[#7] – Chemistry 102 – Introductory University Chemistry II

Today’s post marks the second half of my introductory chemistry experience.  After living through a less than ideal outing of Chem 101, I was motivated to try harder, and to do better, in Chem 102.  I had begun to adopt my much ignored, and often overlooked, high school motto: “Fortuna audaces iuvat,” which is Latin for: “Fortune Favors The Strong.” (Or at least, I think it was my high school motto … Either that, or I saw it on a bumper sticker once)

 

Batteries (a.k.a. electrochemical cells) were one of the many things that we studied in this course.

 

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Preamble:

Alas, as I was still a naive first year, my outlook was plagued by a false sense of entitlement.  I believed, erroneously, that the harder I worked, in terms of effort, the better my grades would be.  I did not take into account the most important thing of all … working smart; studying intelligently.  One could read the textbook, scrutinizing every word, until the cows come home, and yet, not know a thing about how to successfully solve problems come exam time.  In order to achieve a truly remarkable grade in courses such as chemistry, a fair amount of time must be spent doing practice problems.  I wasn’t aware of this, at the time, however.  It was remiss of me, I know; I am all the more wiser, though. 

[#2] – Chemistry 101 – Introduction to University Chemistry I

Today’s post will be centered around my first ever university chemistry course (a.k.a. Chem 101).  In all honesty, Chem 101 was my toughest class in first year (barring Stats 141, which I will talk about at a later date) – I found it very difficult to make the transition from high-school chemistry to university chemistry.  Even to this day, I’m still not completely certain why this was the case; however, I do have a sneaking suspicion of where I went wrong, albeit not a definitive one.

A standard periodic table for a standard chemistry course.

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Preamble:

Chemistry (more specifically, inorganic chem) was always one of my stronger subjects in high-school.  I enjoyed learning about it all throughout my grade-school years, and even managed to obtain my school’s highest mark award for grade 11 chem.  Given this background, it should not be surprising that I was rather disappointed with my relatively poor performance in university chemistry …  The following should shed some light on the reason(s) for my discombobulation in this course!