Chem 2031 Main Page

*********************************
Midterm Exam! Monday Sept 29 and Wednesday Oct 1, 3-5 PM.

You may bring a "Cheat Sheet" into the exam with ANYTHING you want on it. The sheet must be 8 1/2" by 11" using only one side of the page write/print on. I will collect this page along with your exam. Please take this seriously as it is also a good way to study for the exam. You will NOT have access to the web pages or to FTP for the course.

Please do NOT bring a jump drive or other removable media to the exam!!

You will be given two hours to do the exam and it will cover everything you have been doing in your assignments up until now. To study for the exam it is best if you simply redo the assignments. Ideally you should do this by starting from scratch and simply redoing them one by one. If you have less time to devote to this process you should carefully study your answers to the assignments. Among other things you can expect to have to know how to determine correct significant figures in a number when its error has also been calculated. You will have to be able to create a "proper" graph and carry out a regression on the data (AND you have to know how to interpret the table of information that results). You have to know the difference between X data and Y data. You also have to be able to do the simple discrete statistics calculations for mean, stdev, %RSD, Error-95, etc. Make sure you know what Error is and how the t-95 value fits into the picture. These are not all of the topics you have to be familiar with, but perhaps my statement here will stimulate you to work out something you were not otherwise sure about.
You will be given a "paper" exam that will contain some of your answers. In addition you will have to do some actual calculations using Excel in a file that I will need to "collect" on my jump drive. This means that you have to stick around long enough for me to collect file(s) from you AND see that they are readable.
*********************************
Ooopps, this announcement is in error. The text was never ordered because of the change in instructors over the summer.
NOTE: There IS a textbook for this class, The ACS Style Guide, 3rd Ed. by Coghill and Garson
*********************************
All Research Methods Students...You are allowed to use the chemistry computer lab computers any time the lab is open, and if it is not open and I am around you can ask me to open it and 9 times out of 10 I will open it.

There might be some confusion. You MAY indeed use the OLDER version of Microsoft Office (Excel and Word) to complete assignments. My only concern is that if you only have MS Office 2003 that you remember to save files in a compatible format so that you aren't frustrated.

I am not "grading" an email assignment, only the assignments found on the Assignments page (link at right). Make sure you give me the email address you will most likely use on a regular basis IN THE Basic Comuter Skills assignment due Thursday.

******************************************
You can view my "first lecture" notes here. Lecture 1
******************************************

FTP
In order to submit your assignments you will have to use the File Tranfer Protocol or FTP program. This is set up on all of the Chemistry department computers and on computers in the librariy but you might not be able at this point to set yourself up with FTP at home. In the Library, use the directions for setting up these parameters found after the link at the lower left,
"FTP Home or Library."

When logging in to your FTP account use the first four letters of your last name (first letter capitalized) for your username and "RM" plus the last four digits of your EagleID for your password. Capitalize the first letter in your username and BOTH RM in your password.

What this course is about:

Each section of the course will have online content accessible from this site via the menu to the left. All assignments and practice tutorials are listed there. Some of this content may change during the semester, so if you work ahead then be sure to check back before the assignments are due (That is when I will actually grade the your work). These pages have deliberately been written with a minimum of graphics and animation to make them compact and quick to download, either through the direct ethernet connections of the computer lab or over modem lines from home.

Each computer in the computer lab already has the web server and FTP server sites book marked. For those who may access this material from other computers, the web site home page (the one you're looking at right now) is at this address:

All of the Web pages for this course are contained on the Chemistry Department's own server. Each student in the course will have their own FTP account on this server and this is where you will turn in all of your assignments. (If you're not familiar with the term "FTP" yet, just wait a bit.) For those who might FTP from a remote site, the address is similar:

I hope to see very few pieces of paper from any of you, no computer disks, and I hope to hand back to you few in return. Consider this your first environmentally friendly "green" chemistry course! Today or tomorrow you will have to send me an e-mail using the e-mail account through which you want me to keep in touch with you. You will also need to purchase floppy disks, a Zip disk, or better yet, a flash memory device on which to save your work.