I took CHEM 111 Fundamentals of Chemistry my Spring semester 2022 to complete my Scientific Reasoning pillar degree requirement. When I was in high school, I really liked taking science classes, so when I had openings in my schedule for classes to satisfy the pillars and saw there was a chemistry class available, I was excited to take it. I finished this class with a 94.3% which translates to an A, and I was really happy with my grade. I also liked the professor, he seemed to really like the material and gave little fun facts about what were were talking about that day, sometimes even bringing in elements in test tubes and glass bottles for us to see what they actually look like in really life, not just in pictures/videos. This was also a lab class, and I really loved the lab activities we had for this class. I thought they were really engaging and helped apply chemistry concepts to everyday ideas in many different lab settings.
Some of my favorite things to do in chemistry, and some of the things I was most looking forward to, was using stoichiometry, or unit conversions, and lewis dot structures for electrons. When I was first introduced to stoichiometry in high school, I was so confused at first. She taught us using the train tracks method, and its looks incredibly confusing, I was entirely lost with no hope. But, like always, I picked it up really quickly, and once I knew how to do it I was having so much fun I almost wish she would have given us more homework! We did get to do some stoichiometry during the chemistry class here which I was really excited about, but we also worked a lot in lewis dot structures, which I was less knowledgeable about but no less interested in. I always thought they looked really cool and really fun to do, and I was not disappointed. There was also a handy website he showed us which helped to draw out the structures by showing the angles of the electrons. It did get easier with more practice, and he was always there to help. Doing this work really made me appreciate how important it is in everything we are trying to do to keep practicing to really get down what we may think is tedious. We never know where what we’ve learned from one thing can be applied to another, so it is always important to pay attention and to try our best wherever and whenever we can.
Lewis Structures Solutions; Dr. White; February 2022; The solution page to extra practice work for lewis structures, formal charge, geometry, and polarity to do before we had a test on molecular bonding.