<p>I am a college freshman who will take the introductory analytical chemistry on upcoming semester. I was very curious as to what should I know and how can I prepare for this course. I just completed a semester-long advanced general chemistry course, but it was heavily focused on the physical chemistry (50% thermodynamics and 50% quantum mechanics). I have a general chemistry textbook called Principles of Modern Chemistry by Oxtoby, but I rarely used it and I doubt I can complete it within three weeks (before the next semester starts). Will you give me important topics from the general chemistry that are essential for analytical chemistry? Also do you think I should go over some light books on general chemistry like AP Chemistry prep books and Schaum or should I just read my Oxtoby textbook?</p>
<p>Thanks you very much in advance, and happy New Year!</p>
<p>The chemistry shouldn’t be too hard to pick up along the way (of course, this would depend on how it’s taught). I think it’s a good idea to understand titrations well but other than that you should be able to easily learn any other additional information necessary the weekend before the lab.</p>
<p>What is really important to understand is statistics. Things like confidence intervals, statistical tests (such as the student’s t test), error propagation, linear regression, etc, are usually emphasized strongly in analytical chemistry.</p>
<p>Is it alright to review the AP Chemistry prep book to prepare for the analytical and organic chemistry? My general chemistry class rarely used the textbook (Oxtoby).</p>
<p>My achem course was mostly gen-chem stuff and some extra stuff: acid-base, statistics, chromatography. A huge part of my grade though was how accurate we were in the lab. So you should brush up on your lab skills. Make sure you know how to pipette, weigh and titrate accurately.</p>
<p>Titrations, Acid Base, equilibria, stoichiometry, and electrochemistry. There isn’t much Pchem stuff in analytical other than some very basic quantum applied to spectroscopy and spectroscopy. You will learn a lot about analysis using stoichiometric reactions, spectrophotometry, hopefully chromatography, electrochemical probes (pH ISE’s) possibly electrophoresis techniques, and some atomic spectroscopy. Also statistics as it relates to accuracy, precission, calibration linear regression etc.</p>