General chemsitry labs

[RN2BE93]

Ok so I already wrote a post about what I'm getting myself into when taking general chem. And got awesome feedback. Thank you all btw! Now I'm curious about what the labs are like because I now know all science labs are not the same. So what should I expect from labs?

[SopranoKris, MSN, RN, NP]

I found lab to be pretty straight-forward and easy. Follow the procedures, be meticulous and your experiments will go well. Our school has Chem lab as a separate class from lecture, so I had a different lab instructor. I wish I could have her again for my next lab, she was awesome :)

As far as what to expect: you'll usually have to write out your procedures or fill in a lab report (depending on your school's text). Our lab also had a weekly quiz, but it was fairly simple if you had done your pre-lab homework. We learned how to use various pieces of equipment in the lab and learned procedures such as distillation, titration, etc.

I found that lab made the info learned in the lecture portion of the class actually "sink in" better. It's was hands-on, real-time learning as opposed to learning formulas and doing theoretical calculations. In fact, one of our experiments had us do the theoretical yield on a particular reaction. Then we did the actual yield and found the percent difference.

If you're a methodical, organized person, lab will be a breeze :)