prereq knowledge
prereq knowledge
Prerequisite Knowledge for CH305Many of you had your front end of this course sequence a while back - like a year or two or even more. To help you focus on what is important for THIS course (CH305), I've pointed out a few sections of the Chembook that should get you back up to speed. Certainly I think they are all important but this is my short list so to speak. All of these topics below were introduced in high school chemistry as well, so there is nothing really out of the ordinary for this. If you know you are up-to-date on everything below, then you really don't have any catching up to do... onward!
This is also the basic "nuts and bolts" stuff where you know the differences in an atom and a molecule. You know how to interpret chemical formulas so that you can calculate the molar mass of a substance. Know how to fluently convert mass to moles and vice versa. How to calculate and use various concentration terms. How to properly balance a chemical reaction using whole numbers. Know how to do unit factor conversions so you can switch easily between different units of measure - like feet to cm, or pounds to kilograms, or gallons to liters. All of that is what I refer to as the "nuts and bolts" of chemistry.
Now, where to brush up on this? Read completely through Chapter 1 of the chembook online textbook. It touches on all of these topics:
Chembook: Chapter 1 - Fundamentals of Chemistry
Those topics and skills will help you the MOST in this course, so work on those first.
Below are specific sections from Chapters 1-5 from Chembook that come into play at various times. I list the topic and then give the link to the specific section.
The Gas Laws - Section 2.4 - Gas Laws because we occasionally need to quantify pressure, volume, and mole relationships pertaining to gases. Never hurts to read other sections as well - like the common pollutants in air and what the standard composition of air is.
Nomenclature - Section 3.8 - Nomenclature has the naming of common elements, monatomic ions, and commom polyatomic ions.
The first 10 Normal Alkanes - Section 2.8 - Al Kane has the basic formula for all saturated hydrocarbons (alkanes) and the names, formulas, states at 25 °C, and boiling point. Memorize the trends in the data and not the actual values.
Speaking of trends - Section 3.10 - Periodic Table Trends atomic size (radius) and electronegativity (EN) is important for some of our understanding of structure.
Line Structures - Section 4.1 - Line/Dot Formulas once we are into the second half of the course, structure is very very important. We will review this, but reacquaint yourself with line structures. Also have a look again at sections 4.2-4.6 which further develop the whole understanding of "structure" within chemical formulas.
That is really it. A glaring omission is atomic theory and electromagnetic radiation - the front half of chapter 3. Yeah, we don't really directly use that stuff - so no electron configurations and stuff like that. When we need something from the "past" - meaning the CH304K and earlier material, we will clue you in so you can go back and refresh yourself on it.