticeable precipitate. Though you should not do this when you are working with amphoteric precipitates that precipitate and also are dissolved with the same chemical. You will be able to pick up on the times when you can skip diluting.</p>
<p>-In general read ahead and read the first parts of each chapter. This will just expand your knowledge about what is going on and why you are doing what the book tells you to do. This will also help you to spot the multiple times the book tells you to get small samples of A, B, C, and D and treat all of them with X and on the next page it tells you to AGAIN get samples of A, B, C, and D and treat them with Y (the book is designed to waste your time because some people in lab have to not finish so not everyone gets a good grade). Well after you treat the first set of samples with X you can’t treat them with Y, they have been used. Couldn’t you tell me BEFORE to get two samples each of ABCD to save my time so I wouldn’t have to go back the rack and waste more time? You can’t just read as you go along if you don’t want to fall victim to these nuisances.</p>
<p>-As far as the actual lab work, assignments, and homework goes; do your best, try to give as best answers you can give. It is so much to read that most TAs just make sure you give good answers so you can get credit. I remember when I wasnt sure what to write I would use “Precipitate A forms and not B because A is more stable”; I didn’t know the chemistry behind it but I would just put a logical answer that sounds good. Use the stuff posted outside CLB for guiding you on the HW problems.</p>
<p>The ease of this course will depend a lot on your TA, I was lucky to have one who had no problem helping explain things and helped us a lot on our unknowns. I also had a really small section so a lot of us helped each other out a lot and would split up the work on long assignments and work together even though we were not allowed. I know this course sucks hard and the book is not well written because the course coordinator is WAY out there with his love for chemistry. Its a lot of work for 1 credit.</p>
<p>Mystifire! </p>
<p>Wow, thanks for taking the time to post all of that. My d’s taking 2046/2046L now, too. I am cutting and pasting your “hints” and sending them to her in an email. I’m sure she’ll appreciate your “take” on the class. Thanks again! :)</p>
<p>zebes</p>
<p>This was very helpful Mistyfire. I do have one question though, how exactly do you know when you should skip the dilutions to save time? And also, where are the answers to the problems posted?</p>
<p>Okay so knowing when you can and cannot dilute is a skill you will eventually hopefully master through the course, at least within the first 4 weeks. Just remember that a LOT of questions go as follows: “Add 3 drops of 1M of NaOH to 2 mLs of B. What forms? Write down, if any, the formula for the reaction and describe its formation”. Well, 90% of the time something DOES form and 90% of that time the formation of it is independent of the strength of NaOH. So what I would do is take a little vial, fill it about halfway with B, then uncork the 6M NaOH and pour a little in the vial, or get my eyedropper and use it to put a few drops in the vial. Precipitate will or will not form, there is no halfway, it’s yes or no. Soon you will recognize situations like this and even in places where you might need to dilute you can do a quick half and half 6M with water to make a 3M which is practically the same as 1M. But, in this example, just think…. I saved time by not diluting, saved time by not using a graduated cylinder in getting exactly 2 mLs of B and I saved time not being confused by only adding 3 drops of 1M NaOH because that is SOO little that you may not even notice the precipitate. Like I said before, the book is designed to waste YOUR time and to conserve THEIR chemicals. I didn’t feel one iota of guilt not diluting and using as much chemical as I wanted from the shelves.</p>
<p>Probably, though, the most imperative thing, and I can’t stress it enough, is doing the coursework as fast as you can. There are many ways to do this but way most students do of reading the book only while at lab and reading/following the directions as they go along won’t cut it. Never leave lab early. Never skip lab. If you are in the middle of an assignment when lab ends make sure you put your stuff away so you can pick back up the next week as fast as you can. I was crunched for time but I know if I had read ahead I would have saved even more time and the class wouldn’t have been such a stress fest. I would have known that on the next page I would have to make a hot water bath so I could have made it earlier while doing something else and not waste time waiting for water to boil. I would have known when I needed to get more than one sample of the same chemical. I would have known that making, rinsing, washing, re-dissolving, and collecting a “pure” sample of XXX that turned out to be Calcium Carbonate is a complete waste of time when there is pure calcium carbonate in a bottle sitting on the shelf. Remember that the EASIEST way for UF to curve a class is to make it so that some finish and some do not. This is the exact same situation as PHY2053/PHY2054 labs.</p>
