Download Chem 33000 - Physical Chemistry 1

Syllabus for Chemistry 330, Spring 2016
















Title of course : Physical Chemistry I and Physical Chemistry I workshop
Department and Course Number: Chemistry 33000, Chemistry 33001
Instructor : Professor Green
Instructor contact information (Office location, telephone, email): Rm MR1130,
x6034, [email protected]
Instructor office hours: Th 3-4 (or by appointment: note that I can normally arrange
things so that you can see me within a day or two; either send me an email or talk to me
after class, and a time will be found. The stated hour is pro-forma, although I do expect
to be present in my office for that hour. If you need to see me, it will be possible. If I am
in my office, and don’t have other guests, drop-ins are OK. )
Course description (from Bulletin) Ideal and real gases, kinetic molecular theory,
thermodynamics and phase equilibria, solutions
Prerequisites and/or Corequisites for Chem 33000: Math 203, Physics 207, Coreq:
Physics 208; for Chem 33001 (nominally optional (but very strongly recommended)
workshop), coreq, Chem 33000. Note that the course is planned overall with the
assumption that students attend the workshop; this is a course that depends on problem
solving, and much of the practice is in the workshop, so failing to attend is a significant
handicap.
Class schedule: Number of hours (lecture/lab/workshop); number of credits; day(s)
of week and time that course meets: Chem 33000: T,Th, 9:30-10:45, 3hrs/week, 3
credits; Chem 33001, F 9:00-10:45, 2 hrs/week, 0 credits
Textbook: “Physical Chemistry”, by Silbey, Alberty, and Bawendi, (4th edition, Wiley);
there may from time to time be handouts (usually posted), including answers to problems.
Course objectives (these are used for the direct and indirect assessment of student
learning at the end of the semester):
1) Understand gas laws, ideal and real, and be able to use them in problems
2) The major part of the course will be devoted to introductory thermodynamics,
including: i) work, heat and energy, and the First Law of Thermodynamics, ii) entropy
and the Second Law, the Third Law, other thermodynamic potentials (including free
energy); iii) application of thermodynamics to chemical equilibrium, and phase
equilibrium iv) application to solutions, including ionic solutions; Debye-Huckel theory
of dilute ionic solutions
3) Applications of thermodynamics to some special topics, especially electrochemistry
4) Kinetic theory of gases and elementary chemical kinetics
Assessment/grading/policies: There will be three hour examinations plus a final
examination; the lowest hour exam will be dropped; if a student misses an exam for any
reason whatsoever, that becomes the low grade. There are no makeup exams. (The final
grade may be curved, and there is no way to make up fair comparable exams—the fairest
procedure is to drop a missed exam). Students who miss more than one exam should drop
the course. There will also be 9 homework assignments, one per chapter covered; late
homework will not be graded, but it is still worth doing the problems to get ready for the
exams. The allocation of credit is:
Two best hour exams: 45%; final, 45%; homework, 10%. There may be very small
adjustments for outstanding class participation.


Weekly schedule and topics to be covered:
Week
1

Topics
Chap 1: Gas Laws: Equations of State, and equilibrium

2,3

Chap 2:The First Law

4

Exam 1 (with very high probability, March 1)

5

Chap 3:The Second and Third Laws

5,6

Chap 4: Fundamental Equations of Thermodynamics

7,8

Chap 5: Chemical Equilibrium

8

Exam 2

9

Chap 6: Phase Equilibrium

10,11 

12



12,13 
13,14 

14
Chap 7: Electrochemical Equilibrium, and thermo review

Exam 3

Kinetics Section:
Chap 17: Kinetic theory of gases
Chap 18: Chemical Kinetics (if possible; not guaranteed)

Review
Other information: 1) Concerning the workshops: I repeat: The course is designed
assuming that you will attend the workshop, even though it is nominally optional. Obviously,
there is an advantage to attending, or we would not bother. There may be only limited time
devoted to solving the kind of problems that will appear on the exams during the official
class, as it is assumed that there will be additional practice during the workshop. In other
words it is going to be very difficult to prepare for exams without the workshop; for most
students, the lecture does not spend enough time doing examples, but in total (counting the
workshops) there is more than adequate attention to problems. If you really can’t attend,
make sure that you have a friend who can go over the problems with you. I can’t re-teach the
section for individual students; the point of a workshop is to work together; working alone
seems to be less efficient when learning how to solve new problems.
2) Homework: Even though the homework is only 10% of the official grade, it is critical; it is
the only way you can see whether you are doing an adequate job. You will be given the
answers after the problems are handed in, but this will not help if you have not made a very
serious effort to do them on your own. Students who do not do the homework almost always
fail. Answers will be posted the afternoon of the class when they are due, and no homework
will be accepted after the answers have been posted. The grading on the homework is limited
to checking the amount done, not a complete grading as is done with an exam. You can check
your answers from the posted answers; if there is something you still don’t understand, and
can’t get even with help from your friends, ask in class—chances are others will have the
same problem, and if several people don’t get a homework problem, it means that there may
be a conceptual problem that needs to be clarified.
3) You will notice that the topics in the weekly schedule are those of chapters of the textbook.
Problems will also be assigned from the text; if you do not have the text, or at least access to
it, you will be unable to follow the course. It may be possible to get a less expensive or
second hand copy on line, or share a copy, or whatever it takes to keep the cost within reason.
The book has not had a new edition in several years, so a second hand copy is likely to be
available somewhere.
I hope that you will enjoy the course; you have to work to learn the material, but it is part of
the basic vocabulary of chemistry, and you can begin to understand the chemical literature
after this course, and better still after Chem 332; however, a lot is already understandable
with Chem 330.