GENERAL AND INORGANIC CHEMISTRY
Academic year and teacher
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2019/2020
- Teacher
- SIMONE MELONI
- Credits
- 6
- Curriculum
- BIOTECNOLOGIE PER L'AMBIENTE
- Didactic period
- Primo Semestre
- SSD
- CHIM/03
Training objectives
- The General and Inorganic Chemistry course aims at providing students with the basic concepts needed to properly face the following courses in Organic Chemistry and Analytical Chemistry.
The student will acquired knowledge on the atomic structure of matter, the electronic structure of atoms and molecules, the periodic properties of chemical elements and the corresponding table, the relation between valence electronic structure and chemical reactivity, chemical bonds, types of chemical reaction and the balancing of chemical equations, elements of thermodynamics, properties of gasses, liquids and solids, solutions and their properties, dilution of solutions, the chemical equilibrium, acid-base reactions.
At the end of this course, students will be able to plan experiments on a macroscopic level, to think to chemical systems in terms of their microscopic nature, use a suitable symbolic language to represent chemical reactions and results, namely: to be able to recognize and represent the structure of the most common inorganic molecules, to foresee their properties, to balance chemical reactions, and to compute the concentration of species at the chemical equilibrium. Prerequisites
- A basic knowledge of mathematics and informatics is required: solution of equations, knowledge of some fundamental function and their graphic representation (power, logarithms and exponential functions). The student is expected to be able to deal with number of significant figures.
There are no formal prerequisisites to follow this course. Course programme
- The course consists of 48 contact hours.
The syllabus of the course is the following:
1) atoms and elements; composition of the matter; atomic and molecular weights. (6 hrs)
2) Chemical reactions. Stoichiometry. Periodic table of the elements and main classes of compounds. Chemical bond. (10 hrs)
3) Gas laws. Liquids and solids. (4 hrs)
4) Properties of solutions. Colligative properties. (6 hrs)
5) Chemical equilibrium. Acids and bases: pH, hydrolysis, buffered solutions. (12 hrs)
6) Principles of electrochemistry. (2 hrs)
7) The remaining hours (8) will be devoted to approach students to some basic laboratory operations, mandatory for a chemist, such as:
• label reading; comprehension of the importance of this action before doing anything else
• reactions monitoring; comprehension of what is happening inside the reaction vessel
• preparation of solutions; density and concentration calculation
• filtration
• dilutions Didactic methods
- The course consists of 48 contact hours. During the lectures, particular attention will be devoted to foster the ability of students to associate macroscopic observations to the microscopic nature of matter, and to describe the connection between the two through the chemical language.
Learning assessment procedures
- The exam consists of 11 questions/exercises (5 possible answers among which only 1 is correct) concerning the entire program. The student is allowed to use ONLY the periodic table of elements and a calculator. All information about the exam are available in the mini-site of the General and Inorganic Chemistry course.
In case of positive evaluation (mark > 18), the student can reject the mark according to the prescription given by the teacher. If not explicitly rejected, the mark will be automatically considered accepted and will be registered. Reference texts
- The teacher will provide some slides whose objective is to help the comprehension of the topics discussed during the lectures. By no mean the slides replace the textbooks. Slides can also help students to remember the topics discussed during the course. It is remarked that students are expected to use the textbook suggested by the teacher, or any other suitable textbook discussing the topics of the course, to prepare the exam.
Among the possible books, the following one is recommended:
• “Chimica - Un approccio molecolare”, Nivaldo J. Tro, EdiSES editor, new edition. This textbook gives the student the opportunity of downloading and checking on-line the material prepared by the teacher. The student will also find specific exercises useful for the preparation of the exam. Possible additional material will be provided directly by the teacher, who has not approved any other form of its distribution.
During the lessons, the teacher will also provide instructions for the download and use of a free app for self-evaluation exercises and tests.
