Semester Finals

I know you all have a busy schedule the next week, getting ready to slam dunk your exams. That is one reason why we did not do the lab I had planned this last Thursday. Keep plugging away on the practice test. I would strongly urge you to get together to work on problem sets - at least compare your answers because we are not going to have time to go over all of them. Best of luck! Contact me via email if you need help.

Tuesday 1/22 What will be on the Final?

Basically, everything is fair game. Chapters 1-11 are going to be on the final as well as any lab we have done. Your job in the next few days is to STUDY. You all need to do this, and you need to do it well. Note cards, notes, quizzing yourselves, these are all good things to do. I will have a study guide available for you on Wednesday if you care to pick it up. Today, we'll be studying actively on AP Chem.

Tuesday January 15th

Labs are due!! We'll go over calculations and what is needed today in class to make sure everyone is happy with their lab work. I promise grades are coming soon. We'll also begin chapter 11 today. Due Thursday BEFORE LAB is the following: 11.2, 11.13, 11.24. Extra Credit for 11.18 and/or 11.28 We'll talk about these and other exercises on Friday morning. Yes, that's right, Friday morning. Only two more to go 'till semester end! A reminder: You should be putting in, on average, about 45 mins to an hour every night. If not, you have that time to make up on the weekends. Thursday's lab will be about determining what's in our water!

Monday January 14th

All right, so Marlia asked me at the end of class on Friday about how to determine the volume for the vinegar and baking soda experiment. At first I thought that I made an error in judgement about your experimental design, but then it dawned on me today. What we planned to do, and I apologize for not making this more clear, is to make an assumption about the volume amount from the gram amount you found. For example, if you found that you lost 0.1 grams of carbon dioxide and the molar weight of carbon dioxide is, for the example here, 44.0 grams, then all you would do is calculate the moles. In this example it is 0.002 moles. Given that an ideal gas has a molar volume of 22.4 L, you can perform dimensional analysis and find what would be the volume for the amount of gas we measured. I hope this makes sense and is not too late for your homework time...and I hope you read this before Monday. Happy calculating!

Friday January 11th

Oops, sorry I haven't posted in a few days. Here is what we have done this week: Monday's Lab was about the temperature/volume relationship in gasses - and you tested Charles' law. Tuesday's and Thursday's lab was about designing an experiment with vinegar and baking soda to calculate the experimental value of R in the ideal gas law. Friday, today, we will be doing another lab on the ideal gas law. This time we are using a specific technique called the Dumas method to determine the molecular weight of an unknown volatile liquid. All week lab! Cool. Homework, thus far, has been the following things due: Tuesday: your lab calculations and a practice excercise out of the book. Thursday: design of your experiment in your lab book and finish reading chapter. Friday: questions 2-7 on the post-lab, and pre-read the Dumas method lab for today.

Monday January 7th

Welcome back! I hope you were not too disappointed in the lack of things left for you to do the last few days of the week before break. And I also hope that some of you tried the extra credit options! At any rate, we have a lot to get done before the AP exam. It looks like we will need to tackle a chapter per week until April 25th or so, and then review before our exam. The exam date is May 13th (don't worry, its a Tuesday). That leaves us some time to review and take a few practice tests before you go into it. But first, this week. We begin chapter ten, which is a nice transition back to school life because it is pretty easy to understand and a bit of a review for you all. Homework Monday is to read pages 399-412. There is only one exercise for each of you and all you have to do is show how the book's answer makes sense by showing the calculations and the work. Marlia and Va will do the practice exercise on page 412 (the one about the natural gas storage tank), and Adam and Molly will do the practice exercise on page 413 (the one about the oxygen in a cylinder). See you Monday!

Tuesday December 18th

Today we'll do a lecture on the important points of chapter nine. Homework for Thursday is to read up until p. 373. Due Thursday is a problem of your choice from the section on page 391 titled "Orbital Overlap; Hybrid Orbitals". You will present this to the group if there is time after the model building lab. On Friday, NO MORNING MEETING! Yee-haw! Read the rest of the chapter before Friday, and choose a problem from the section titled "Multiple Bonds" starting on page 391. These homework exercises are due Friday - Ms. Crock will email me the who's who of homework list so I can enter the grades in over break. Beware, you will not need to know molecular orbital theory for the AP exam. However, it IS something you should be aware of so read it. Pay particular attention to the "Chemistry in Life", "Chemistry at Work", and "Chemistry: A Closer Look" sections - they are the most interesting and applicable. Quiz on Friday - pay attention to the sample exercises!