PCC-12403 General Chemistry 2

Course

Credits 3.00

Language of instruction:

Dutch

Contents:

Many disciplines in the fields of life sciences, environmental sciences and technology build on concepts from physics and chemistry. The courses General Chemistry 1 and 2 intend to make you familiar with these general concepts. Among the concepts are matter and energy, size and scale, quantization of energies, driving forces, change and equilibrium. The starting point for the exploration of the various concepts is observation of the world we live in. From there, a journey is undertaken in search of the physical and chemical laws that govern the world around us. Concepts are worked out both theoretically and experimentally in tutorials and practical classes within themes and contexts from various fields. In General Chemistry 2 the emphasis is on physical and chemical properties of atoms, ions and molecules. Subjects treated within this course include transport under the influence of concentration gradients, redox reactions and redox potentials, atomic and molecular structure, quantization, intramolecular interactions and spectrophotometry.

Learning outcomes:

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:
- describe transport under the influence of concentration gradients or external forces and calculate transport rates;
- apply the Einstein relation and Fick's first law to the motion of particles;
- calculate the electrical conductivity of a solution;
- calculate redox, diffusion and membrane potentials for various systems;
- calculate equilibrium constants of redox reactions from electrochemical data;
- describe the electronic configuration of atoms in the ground state in terms of their orbitals;
- recognize trends in the periodic table of elements and explain these trends from the elements electronic configurations;
- understand different types of bonding;
- draw Lewis structures of inorganic molecules and deduce their shapes using the VSEPR model;
- apply Lambert Beer's law and understand absorption and emission of electromagnetic radiation and the application to several types of spectroscopy;
- handle physical and chemical units and dimensions;
- execute experiments in the domain of general and physical chemistry following a given protocol and analyse experiments.

Activities:

- participation in tutorials;
- participation in practicals;
- independent study.

Examination:

Written exam with multiple choice questions . All practical exercises need to be completed successfully (go/no go). Partial results are valid for six years.

Literature:

Syllabus and practical manual are available at the WUR-shop.