This course is designed to familiarize you with many of the techniques and procedures that synthetic organic chemists use on a routine basis:
Your grade in this course will be determined in large part by the level of mastery of each of the above items that you demonstrate. In practical terms the phrase "level of mastery" reduces to a determination of whether the work you submit is deemed satisfactory (S) or unsatisfactory (U). Table 1 summarizes the techniques and procedures that will be evaluated for each unit. Note the items highlighted in blue are required for each unit. A - sign indicates an item that is not relevant to that unit. The subheadings TLC, mp, IR, NMR, and GC-MS imply that your Formal Report must contain both the relevant data and a thorough discussion/analysis of that data in order to receive an S.
The maximum number of items evaluated will depend upon how many units are completed during the semester. Regardless of the actual number, grades will be assigned according to the following distribution:
Table 2 illustrates a typical evaluation record for one Polly Ester. A - sign in a cell indicates that the item in question was not evaluated. The designation U/S in the cell for the Pre-Laboratory exercises for Unit 1 indicates that Polly submitted the exercise twice; her work was unsatisfactory the first time, but was satisfactory after she corrected the errors and resubmitted the assignment. There is no penalty involved with the resubmission of work that receives a U. When resubmitting Pre-Laboratory and Post-Laboratory exercises, you should redo those questions that were not satisfactory on a new copy of the handout. Do not make your corrections on the original copy. You do not have to redo any questions that were satisfactory on a previous submission. Staple the revised exercises to the assignment that was not satisfactory and submit both documents to your instructor. All resubmissions must be handed in within one week of the date when they are returned to you. Resubmissions received after the deadline will not be evaluated and the original grade of U will remain on record.
In this illustration, the number of items being evaluated is 38 (7 items were not evaluated.) The grade distribution based upon this number of items would be:
34-38 = A- to A
30-33 = B- to B+
27-29 = C- to C+
23-27 = D to D+
<23 = F
Polly earned 33 out of a possible 38 Ss, so her letter grade was B+.
Attendance is required in this course. If you are unable to attend your regularly scheduled lab, it is your responsibility to make arrangements with the instructor of another section to attend that section. Each absence that is not made up will result in a deduction of 2 Ss from the total number of Ss you earn during the semester.