Chemistry Study Group for Spring 2009

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I am starting my third chemistry class on January 12th (tomorrow!!) and was wondering if anyone was interested in forming a study group (or if there is already one on here that I did not see yet?)

Kristi :)

Well, how did it go?

Sorry for the delay. Just getting to this!

It went ok. There was a big mix-up for the 1st day of class.

Meaning, half the class (incl. me) thought 1st day was the day

I told you guys about (Sat.17th) and it was actually on the 10th.

At orientation, everyone said 1st day of classes was on the 12th so

we were all thinking since ours was a Sat. class it would be the 17th.

Anyhoo, he was really cool about it. Our class is really small...about

12-15 ppl. So he reviewed what they went over the previous Sat., gave

us a quiz and let us go early. He's offering tutoring 2x a week. We're a

day ahead of the other classes so he let us know we really can't miss

another class.

I'm good right now. We went over the basics....measurement, scientific

notation, prefixes and equalities, Density, specific gravity, temp. conversions,

specific heat, and states of matter. We have ?'s in pink at the end of each

section to do and a study guide that came with the book. Our book is

Chemistry An Introduction to General, Organic, and Biological Chemistry by

Karen Timberlake (10th ed.). I have the next 2 chaps to read and the ?'s to do

yet after I got caught up this weekend w/what I had missed.

I've been studying for my 1st Med.Term. test tomorrow and had to read the

chapter we'll be going over after the test, homework and 2 medications assign-

ments. I'll be popping in and out this week though as I read the next chapter.

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Specializes in Med-Surg.

hey i'm in san diego. i'm taking organic chem but its an organic and biochem book. my classes start 1/26. some help would be cool. i love this site!

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Specializes in nursing student.

OMG. First class last night. I am so confused about the math portion already. We went over scientific notation which I totally get and some conversions. It's when you get into the conversions with more than two units that I get confused. We have problems to work on so I may be posting for some help tonight before my General Psych class. My teacher seems nice but she's a little spazzy. *sigh* She kinda just regurgitates info from Powerpoint with no real explanation even when asked, at least so far. Guess we'll see.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Clinical Documentation Specialist.

Ok, here's a question for you all. It pwnd me and I have NO IDEA how to work this one out. It's a Dimensional Analysis problem. I know how they work in general, I just get my mind wrapped around this one.

If a person smokes 10.0 packs of cigs a week and each cig contains 5.00mg of tar, how many years will she have to smoke to inhale 0.250 lbs of tar?

[use 20cigs=1 pack, 1lb=454g, 1 yr=52 weeks]

My prof only told me "10 packs/week x 20 cigs/pack x 5mg tar/cig etc." UGH! I was hoping he would give me the whole thing.

Oh he also gave me a website in case anyone else has difficulty with these too, its

http://chemistry.alanearhart.org/Tutorials/DimAnal/

TIA!!

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Ok, here's a question for you all. It pwnd me and I have NO IDEA how to work this one out. It's a Dimensional Analysis problem. I know how they work in general, I just get my mind wrapped around this one.

If a person smokes 10.0 packs of cigs a week and each cig contains 5.00mg of tar, how many years will she have to smoke to inhale 0.250 lbs of tar?

[use 20cigs=1 pack, 1lb=454g, 1 yr=52 weeks]

My prof only told me "10 packs/week x 20 cigs/pack x 5mg tar/cig etc." UGH! I was hoping he would give me the whole thing.

Oh he also gave me a website in case anyone else has difficulty with these too, its

http://chemistry.alanearhart.org/Tutorials/DimAnal/

TIA!!

Here is what I came up with, although I don't know if this is what your teacher is looking for. First, I wanted to know how many mg were in a pound. I googled the conversion of 5.00mg to pounds, and 5.00mg=1.10231131 x 10^-5 lbs. So that is the amount of tar, in lbs., that a person inhales when they smoke one cig. However, there are 20 cigs. in a pack (also had to google that one ;)), so you have to multiply that number by 20 (1.10231131 x 10^-5 x 20=2.20462262 x 10^-4). That is the amount of tar, in lbs., a person inhales when they smoke one pack of cigs. Then, multiply that number by 10, because we know that this person smokes 10 packs per week. That yields .0022046226 lbs. of tar in 1 week. There are four weeks in a month, so multiply by 4. That equals .008184905 lbs. of tar inhaled per month. To find out how many months it takes to inhale the requisite .250 lbs. of tar, divide .250 by .008184905, which equals 28.34952315. This is the number of months it takes to ingest .250 lbs. of tar. But we want to know the number of years, so we divide 28.34952315 by 12 (the number of months in a year), which gives us our answer=2.362460262 years.

