I’ve heard horror stories about this lab…
This semester I took a quantitative analytical chemistry lab, which is part of my major requirements! It’s a pre req to take all of my upper level chemistry labs so I had to take it this semester.
I was super nervous going into this lab because I’ve heard really bad things about it… and then I didn’t get to take it with the professor everyone recommended 💀 This lab requires you to complete 6 experiments throughout the semester and you have to come in outside of the set class times to do work. We’re given an unknown (the teacher knows what it is) and we have to find out the concentration using different analytical techniques. We keep a lab notebook and submit that as well. I was nervous going into this lab for a few reasons (1) I didn’t know if I would have the time to do all the extra lab work (2) I didn’t know the professor (3) the grading system seemed scary (4) all of the work is independent.
I ended up loving this class!! The time commitment wasn’t as scary as I thought it was, I followed the schedule and came in for a couple of Friday mornings to stay caught up. The lab experiments were pretty cool and I learned a lot of good lab skills. My professor was super helpful with calculations and there were videos we could watch to learn how to do the experiments.
The only bad part of this lab was having to calibrate glassware😭 it was a very long tedious process and took me multiple days to do.
If you have to take this lab, I recommend making friends with the people at the lab stations next to you, schedule extended lab hours into your week, keep track of everything in your notebook (and I mean everything!), get help on calculations if you need it, and make careful measurements!
