Lecture Theatre L (CYT-building)
Tuesdays and Thursdays
9:00 – 10:20 am
Dr K. K. Jason Chan
Lecturer
Department of Chemistry
email: [email protected]
Rm 4543, Lift 25/26
Miss QIN Mingming
[email protected] Mr YAO Huatong
[email protected] Miss WANG Wei
[email protected] Mr WU An
[email protected] Miss GAO Qingqing
[email protected] Mr QIU Zijie
[email protected] Mr ZHAO Weijun
[email protected] Mr Joshua LAI
[email protected] Miss YANG Guofang
[email protected] This course uses the new Canvas platform.
https://canvas.ust.hk
CHEM1004 is an introductory course provided for students who have never taken a Chemistry course,
but would like to learn what chemistry is and how it may affect the world we live in.
Course objectives are as follows:
1. Introduce basic concepts of Chemistry.
2. Connect Chemistry with everyday life and modern technology.
3. Explain the importance of Chemistry in the environment, medicine, and daily life.
The course is divided into seven Chapters:
Chapter 1: What is everything made of?
Chapter 2: The Air.
Chapter 3: The air and our environment.
Chapter 4: The metals in our daily life.
Chapter 5: Metals in the industry.
Chapter 6: Fire and fuels.
Chapter 7*: Food, Drinks and medicine.
*depending on the progress of the course
The lectures are critical to your understanding of course materials. You should try to attend all the
lectures. During many of these lectures, there will be some interesting chemistry demonstration
experiments and you may miss out on seeing these if you skipped the lectures. If you arrive late, please
feel free to join the class, but enter the lecture theatre discreetly so as not to disturb the lecture.
The video-recording equipment in LT-L are not yet ready for use, hence the lectures are not video-
recorded and no video lectures can be provided.
Comprehensive lecture notes will be provided for this course. These notes should be very helpful to
you as they provide more details of the lecture materials than power point slides. However, the version
of the notes you receive is incomplete. You will need to fill in some important details or draw diagrams
to complete the notes during the lectures.
You should print out hard copies of the lecture notes and bring them to the class. You can staple each
chapter’s notes into a booklet.
It would be advisable to print them single sided, so that you can use the blank page to drop down extra
notes that the lecturer mentions but are not in the notes, or to write some references you obtained from
other sources or your revision notes.
The power point slides will be mostly pictures or graphics. These will also be released on Canvas after
the end of each lecture. Please note that while the slides may be available before the lectures, they are
sometimes released after the lectures, so please make notes on the lecture notes instead.
The lecture notes will be released by chapter. New chapters will be released on Canvas towards the end
of the current chapter. You can read through the notes before the lecture to familiarise yourself with the
materials.
You don’t need a textbook for this course, and since we draw examples from many different areas of
chemistry in everyday life, no one textbook is a perfect fit for the course. Therefore for each chapter,
some reading materials will be suggested to you for optional reference.
To help you prepare for the examination, each chapter will finish with a short exercise. These exercises
will require you to work through a set of problems, using some knowledge from the lectures and also
to teach you some new knowledge through the exercise.
These exercises will not be formally graded, but they will be examinable.
Two tutorial sessions will be held during the course, and the instructor will go through the answers to
the exercises (about 3 chapters each time). These tutorial sessions are optional and will be arranged
outside of the normal lecture timetable. During these tutorials, you are encouraged to ask questions if
you have anything that you did not understand or would like to know more about.
Please feel free to approach the instructor, Dr Jason Chan to ask questions or to discuss any chemistry
or course-related issues. You may approach him after the lectures, or you may email him to arrange an
appointment. There is no fixed office hour schedule: if you need one, feel free to email and book a time.
In addition, our TAs are all postgraduate research students working in the forefront of chemistry
research. They are here to help you also if you want to ask any questions or if you want to find out more
about their research. You should email them directly to arrange an appointment.