<p>Doing all the book and extra credit assignments WILL get you at LEAST a B+ but more than likely an A because there is a ridiculous amount of extra credit in this course. I did ALL of the extra credit and had an A so I didn’t have to take the final and on my 3 unknowns I got a 90, 70, and 65 percent respectively! That is an average of a C grade on each one! And I could have gotten even worse on my unknowns and had to take the final but only would need 30-40 percent on it!! I know some people who go into that final (worth 120 points) only needing 5-10 points on it to get the grade they want.</p>
<p>And probably the other thing is about the unknown schemes. I know this is controversial, but the fact is a large, large portion… in fact probably the MAJORITY of students in this class are NOT writing those things all by themselves. It is hard enough to read that book and figure out WHICH freaking ions you are going to be tested on let alone how to quickly/effectively test for them. There are emails, facebook pages, online resources, and past students you can get in touch with (me being one of them) available for finding help with schemes and I personally suggest using such resources. I mean, you should not be stupid enough to turn in someone else’s work exactly, but like I said before there is only exactly 1 way to do the tests correctly so it’s not like every student who has ever created a scheme for 2046L has written something revolutionary. Furthermore, having a correct scheme by no means guarantees you will do your unknown correctly. You still have to read and follow the scheme without struggle. But at the same time, if your scheme is <em>good</em> you do not have to think about the chemistry that is going on behind each test and you can go through and say “present” or “not present” for each ion. I don’t feel guilty using old schemes as I guide, I mean if the coordinators for this course have such a problem with it then maybe they should not publish the same Lab Manual every semester for 4 years in a row. I know it is logically fallacious to say “everyone does it”… but even the people who KNOW all about what is going on I have seen fail their unknowns after writing their own scheme. I mean… your unknowns ARE the “exams” of this class, it is not worth the risk. This upcoming week would be Week 2 out of 13 and some students will be doing their first unknown as early as Week 3 (easiest and most enjoyable unknown btw… it only gets harder from there) so if you plan on doing your unknown soon get your scheme and know it well before you walk into lab.</p>
<p>Oh, and the homework answers are posted in a glass case on the north part of the east wall of CLB. If you leave Library West facing south walk out towards the plaza a little bit the turn to the west and go straight towards the building it is on that wall.</p>
<p>:) 
:)</p>
<p>Passing your info along again. </p>
<p>zebes</p>
<p>Thank you so much :)</p>
<p>I’ll be sure to follow your advice.</p>
<p>The answers for assignments 10 & 11 are not posted at the Chemistry Vuilding, nor online. DO you know where I can find them besides these two places. I am trying really hard to finish the extra credit for Assignment 10 but my TA is not nice at all, or helpful.</p>
<p>same here!</p>
<p>If your TA is nice, he or she will give you the answers to Assignments 10&11. Send your TA an E-mail to see if it’s possible. Most TAs are lenient.</p>
<p>The semester is almost over and I’ve done very well in both classes. Thanks a lot for all the tips!</p>
<p>Hii, I’m currently taking chm 2046 lab and i have no idea how to do the unknown scheme 2, is there anyway you can help me?</p>
<p>THis is a copy/paste from another site, I didn’t actually read through since it’s been several semesters since I took 2046L, I do not guarentee it’s accuracy, but it’ll probably be good to get you started
</p>
<p>Where can i find schemes online? I haven’t found any :/</p>
I’m been having some issues completing Unknown Scheme 1 and I haven’t had any luck finding it online either… Can someone tell me where or upload/copy & paste it for me please?