Pros/Cons of conceptual general chemistry?

[Jayal]

I'm taking gen chem 1 with a highly rated professor at my university, but he teaches the sequence conceptually and does not use much math on his exams/hw. Will there be any issues with taking a conceptual approach as opposed to the traditional mathematical structure? I'm just worried if I take him then I will be confused during future chem courses if I can't take him again. He has a really good rating (4.9 on rate my professor)

What exactly is a conceptual approach? What are the differences between this and the traditional style?

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[cbdblmad]

Gen chem 1 isn't math heavy in general. The concepts you learn like simple dimensional analysis, molarity/calculating moles, and vsper are what are useful later on and only use simple arithmetic and 6th grade algebra. I don’t think it will put you at a disadvantage and may actually help you since being able to do math but not understanding what you’re finding is completely useless.

 

[JSD2]

I wish my professors focused more on concepts. All the math in any science field is at the end of the day based on the concepts. If you have a really good understanding of the underlying ideas then you can reason your way through nearly any problem. Even for something like o-chem (where most people generally go towards route memorization of mechanisms, etc) I always found that understanding why things happened in that way exponentially more helpful on exams than memorizing how a specific mechanism is done (obviously still do some practice with mechanisms/synthesis/etc but knowing the theory makes it 1000x easier to remember).