There will be two online graded quizzes in addition to the end-of-chapter exercises, they will occur after
two to three chapters have been covered. You should complete them within the given time (around 1
week). The accumulated points from the online quizzes will carry 10 % to the course grade, but the
main purpose is to help you further understand the course materials and have a chance to practice and
receive answers immediately after submission. When these quizzes are available, you will receive email
notification as well as instructions during the lectures.
This course will have a study project component for you to learn more about a particular area of
everyday chemistry that interests you. The project period will commence about 2 weeks into the course.
There will be two types of study projects, and you are free to choose one or the other.
- Individual written study report
- Group Experimental study project
Individual projects will be a piece of written original research. You will choose a topic yourself that is
about any chemistry phenomenon or chemicals that is in your everyday life. Be creative and explore
interesting topics!
You are expected to read widely, using resources available to you, not limited to the internet – you also
have access to books, journal articles and other multimedia resources. You may report also real
experiences yourself and report them. Photographs would be needed to demonstrate that your topic is
truly something you can connect to in the real world.
The article should bring together many ideas to draw up an original story. Originality checks will be
performed so you must do the writing yourself.
More information will be announced in a later lecture before the start of the project.
We plan to group students into groups of 5 to 8. You may form groups among yourselves and other
students not already belonging to a group who wished to carry out the experimental projects will be
randomly formed into groups.
Several research topics will be listed and you will decide to carry out one of these or you may discuss
with your groupmates and come up with an original topic. Students-led experiment ideas are very
encouraged but they must be experiments that can be safely performed at a ‘kitchen’ or ‘home’ setting
– meaning that it should not involve highly hazardous chemicals or unsafe procedures. Use of any
flames would be forbidden. The experiments should have an everyday chemistry theme.
After deciding on the topic, there will be a meeting with the instructor, who will listen to the ideas and
give some guidance on the projects. In particular, together with the instructor, your group will identify
the experiments to carry out based on your topic. It is a requirement that these experiments will be
simple and safe to conduct at home. The Department of Chemistry can provide some simple apparatus
(such as test tubes, beakers, droppers, etc.) and other small items or specific chemicals. In rare and
worthwhile cases, we may make arrangements for specific experiments to be conducted in a laboratory,
but due to limited resources, this may not be available to everyone.
Each project group should identify a leader who will coordinate the group work. A Canvas group
website will be created where the members can share files, hold discussions, arrange meetings, etc.
During the project, each group will be assigned with a TA to guide your project. You will find your TA
can usually offer a lot of insight and support to you, so do meet with him/her often and invite him/her
along to your experiment gatherings. You will need to research by looking up books in the library,
scientific journals and using the internet. You can also approach the instructor to discuss your projects.
You will also gather some results from the experiment observations. Finally you will sum these up into
a group report and produce a poster. These will be graded for all members of the group and individual
performances will also be a grading factor. We hope to be able to share the findings of your projects
during a later lecture after reading and marking all the reports.
In view of the time needed for this project, there will be no mid-term examination for this course.
This course will end with a close-book final examination (2 hours). This will cover all the lecture
materials and exercises that were taught in the course. You will mainly be tested on your understanding
and ability to solve problems rather than on the memorisation of facts, but you should also be familiar
with some key chemical details – some of these will inevitably require some memorisation.
The date, time and venue for the final exam will be announced later.
The final grade for the course will be consisted of:
10 % from the Online Quizzes
30 % from the Study Project
60 % from the Final Examination
The course is graded from A+ to F. An F grade will not earn you credits for the course.
At the end of the course, the students will have:
1. An ability to recognize physical/chemical properties, physical/chemical changes.
2. An ability to apply knowledge of chemical reactions, stoichiometry, atomic structure, chemical
bonding, molecular structure, states of matter, acid-base chemistry, and redox reactions.
3. A basic knowledge of organic chemistry, polymer chemistry, biochemistry, and food chemistry.
4. An ability to link chemistry to modern technology, environment, and daily life.
