STRUGGLING with Gen Chem II

[deleted244469]

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I am taking summer classes, and it is structured a little different with regards to Gen Chem I/II. Their "Gen Chem I" class consists of the qualitative aspects of the material for the most part first, while "Gen Chem II" dives straight into the quantitative portions (equations, math etc.) I did pretty well in Gen Chem I, but boy am I struggling so far in Gen Chem II. Our first test is Wednesday and I need to figure out how to conquer this. The problem is that I am BAD at math (Like, really bad). My professor, while nice, also has NO clue how to explain the material. He uses handwritten overheads for class (No Powerpoints !?!?!?)

Any suggestions/tips for the quantitative aspects? I'm beginning to get worried.

-Kovy71

 

[magicaldinosaur]

No powerpoints... LOL... Yeah, wait til' Orgo. My professor doesn't even talk, just writes on the board. 😉

Just do problems.. Lots of problems. The concepts don't take long to learn, applying them do, so practice.

 

[deleted244469]

I just feel like what he explains in class is nothing like what he assigns for homework. I am a visual learner. I need to see the problem that he wants us to do worked out step by step. He doesn't do that. He explains it one way, and then seems so ask things he didn't talk about in class on the HW.

 

[Doctor Dream]

I just feel like what he explains in class is nothing like what he assigns for homework. I am a visual learner. I need to see the problem that he wants us to do worked out step by step. He doesn't do that. He explains it one way, and then seems so ask random questions on the homework.

Use your book or the internet if he's not being clear with his methods. Khan Academy is freakin amazing for gen chem calculations

 

[deleted244469]

I just purchased a membership to "Chegg Study". It's pretty dang nice actually. I copied and pasted some of the homework questions I had ZERO clue about from previous assignments, and voila, there they were! (albeit, with different numbers). You can also ask questions, and people will solve/explain how they are done.

WINNING.

 

[LMBLBM]

Study textbook from page. I know it is boring and very daunting tasks. However, if you do study the whole textbook and able to do all problems in the textbook, no need to go to his lecture. This ain't highschool. Lecture is not to teach you. It is to give advice and guide your self-motivated learning.

 

[Doctor Dream]

Study textbook from page. I know it is boring and very daunting tasks. However, if you do study the whole textbook and able to do all problems in the textbook, no need to go to his lecture. This ain't highschool. Lecture is not to teach you. It is to give advice and guide your self-motivated learning.

I wouldn't advise skipping class. Yea, it's not high school, but be smart and responsible. Professors base their tests around what they teach, they don't always teach right out of the book. You'd be shooting yourself in the foot if you didn't go to class. If you skip the guy's class regularly, you're automatically ruling him out from writing you a LOR as well.

True story, I would have missed an extra credit opportunity which boosted my grade from an A- to an A if I hadn't shown up to class that day. Moral: Don't skip class.

 

[Cookieee]

Since you're a visual learner, I highly recommend watching some YouTube videos on the topics covered in class. The best sources I can recommend are:
1. freelanceteach: amazing at explaining and gives tricks for doing the math required in a simpler way. I assume you're doing Kinetics and Equilibrium right now and his vids on this are great.
2. Khan Academy: covers more concepts than how to do actual problems but a great source.
3. Crash Course: their graphics are amazing, helps to visualize everything. If you know absolutely nothing on the topic, they explain it on an 8th grade level. Good place to start each topic but has no depth beyond the basics.

 

[deleted244469]

Cookieee, THANK YOU. I will check these out. I knew about Khan Academy, but not about the others. Very helpful.

 

[moisne]

I feel so bad for you - you are going to need to do well in this class, physics, and calculus....

Well if you have a chem question - you can PM me - I tutored chemistry as a living for a while. Good money actually

 

[zeppelinpage4]

I am taking summer classes, and it is structured a little different with regards to Gen Chem I/II. Their "Gen Chem I" class consists of the qualitative aspects of the material for the most part first, while "Gen Chem II" dives straight into the quantitative portions (equations, math etc.) I did pretty well in Gen Chem I, but boy am I struggling so far in Gen Chem II. Our first test is Wednesday and I need to figure out how to conquer this. The problem is that I am BAD at math (Like, really bad). My professor, while nice, also has NO clue how to explain the material. He uses handwritten overheads for class (No Powerpoints !?!?!?)

Any suggestions/tips for the quantitative aspects? I'm beginning to get worried.

-Kovy71

I personally found my gen chem professor to not be great either, but the text book for my class was really good. So I tried to learn mostly from the text book and then apply that to problems.

I'd say, refer to the text book and review books which explain things better and just do a lot of practice questions. I didn't realize how much you could learn from jsut running through practice problems, but I managed to pass a lot of classes in med school with that technique, so it might help with gen chem also.

Edit:
Also, this may be time consuming but I found out that I got much more out of lecture if I read the relevant chapter in the text book beforehand. So maybe you can read relevant material from the text book, then use the lecture as a second pass of the material and to reinforce the higher yield stuff for the test. Then just do problems the rest of the time. This can be very time consuming though. This method worked in my earlier intro courses which didn't have too much material, but once the classes got harder in upper levels and there was more material, I couldn't keep up with the readings.

 

[deleted244469]

Well, I have been chugging away and am making good progress! If anyone is curious, I found some other great video authors on youtube:

Tyler Dewitt
ThatChemGuy

GREAT videos.

 

[Gregor Wiesmann]

Use your book or the internet if he's not being clear with his methods. Khan Academy is freakin amazing for gen chem calculations

Khan Academy is freakin' amazing for everything.......although I think Bozeman Science might be better for Biology.

 

[TheBatman]

What are you learning at the moment?

 

[deleted244469]

What are you learning at the moment?

Titrations/Dilutions/Molarity/Molality/Mole Fractions

I have the latter 3 down. Working on Titrations/Dilutions tomorrow.

 

[allantois]

Don't get discouraged because of Math. Gen Chem is really only Algebra. You can, and probably should, take algebra-based physics as well as algebra-based calculus, might be called Life-Science Calculus/Methods of Calculus/Calculus for Biology majors or whatever other variation your school offers.

I do think very highly of the wealth of resources on YouTube (I swear college professors will loose their jobs one day because of it).

 

[deleted244469]

Don't get discouraged because of Math. Gen Chem is really only Algebra. You can, and probably should, take algebra-based physics as well as algebra-based calculus, might be called Life-Science Calculus/Methods of Calculus/Calculus for Biology majors or whatever other variation your school offers.

I do think very highly of the wealth of resources on YouTube (I swear college professors will loose their jobs one day because of it).

It's not the math per say. It the steps to get to the math. Since my professor is useless, I am stuck trying to figure out the steps myself. That is the frustrating part.