I may have some of these calculators wrong, and obviously I didn't do any rounding/sig. figs., but hopefully that will give you a start. I also don't know what a dimensional analysis problem is, I just approached the problem the way I would any other problem.

Good luck!

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Specializes in nursing student.

OMG if I could switch professors, I would. My professor is an absolute blunder head. The first hour of our lab day is a problem session, she couldn't even get half the problems right, kept saying "that's it I'm done and I'm giong home" every other problem. And then she doesn't even teach the problems, she writes them on the board and gives you the answer. UHHHH that doesn't help me set it up and solve it on my own. So I asked the person next to me if she understood, she did and she started to explain it to me...... Suddenly the prof stops talking, turns around and says "Are you done back there? Can I go on now?" To which I promptly responded, "well once I understand the problem and how to do it myself I will be ready to move on". Several people had already attempted to get her to explain how she sets up the problem and gets her answer which she is unable to do so there was no point in asking her. She stands there tapping her foot waiting for us to stop talking and then just moves on!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Her excuse for this is that she works full time at Monsanto and she just got asked to teach the class a week ago..... Well I know I'm just a stupid student here but if you put yourself on a list of adjunct instructors for a certain class, shouldn't you be able to TEACH said class if they are to call on you to do so? Unfortunately, I can't change classes because all the other classes are full. Ugh it's going to be a long semester:banghead::confused:

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Specializes in Critical Care, Clinical Documentation Specialist.

Oh man! Princess I'm sorry, that majorly sucks. I think you need to find a Chem study group with some of those in your class and go from there. Looks like way extra work for you :(

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Specializes in nursing student.
Oh man! Princess I'm sorry, that majorly sucks. I think you need to find a Chem study group with some of those in your class and go from there. Looks like way extra work for you :(

I think I will. My cousin is in the class and luckily had taken Chem in HS but they will not take it for her Dental Hygiene program..... anyway, I also found out the an RN that works in the ICU I do staffing for was a Chemistry Major too so I think I just found my new best friend for the semester. :) She told me to call her anytime.

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Specializes in nursing student.

I have decided that she gets 2 more weeks (we have next week off due to her prior committments) to get her act together and if she is still a spaz when we return then I am going to complain to the Chair of the department. I honestly have a serious doubt about her teaching skills when she gets so easily flustered and threatens to leave and messes up repeatedly when trying to do math problems. If she can not grasp the material that she is teach (remember this is what she does every day since she works for MONSANTO) then how can she instruct us? I refuse to fail this class due to her incompetence and also should not have to recruit outside forces to re-teach me what she did not. It would be different if I needed a tutor but rather in this case I need an instructor that will actually instruct.

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Oh my i feel your situation...i had my first class, we too went over scientific notation, significant numbers and then.... conversions...i was okay until we got to the conversion problems.... my teacher did explain them, but he has a thick indian accent, so i didnt fully understand him....one problem he gave : a car has 18.5 gallons of fuel, uses 46 liters during the drive...how many gallons were left? i got that one, but then quickly moved on to more difficult, and i was LOST!! i will not panic yet, i will keep practicing....i have studied a medication dose book, which also has those conversions...so i realize this is a skill that we MUST learn, we will see again in pharmacology!!!!

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To anybody who hasn't visited that link yet...DO IT. Tell your teacher thank you from me because that is an awesome site. A lot of reading but VERY GOOD!

My first quiz is on Wednesday so I have to get back to studying.

I hope everyone is surviving.:heartbeat

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Specializes in Critical Care, Clinical Documentation Specialist.

Good FutureNOVARN, I am SO pleased someone actually finds a link useful that I post. I got my first exam back and I got 100% WOOHOO! So if I can do it so can you!!

I also picked up Cliffs Study Solver for Chemistry. Great book with lots of extra problems to work on, you may want to pick one up if you haven't already.

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