Overview
Chemistry 1AA3 is a continuation of
Chem 1A03 and discusses organic chemistry, additional bonding topics (orbital hybridization), chemical kinetics, buffer solutions, intermolecular forces, and a new topic, chemical biology. The majority of the course, including the entire first midterm, is dedicated to organic chemistry: there is a lot of content discussed (most of which should be high school review), but I felt like they went at a relatively slow pace. Unlike high school, nomenclature and synthesis are not emphasized in the organic chemistry chapter. They test you on recognizing functional groups (which is super easy) and deducing chemical activity based on 3-dimensional structure. In the chemical bonding topics, you go over orbital hybridization (sp, sp2, sp3, etc) and chemical behaviour based on these. Buffer solutions includes acids and bases (that means your good friend the ICE table), and despite giving several students headaches in 1A03, it actually isn't
that bad in 1AA3. It's still a little challenging, but I found it less intense this term. Intermolecular forces is relatively straight forward: it reiterates the particle theory you already learned.....in the seventh/eight grade. Don't get me wrong, it won't be like grade school, they'll still give you some challenging theoretical question about intermolecular forces. Finally, the new topic is chemical biology, and in year I took this class (Winter 2008), we focused on High Throughput Screening (HTS) and bees. Well, more specifically, how the queen bee releases this hormone that suppressing bad memories in her workers, and thus keeps them loyal (which was actually pretty cool). We also discussed aromaticity, which actually turned out on a lot of three mark questions on the second midterm, so pay close attention to this topic.
In terms of teaching, like 1A03, this is a large first year class, so there are 4 or 5 sections taught by as many teachers. Pippa Lock is still the unanimous favourite because she has the most charisma and best content clarity. Nevertheless, the department of chemistry has some pretty good first year chemistry instructors, and they all use the same "skeleton" notes as in Chem 1A03 (so you print the notes at home and fill in blanks during the lecture).
Course Breakdown
The evaluation for 1AA3 is the exact same as 1A03
First Midterm: 15%
Second Midterm: 20%
Labs: 15%
WebCT Quizzes: 10%
Final Exam: 40%
Midterms
First Midterm
- 25 multiple choice questions, 100 minutes long
- Only covers organic chemistry (and not even the entire chapter; that's how long orgo is)
- The first 20 questions are worth two marks, the last five are worth three marks (for a total of 55 marks)
- Part marks apply, just like in 1A03
I thought that this was a pretty fair test. If you do the practice tests that they post and the suggested textbook problems, you should do fine on the first midterm. After the feedback from Chem 1A03, the professors were much more careful in wording their questions to not specifically trick the students.
Second Midterm
- 30 multiple choice questions, 120 minutes
- covers organic chemistry (cumulative), chemical bonding, chemical biology and chemical kinetics
- 23 two mark questions, 7 three mark questions
- Part marks apply
A bit more challenging than the first midterm, but still fair. Like all first year chemistry tests (in my opinion), the two mark questions were a breeze; the three mark questions were the tricky ones. For chemical biology specifically, I highly suggest you go to office hours and ask the professors to elaborate on any information that you're not sure about. Chemical biology is NOT in the textbook, and it's all strictly supplementary information. In any case, it's a good habit to visit professor office hours for all topics you're not sure about.
Labs & Tutorials
Unlike 1A03, you do have 2 or 3 labs (out of 5) that you take home and hand in the formal report 2-7 days (depending on the lab) later. They don't necessarily expect a fully typed report with in text citations, but the point of taking it home and handing in the entire report later is to fully grasp the results of the lab. Also, since the lectures move relatively slowly, we ended up starting the buffer solutions lab before we even started taking about buffers in class. The extra two days to finish the discussion for this lab specifically was immensely helpful.
Tutorials are still optional in 1AA3 and alternate with your labs. They post tutorial questions every week that have similar questions to the ones on the midterms. Although they post the answers, they often don't post the
full solutions to the questions, so it's in your best interest to attend the tutorials to get the full solutions (especially for aromaticity - hint hint).
WebCT quizzes
They are the exact same as 1A03: 6 in total and they count your top 5. All multiple choice and relatively easy if you take the time to carefully complete them.
Final Exam- Cumulative, 3 hours long
- 37 questions with an approximate breakdown of:organic chem + chemical biology (6 questions), kinetics (10 questions), acid-base chemistry (13 questions), intermolecular forces (4 questions) and all labs (4 questions)
- 29 two mark questions, 8 three mark questions
- Part marks apply
I thought that the exam was way easier than the midterms. I found that a lot of the exam questions were similar to the suggested textbook problems, so my advice for the final exam:
DO THE TEXTBOOK PROBLEMS. It's not enough to do the practice tests/exams and tutorials. They use very similar questions from the textbook, so it's in your best interest to complete them.
Overall, this class is very similar to Chem 1A03 in organization and evaluation. I found that it was
slightly easier than its predecessor, but that's probably because by term 2, you get used to the type of questions that the department of chemistry throws at you. Also, the material was also slightly more interesting (brainwashing bees and there was also a note called "steroids" with a picture of Barry Bonds) It is
not a walk in the park, but if you put in adequate work, you should be able to get a double digit grade.
Good luck!
