Help! Chemistry Assistance!

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Ok so I have to take "Fundamentals of Chemistry," this summer along with Micro. I have already taken chemistry first semester in college, which was hard enough adapting to. I took A and P and got a B, and all A's in the rest of my courses. For some reason I can't get chemistry in terms of "CONVERSIONS." Im having trouble converting from moles to grams and such. Anyone have any hints/tips/strategies would be extremly helpful!

Thanks

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Specializes in Triage, Trauma, Ambulatory Care.

I found cliffs study solver for chemistry to be very helpful with these types of problems. I checked it out at the library and loved it so much I bought a copy on amazon for 9.00 dollars or so. It might be something you want to take a look at and see if it is helpful.

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Specializes in dreams of the future.

The old plug n chug or chain link method always made it easy for me. Just practice and read the q's and understand them thoroughly. Go in there calling yourself brilliant, or think of it as a challenge you WANT to take on. Mind set is one of the main things I think. Simplify it to cupcakes and eggs. I need 3 eggs (moles) to make a dozen cupcakes (grams). Then how many eggs would I need to make 18 cupcakes? Theoreticly, 4 and a half eggs. Whatever you gotta do, I wish you the best!

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Are you, first of all, having problems doing dimensional analysis? If so, then I recommend this prof's detailed tutorial (with quizzes!) on dimensional analysis. I think this guy is the greatest thing since the invention of the pipette! :)

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

If it's *just* the mole/grams conversion thing that's got you stumped, Mr. Guch may help:

http://misterguch.brinkster.net/molecalculations.html

As always, my advice is to do approximately 8 gazillion problems until you want to barf :barf01: when you see one. By then you will be totally comfortable doing them!!

Good luck! (BTW, this is one skill that *will* help you with nursing school!)

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Forgive my intrusion...but thought since this was an active thread and about Chemistry, might get some response. It's been a while since I took any Chem classes/labs (ok, a Looong while :-) and I have a friend who has gone back to school and is just starting a chem class. Last night was first lab and she told me today they had to stand the entire lab (nearly 3 hours)-because the instructor said it was against OSHA rules for them to have any chairs in the lab.

This sounds bizarre to me, and certainly didn't used to be that way-nor can I imagine that every professional chemist stands all day long to work either-has anyone else seen or been told anything like this?

She was hurting today, not like when you are moving, it's hard on the body to just stand for several hours. I told her I would certainly challenge that one and ask to see it in writing...

Anyone?

thanks!

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Specializes in Triage, Trauma, Ambulatory Care.

We are not allowed to have chairs in the lab either. Our labs are 2 hours. Can your friend walk around the lab a bit in between experiments? We actually do a lot of moving around from one side of the lab to the other. The vent hoods and such are across the room from our work areas. So there is a lot of back and forth.

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Specializes in Pediatric Pulmonology and Allergy.
Forgive my intrusion...but thought since this was an active thread and about Chemistry, might get some response. It's been a while since I took any Chem classes/labs (ok, a Looong while :-) and I have a friend who has gone back to school and is just starting a chem class. Last night was first lab and she told me today they had to stand the entire lab (nearly 3 hours)-because the instructor said it was against OSHA rules for them to have any chairs in the lab.

This sounds bizarre to me, and certainly didn't used to be that way-nor can I imagine that every professional chemist stands all day long to work either-has anyone else seen or been told anything like this?

She was hurting today, not like when you are moving, it's hard on the body to just stand for several hours. I told her I would certainly challenge that one and ask to see it in writing...

Anyone?

thanks!

I had the same thing when I took Chem, and I was in my third trimester of pregnancy at the time! I'm not sure why the rule applies only to chem lab since in A&P lab we could sit. Anyway, people used to sit on the lab tables which probably is a lot worse! I would sit on the radiator or if I really couldn't take it, I'd take a chair and sit in the hallway. There was lots of waiting around time (like, if you had to let your solution sit for 20 minutes or something) and to just stand like that without having anything to do is rough.

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http://www.graphpad.com/quickcalcs/moleform.cfm

enter the numbers and click calculate! :p

it goes from grams to moles or

moles to grams

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Actually converting moles to grams and grams to moles is pretty easy.

If you wanted to know the mass of 0.025 moles of Fe

you would take the 0.025 moles and multiply by the mass of Fe (55.85) to get the grams 0.025mole (55.85) g

1 mole

If you wanted to know how many moles of S in 100.0 grams

you would start with what you know and that is you have 100.0 grams and then find S mass on periodic table which is 32.07 and divide 100.0 g by 32.07

100.0 g ( 1 mole)

32.07 g =3.118 moles

see how in the first one you started with moles (0.025) so then you would put moles on the bottom and grams on the top - you will always cross. And when you had grams in the second one 100.0 you would put grams on the bottom - think of it like this 100.0g x 1mole the 1 mole cancel

1 mole 32.07g

each other and then you are just left dividing 100.0 by 32.07.

I hope this makes sense - I just finished Chem (got an A YEAH). It gets a little tougher when you have to convert to atoms or molecules, but still basically same principle. (this works the same way basically for most conversions - )

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Forgive my intrusion...but thought since this was an active thread and about Chemistry, might get some response. It's been a while since I took any Chem classes/labs (ok, a Looong while :-) and I have a friend who has gone back to school and is just starting a chem class. Last night was first lab and she told me today they had to stand the entire lab (nearly 3 hours)-because the instructor said it was against OSHA rules for them to have any chairs in the lab.

This sounds bizarre to me, and certainly didn't used to be that way-nor can I imagine that every professional chemist stands all day long to work either-has anyone else seen or been told anything like this?

She was hurting today, not like when you are moving, it's hard on the body to just stand for several hours. I told her I would certainly challenge that one and ask to see it in writing...

Anyone?

thanks!

Unfortunately, I think her professor is right. We are not permitted to sit during Chem lab. And as others have noted, their profs don't let them sit either. Last semester, one of my lab bench-mates was VERY pregnant. I felt sorry for her!

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We had stools that we could sit on, but just a few weeks into the class I realized that, for me, the stool just got in the way and I stopped using mine.

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We have stools in our Chem lab too and I have never heard of not being allowed to have chairs in a lab? I don't understand why it would be unsafe to have chairs - I feel sorry for you all who cannot sit down. I was glad to have chairs for the long labs, even though most of the time I only sat while the Prof was talking not while doing experiments.

On the subject of mole/gram conversions - I agree with poster who said to just keep doing tons of them over and over again and would also suggest you try to find someone you know or in your class to help you one on one because that seems to be the best way to understand math problems, at least for me.

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