Chemistry 245 Lab

The laboratory portion of the course provides an introduction to physical chemistry laboratory techniques. The program continues to build on the general lab skills learned in first year; thus there are a good number of titrations, pipettings, weighings, and work with volumetric glassware. But at the same time we start to introduce a more physical chemistry approach to collecting and analyzing data. The use of a spreadsheet program is taught and used, especially for graphing results. Both linear and non-linear least-squares fitting are introduced. Laptop computers and Ocean Optics spectrometers are used in several experiments, and a variety of different topics are investigated, including chemical kinetics, electrochemistry, properties of solutions, and phase equilibria. [The lab portion of the course is being extensively changed for the Fall 2012 term, with some experiments likely being replaced with tutorials. This website will be revised later this summer. Some of the information below will change, but this will not affect your registration, so go ahead and register for the course.]

Students must register for both the lecture section (A) and a lab section (B) to be fully registered for the course (except those applying for a lab exemption — see next paragraph).

Those students repeating the course and hoping to use the credit of a previous lab mark must email the Senior Lab Instructor for the course. Such students register in the A section only; do not register in a B section.

Link to schedule of all Chemistry lab and tutorial sections: Chemistry Schedule.

Senior Lab Instructor	Alan Taylor
Office	Elliott 334d
Phone	721-7175
E-mail	ataylor@uvic.ca
Website	web.uvic.ca/~ataylor/

Location of Lab	Elliott 343
Pre-requisites	Chemistry 102 and Math 100 or 102
Schedule	Introductory Session: Week of September 10. If for some reason you are unable to attend during your regular lab section, please see the Senior Lab Instructor for the course (Elliott 334d) before your scheduled session. Those who have not been able to get into a lab section, go to any one of the sections (for this week only). In the meantime, keep checking frequently for vacancies in the section(s) you want and register before someone else takes the space. Lab manuals should be purchased from the UVic Bookstore prior to this first lab. Please read up to at least page 43 prior to attending. You are encouraged to continue on to page 59. You also need to bring along safety glasses (or goggles) and a lab notebook. See below for details The Experiments: After the intro session, you will follow the weekly schedule found at the beginning of the lab manual.
Materials Needed:
Lab Manual	Chemistry 245 Lab Manual, available from the UVic Bookstore.
Notebook	The lab notebook for this course must be of the type that has carbonless copies of each page. Any of the brands and styles sold at the UVic Bookstore are acceptable.
Safety Glasses	Safety glasses or goggles are required for all students. If you wear prescription eyeglasses, you must wear safety glasses or goggles overtop. Safety glasses are available from the UVic Bookstore and from Science Stores (Petch 168).
Lab Coat	Recommended. (Required when wearing short pants or a short skirt.) Can be purchased at the UVic Bookstore.
Other Requirements	A USB flashdrive is recommended. Although you can access data stored in the lab from the Chemistry Computer Room (Elliott 330) and from the McPherson Library, if you want to work with it elsewhere you will need to transfer the data.
Student Evaluation	Performance in the lab portion of the course will be assessed continuously on the basis of prelab preparation, in-lab performance, and lab reports (including quality of data/results, calculations, graphs, and explanatory comments). Each experiment will be marked out of 30, including 5 marks from the prelab preparation / in-lab performance assessment. The marks breakdown for a given experiment is given in the lab manual in the Setting the Scene section prior to that experiment. Course mark = 2/3 Lecture mark + 1/3 Laboratory mark. A minimum grade of 50% in the lab is required in order to pass the course. At least 70% of the laboratory work must be completed and graded. To view the lab marks, click on the link: Chem 245 Lab Marks or click on the Chemistry 245 title at the top of this page.
End-of-Term Questionnaire	At the end of term, students will be asked to fill out an anonymous on-line course and instructor evaluation. You will be given a password specific to your lab section.