Chemistry 2031: Research Methods in Chemistry
Fall Semester 2008
Dr. Jim LoBue (LoBue Weekly Schedule)

Syllabus
Click below for he desired course syllabus.
Dr LoBue's Syllabus

Required Textbook!

Learning Objctvs
Chem 2031 LOs

Assignment Schedule

Dr LoBue's Class Assignments

Weekly Schedule
Click Here to see times the computer lab is available

E-mail Archive
Click Here to view all previous class e-mail messages


Tutorials and Assignments
E-mail Assignment
Setting up the course accounts and contact info

Basic Computer Skills
Windows Explorer and FTP


Data Analysis I
Microsoft Excel
Tutorial and Assignment I: Statistics, Replicate Measurements, Error Analysis of One Data Set , and Graphing with Excel

Tutorial and Assignment II: Comparing Two Data Sets

Tutorial and Assignment III: Basic Graphing with Excel

Tutorial and Assignment IV: Linear Regression Excel

Tutorial and Assignment V: Statistics and Linear Regression

Tutorial and Assignment VI: Deriving Linear Relationships


Style Guide
Assignments


Style Guide 1

Style Guide 2

Style Guide 3


Chemical Information
Chemical Information I: The Great Henderson Library Treasure Hunt

Chemical Information II: General Chemistry Information over the Internet

Chemical Information III: Chemistry Databases


Visualizing Information
Drawing Molecules and Word Processing Documents

Viewing Molecules with RasMol

Ethics1 and Copyright

Data Analysis II
MathCad
Mathcad I:
Basic Operations

Mathcad III:
Index Variables and Linear Regression

Other material you might find useful:
FTP Home or Library

Significant Digits Review

Chemistry Resources

MathCad Subscripts

Announcements!
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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.
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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
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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.

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You can view my "first lecture" notes here.  Lecture 1
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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:
This course will survey the basic computer skills needed by any chemist, in any situation, from academics to government to industry. Among the skills you will become familiar with are:
  • Basic Computer Literacy. Whether you could teach Microsoft a thing or two, or you consider computers the spawn of Satan, every chemist needs to be able to sit down at a computer and work with it. For some, this will be a review... for others, a real learning experience.
  • Data Analysis. The computer is a fast way to present data in a visual fashion, such as a graph, and also an easy way to perform computations on a set of data to better understand the information it conveys or determine if it is relevant.
  • Chemical Information and the Literature. There is a vast amount of chemical information out there. The computer is a key that helps unlock it.
  • Analyzing and visualizing molecules on the computer. Sometimes a flat 2-dimensional picture just cannot show the critical aspects of large structures, like proteins. We will be using computer software to allow us to view 3-dimensional structures and rearrange, reorient, etc the structure in any fashion we wish.
Unlike courses you may have had in the past, due to the skill oriented nature of this course there will be less lecture/note taking content and more individual exploration and directed work on the computers. As we progress through the semester the course content will become less structured.  Each of you will have individual projects to explore using the visualization and Internet tools that we will be learning.

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:

http://chemistry1.che.georgiasouthern.edu/chem2031/

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:

chemistry1.che.georgiasouthern.edu

Simply connect to the address above with some form of  FTP server software, proveide your login name and password, and the computer will automatically take you to your space on the department's server.  You will be the only student in class with access to your account, though I will have access for the purpose of collecting and grading your assignments. 

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.


Save your work every 15 minutes at minium!
Make sure you keep a copy of EVERYTHING you turn in.
Always make a SECOND copy of your work on another disk.

Page last updated 2/9/2008