Chemistry 115 - Daily Reading Assignments

Mon 12/14 I will give an overview of the course.
Fri 12/11 Read the handout and be prepared to discuss it.    I will lecture on photosynthetic reaction centers.
Wed 12/9 Finish reading Chapter 17 of Zumdahl.  I will lecture on  mixtures of liquids, distillation and azeotropes.
Mon 12/7 Read through Chapter 17.7 of Zumdahl.  I will lecture about osmotic pressure and vapor pressures of mixtures of solutions.
Fri 12/4 Start reading Chapter 17 of Zumdahl.  I will lecture about colligative properties.
Wed 12/2 There is an exam at 7:15PM in Room B317  in Chemistry.  Review for the exam that will be on Wednesday.
Mon 11/30 The class will be devoted to phase diagrams and their uses.
Mon 11/23 Read Zumdahl Chapter 16.10-16.11.  I will conclude the discusion on solids by reviewing some of the interesting aspects of Chapter 6 of DMW.  I will then cover the material in Zumdahl on changes of state and phase diagrams at a rapid pace, because there will be less than two lectures devoted to this material.  This material will be on the exam.
Fri 11/20 Read  DMW Chapter 6 pages 198-215 and Chapter 7 of  Teaching General Chemistry (TGC) pages 217-228.  In this class I will describe diodes and their properties and describe liquid crystals.and review some of the interesting aspects of Chapter 6 of DMW.
Wed 11/18 Read  DMW Chapter 6 pages 194-198 and  Chapter 7 of  Teaching General Chemistry (TGC) pages 208-217. I will continue to lecture on the electrical properities of solids focusing on how trends in band gaps.  I will describe n- and p- doped semiconductors.
Mon 11/16 Read Chapter 7 of  Teaching General Chemistry (TGC) pages 187-208.  Also Read  DMW Chapter 6 pages 186-194.  I will lecture on the electrical properities of solids with the goal to develop an understanding of why some materials conduct and others do not.
Fri 11/13 Finish Reading the current chapters of DMW and Zumdahl  I will lecture on ionic solids following sections 16.7 and 16.8.  In addition I will focus on the energetics of forming ionic solids.
Wed 11/11 Read pages 111-122 of DMW and Chapter 16.3-16.5.  I will lecture on the types of unit cells, packing efficiencies, and the experimental techniques that enable one to obtain structural information at the molecular level.
Mon 11/9 Read Chapter 5.11 and Chapter 16.1-16.2.  I will lecture on atmospheric chemistry for about half the class period, and then begin the section on Liquids and Solids.  The central aspect of this first discussion will be on the intermolecular forces of attraction between molecules.   By the end of the week you should have read 16.1-16.9.
Fri 11/6 I will conclude the lectures on spectroscopy and give a lecture on atmospheric chemistry.
Wed 11/4 There is an exam at 7:15PM in Room (to be announced) in Chemistry. I will use the class period to review class notes and Chapters 12-14 of Zumdahl. The exam will cover through Monday's lecture.
Mon 11/2 Read Chapter 3 of DMW. I will continue lecturing on spectroscopy. In the last lecture we examined the degrees of freedom for H2+. We found that this molecule has 3 electronic degrees of freedom and 6 nuclear degrees of freedom. Three of the nuclear degrees of freedom describe overall translation of the molecule through space; 2 describe the rotation of the molecule, and one describes the vibration. The quantum mechanical expressions for the energy levels of the rotational and vibrational degrees of freedom for a diatomic molecule will be presented. I will then discuss transitions between vibrational and rotational energy levels.
Fri 10/30 Read Chapter 14.6-14.7 and finish reading Chapter 1 of Designing the Molecular World (DMW). I will only briefly discuss valence bond theory in class. This topic was covered in the discussion sections. Most of the lecture will focus on molecular spectroscopy. The beginnning of Chapter 3 of DMW has a good description of spectroscopy that I suggest you read.
Wed 10/28 Read Chapter 14.1 and 14.5 and Chapter 1 of Designing the Molecular World (DMW). I will continue lecturing on Molecular Orbital (MO) theory, this being the theory where we take linear combinations, i.e., plus and minus combinations, of atomic orbitals to find molecular orbitals. Last time we considered the bonding in H2 and H2+. Today we will extend this theory to look at both homonuclear and heteronuclear diatomics. Be sure to review Figures 14.37 and 14.38 before class. If time permits, I will begin a discussion of valence bond theory.
Mon 10/26 Reread Chapter 14.2-14.4.
Fri 10/23 Read Chapter 14.2-14.4.
Wed 10/21 Finish reading Chapter 13. I will not cover VSEPR theory or Lewis dot structures in class. You are responsible for learning this material.
Mon 10/19 I will conclude my discussion of Chapter 12 by describing the solution of the helium atom and then start in on Chapters 13 and 14.  The key question to be answered over the next week in lecture is: why do chemical bonds form? Chapter 13 is a simple discussion of chemical bonding that highlights the role of electron sharing and covering the general concepts, whereas Chapter 14 is significantly more sophisticated in its treatment of the chemical bond.  For this reason my lectures over the next couple weeks will focus more on the material in Chapter 14.   Before class read Chapter 13.1-13.8, skipping 13.5 which will be covered later when we get to solids.  Section 13.8 has already been covered in the lecture on thermodynamics.
