Unlike many environmental sciences courses, the content of EARTH SCI 2Q03 is mostly calculation-based. CHEM 1A03 (basic chemical principles & balancing redox reactions) is a prerequisite for the course but I found that the test and exam placed a larger emphasis on acid/base & buffer chemistry, which is covered more fully in CHEM 1AA3. The course was taught be Dr. Warren and the textbook used was "Environmental Geochemistry" by G. Nelson Eby.
The mark breakdown was: 5% for a short introductory quiz (easy marks), 30% for two formal labs (average for the first one was 65% but the second lab was very identical to the first and you could improve your second lab report based on feedback from your first one), 30% for a midterm and 35% for the final exam. In addition, Dr. Warren gave us a bonus in-class pop quiz that could have increased our midterm grade by 7% and weighted our two formal labs, midterm exam and final exam so that the better of the two labs / exams would carry more weight.
The course started off with reviewing basic chemical / mathematical principles such as unit conversions (chapter 1 of Eby). The course then proceeds to review La Chatelier's Principles (chapter 2 of Eby; and, again, CHEM 1A03 review) and introduces Henry's Law, which is a simple mathematical relationship that relates the concentration of a dissolved substance at a certain temperature to the pressure of a gas in the atmosphere. New content (and the final content for the midterm) really starts at chapter 3 of Eby and involves applying acid-base chemistry to water bodies. Many of the questions in this chapter are based on the Henderson-Hasselbach equation (used when talking about buffers; covered in CHEM 1AA3) and relate to the fact that atmospheric carbon dioxide sets up a bicarbonate buffer with water bodies (again, covered in CHEM 1AA3). Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of these concepts
here. For the 2013/14 midterm exam ~40% of the class got an A-grade and 35% got a B or C grade.
Post-midterm content involved balancing redox reactions (chapter 4 of Eby, CHEM 1A03 review) and used
acid mine drainage as a case study. In the redox section of the course, there was a large emphasis on how chemical reactions taking place in an environmental systems are intricately connected and how changes in temperature and pH can have large impacts on aqueous geochemistry. The last bits of the course also touched up on how waste-waters can be re-mediated using chemicals and bacteria and calculating how much of each you would need to clean waste-water with certain properties. These last two topics were the most interesting for me.
I feel like quite a few envir. sci. majors in the course were intimidated because they didn't feel comfortable with chemistry, but if you complete the practice questions as they are assigned (read: not two days before the exam) you should be fine.
Last few notes:
- answers to some practice questions weren't posted so I would highly recommend forming a Facebook group for the course
- the content that was covered in lectures wasn't exactly the same content that was covered on the exams so I would recommend going over all of the calculation-based problems when studying
- Dr. Warren didn't ask any questions about the non-chemistry side of geochemistry on exams (2013/2014) even though it was covered in lecture (i.e. why is studying acid mine drainage important?)
- Dr. Warren occasionally called people out in lecture for being on their phones / asking obvious questions, doesn't post lecture slides and often repeated what was in the textbook, but don't let that stop you from going to class as much of the bio-remediation material isn't in the textbook
- completing the 2013/2014 labs involved quite a bit of research from sources other than the textbook / lecture; I believe we earned marks for citing primary literature when appropriate
Good luck!
