LCHEM4114 General Chemistry Lab Course Descriptor

Course Summary

This is the first-year lab course accompanying LCHEM4119 General Chemistry. It introduces basic chemistry laboratory techniques while exploring a range of experimental topics including qualitative and quantitative analysis and the characteristics of chemical and physical processes.

Course Aims

• Enable students to perform and interpret the results of laboratory experiments and demonstrations to better understand the fundamentals of chemistry and to enhance their abilities to collect, organise, and interpret experimental data.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject Specific Skills

Transferable and Professional Skills

Teaching and Learning

Teaching and learning strategies for this course will include: 

A minimum of 25 contact hours, focused on laboratory-based practice, which may also include interactive group teaching, co-curriculars, individual meetings, in-class presentations, and exams.

Course information and supplementary materials are available on the University’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

Students will receive individualised developmental feedback on their work for this course.

Students are required to attend and participate in all the formal and timetabled sessions for this course. Students are also expected to manage their directed learning and independent study in support of the course.

Assessment

Formative

Students will be formatively assessed in class through class activities, and during office hours. Formative assessments are ones that do not count towards the final grade but will provide students with developmental feedback.

Summative

Practical Skills assessment indicative content:

• Lab reports

Further information on the structure of summative assessment elements can be found in the Summative Assessment Briefs.

Feedback

Students will receive feedback in a variety of ways: written (including via email correspondence); oral (within office hours or on an ad hoc basis) and indirectly through class discussion.

Feedback on examinations is provided through generic internal examiners’ reports and are made available to the student on the VLE. 

For all other summative assessment methods, feedback is made available to the student either via email, the VLE or another appropriate method.

Indicative Reading

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists for courses are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative reading list provided below is used as part of the approval/modification process only.

Books

• Gilbert, Kirss, Foster & Bretz. Chemistry, an Atoms-Focused Approach, 3rd ed. W.W. Norton. ISBN: 978-0-393-42854.

Electronic Resources

• Poll Everywhere

Indicative Topics

• Purification through recrystallization
• Melting point determinations
• Interpreting atomic spectra
• Characteristic reactions and qualitative observations
• Determination of an empirical formula
• Inorganic synthesis
• Calorimetry
• Quantitative analysis and/or titration