Fri 10/16 Read Chapter 12.14-12.16.  I will continue my discussion of the 3-dimensional particle in the box.  We will then discuss the solutions to the hydrogen atom.  If time permits I will consider the solution of the helium atom.   I will not discuss the other atoms.  The book does an excellent job, and you are only responsible for this material at the level presented in the book.  You should be able to predict the electronic configurations of the atoms and the trends in the radii, ionization energies and the electron affinities.
Wed 10/14 Before class carefully review class notes and read Chapter 12.9-12.13. I will continue my discussion of the particle in the box, showing how the boundary conditions lead to quantization of energy.  Having solved for the 1-dimensional particle in a box, I will then solve the 3-dimensional particle in a box and move on to a discussion of the solutions of the hydrogen atom. 
Mon 10/12 Before class read Chapter 12.6-12.9. I will discuss the solution to the particle in a box.
Wed 10/7 Before class read Chapter 12.1-12.6.  Sections 12.6 is complex, so I will devote considerable time to this section.
Mon 10/5 Before class read Chapter 9.6-9.8. I will not cover sections 9.7 and 9.8 in class and the information in them will not be stressed in future tests.  I will begin class by working several examples that involve reactions where there are changes in the enthalpy.  If time permits I will start a discussion of quantum mechanics.
Fri 10/2 Before class read Chapter 9.1-9.5.  I will introduce the notion of enthalpy and heat capacity and give examples of how they are used.
Wed 9/30 I will review the exam and start lecturing on Chapter 9
Mon 9/28 There is an exam at 7:15PM in Room 8335 in Chemistry.
Fri 9/25 Start reviewing for the exam. I will lecture on heterogeneous equilibrium.  I will go over last years test and then spend the remainder of the day answering questions.
Wed 9/23 Before class read Chapter 6.5-6.8.  I will continue lecturing on equilibrium phenomenon by introducing some mathematical techniques useful for solving for concentrations found at equilibrium.  I will then lecture on heterogeneous equilibrium.  Emily Wixson, who gave the tutorial on using the library and the electronic data bases associated with it would like some feedback.  Please send me email with your thoughts on the presentation and laboratory.  I will pass them as anonymous comments. Bring a diskette to Thursday laboratory. There is an exam next Monday at 7:15 in Room 8335 in Chemistry.
Mon 9/21 Before class read Chapter 6.1-6.4. I will begin lecturing on equilibrium using gas/liquid equilibrium as an example.  Next I will motivate the law of mass action using kinetics. The differences between K and Kp will be described and several problems will be worked out on the board. There is an exam next Monday. All the material in Chapter 6 will be on the exam.
Fri 9/18 Before class read Chapter 5.7,5.8 and 5.10. You will not be held responsible for the material in 5.9 or 5.11 (we'll come back to this at a later date).   I will spend a large fraction of the class talking about distribution functions and in particular the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution function.  You are responsible for learning about Effusion and Diffusion on your own.   For real gases, I am mostly concerned that you know that the van der Waals equation exists and that it allows one to treat real gases more accurately than ideal gases by incorporating attractive forces and the finite size of the gas particles into the mathematical model.
Wed 9/16 Before class read Chapter 5.4-5.6. I will continue my discussion of classical mechanics focusing on constant force problems and their analytical solutions.  If time permits I will begin the derivation of the ideal gas law.  This part of the lecture will follow the material is section 5.6.
Mon 9/14 Before class read Chapter 5.1-5.3. The class lecture, which will not be drawn from the book, will cover Newton's law (F=ma).  We will discuss numerical solutions to this equation, and I will motivate its importance to chemists. I assume that you are sufficiently familiar with the ideal gas law that you can read and understand sections 5.1-5.5.  This material will not be covered in lecture.
Fri 9/11 Before class read Chapter 4. I will continue describing the three important classes of chemical reactions that are presented in Chapter 4 of your book.  Last time we considered precipitation reactions.  This class will be devoted to a discussion of acid-base chemistry and oxidation-reduction reactions. Please look over Table 4.3 before class, since assigning oxidation states is a central step in balancing oxidation-reduction reactions.
Wed 9/9 Before class read Chapter 3. I will begin a discussion of the origins of the periodic table and the notion of periodicity building on the ideas presented in Sec. 2.8. The periodic table will be presented and several examples of periodicity will be presented.  The role of valence electrons will be highlighted.  I will begin describing several important classes of chemical reactions that are presented in Chapter 4 of your book.
Fri 9/4 Before class read Chapter 2. Sections 2.1-2.3 were covered in Wednesday's lecture.  Section 2.4 will not be covered, so read this section more carefully.  On Friday I will describe cathode-ray tubes and mass spectrometers, leaving you to learn about the Millikan oil drop experiment and the Rutherford gold foil experiment of Sec. 2.5 on your own.  Section 2.7 is a review of high school chemistry.  You should begin to familiarize yourself with the nomenclature found in Tables 2.3-2.8.