how to learn chemistry/biochemistry

Colleges and Universities A-Z California Institute of Technology
1

<p>Hi caltech people, I feel like I don't have enough knowledge of (bio)-chemistry. Of course, to do research in biology, it's important to have that knowledge to be able to manipulate certain experiments, etc to get things to work.</p>

<p>My courses in college hasn't taught me anything useful in chemistry because of my major (we take chemistry for life sciences majors, basically a dumbed-down version)</p>

<p>So my question is, for those who are biology/biochem/chem prospective or current students, how did you become such experts? I don't mean learning chemistry for an exam or anything, I mean knowing it for real-life applications.</p>

2

<p>Whatever chemistry I didn't learn for a class or an exam, I learned by working in a biochemistry lab since June. I'm not really sure what you mean by "real-life applications".</p>

3

<p>real-life applications= you're working in the lab and something doesn't work, so you troubleshoot it, changing the conditions</p>

4

<p>Based on how you define real-life applications, it seems the only way to get that sort of experience is in a lab...</p>

5

<p>In that case, hands on experience in the lab is your answer. In addition to that, you could read published papers in the field, though you might need to take classes and read textbooks in order to have the necessary background to understand research papers.</p>