Basic Information

CHEM 110 is a relatively hard Chemistry paper but does establish a lot of groundwork for further studies in the medical field. There is a lot of content and concepts to learn and a wealth of past papers with tricky questions to practice with. The course coordinator uploaded past papers along with their answers in 2019 so doing those papers provided good practice.

 

Within your course guide is an extensive amount of notes with lots of places for you to fill in. Most the lecturers simply went through the stuff within your course guide (on the lecture slides) and you filled in the blanks.

 

In this paper, there is a Canvas quiz associated with each lecture (total 31). Each quiz opens at the end of your scheduled lecture and is open until the beginning of your next scheduled lecture. The term test comprises both multiple choice and short answer questions and only comprises the first half of the semester content, while the final exam tested all of the semesters content.

 

Throughout the semester, you also need to complete a Science in the Media assignment, which will look at how chemistry (and science more broadly) is reported in the media, and explore the implications of good and bad science. The Science in the Media assignment is supported by a series of online modules which you are expected to work through at your own pace. Each module is associated with a quiz or written activity on Canvas, these contribute points towards your final assignment mark. Try your best not to leave this to the last minute as it can be a bit tedious trying to write it all the night before.

 

This course also uses BestChoice, an online revision tool which asks you relevant questions or calculations about concepts taught in the lectures. It's similar enough to the Mastering assignments from the BIOSCI papers.

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Laboratory Component

These labs required a pre-lab and in-lab assessment. You did the pre-lab quiz on Canvas, which contributes 2/15 of your overall lab grade. These labs were fun and involved pretty similar things altogether; titration, filtration, vacuum drying etc. They were moderately connected to the course content but one thing about the Chem labs was that they did not give you a definitive mark but rather an approximate mark from 1 to 5. They used this to give you a total lab mark at the end. It helped to pre-read the lab, practice the calculations you had to do on the BestChoice pre-lab so you could do everything in the lab smoothly. Also, it paid off to write as neatly as possible in the lab answer sheets

 

Lecture Content

Foundations

This block was taught entirely by Dr Kaitlin Beare in approximately 7 lectures in 2019. This section was considered by many to be very foundational; meaning it was likely that most people who did Chemistry in high school had done parts of this block before but was by no means easy. The lectures covered various complex concepts, such as the different types of intermolecular forces (bonding), isomerism, nomenclature, and the basics of mechanism and reactivity.

 

Spectroscopy

This section was taught by Professor Brent Copp in approximately 4 lectures in 2019. The lecturer himself is considered by many to be a very clear, approachable and an effective lecturer, thus, this section was quite enjoyable to most. Special note: do practice, practice and practice. This section requires a lot of practice in order to be able to figure out the structure - do lots and lots of past papers. Topics included discussion of the 3 types of spectroscopy (NMR Spec, H NMR, and Mass Spec). With this section, aim to confidently be able to see how different types of compounds will show up differently on these types of spectroscopy. You could then move on to being able to identify a compound based off its spectroscopy alone.

 

Kinetics

This section was taught by A/Prof Duncan McGillivray. This section was very mathematically based and considered quite hard due to the mathematical integration with calculating half lives, and other enzyme kinetics. This section in the course guide was slightly different (compared to Block 1 and 2) in that it had a lot of text and required a lot of conceptual understanding. Tips to doing well in this section was doing many past papers and practicing the calculations and memorising (and understanding!) key definitions of terms mentioned during lectures. Topics in this lecture series varied from focusing on reaction rates, factors affecting it, to more mathematically heavy concepts such as rate law, half life, activation energy, and rate mechanisms. 

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Functional Groups - Part I 

This section was taught by Professor Brent Copp again and a similar approach could be used for this section as for sections such as the Foundation and Functional Groups Part 1 sections. This section was considered quite straightforward in terms of lecture content as it primarily covered the reaction mechanisms of various organic compounds, beginning with alkenes, alkynes, aromatic compounds & alkyl halides. Although described as 'straightforward', as usual, care must be taken since it was not always easy in the tests or exams.

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Acids and Bases

This section was taught by A/Prof Duncan McGillivary again and a similar approach could be used for this section as for the Kinetics section. Remember to practice lots of problems - the mathematics and the concepts were quite tricky and could easily catch some out. Also note, you shouldn't need to be able to derive the equations (despite the fact that the lecturer likes to show you the derivation during lectures). Those who completed L3 Aqueous Chemistry (or equivalent in other systems) will recognise the various topics covered, such as acid-base relationship, and its respectable characteristics (e.g pH, pKa, Ka, titration curves). 

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Functional Groups Part 2

This section was taught by Dr Kaitlin Beare in 2019. This section was quite hard in that there was a lot to learn. It was imperative that you paid a bit more attention in these lectures. However, she was overall considered to be clear and knowledgeable in her section. This section could be approached in a similar fashion as to the Functional Groups Part 1 section; doing past papers, understanding and memorising concepts and facts.

 

Similar to Functional Groups Part 1, this block focuses on organic compounds, but instead focuses on reaction mechanisms of alcohols and its derivatives, aldehydes & ketones, amines, carboxylic acids, and its derivatives. An interesting lecture topic was also introduced towards the end, where these concepts were applied into chemical aspects of carbohydrates and proteins.