Text: Physical Chemistry, by Peter Atkins 6^th edition

Prerequisites: Chemistry 140A, three semesters of engineering calculus, equivalent to math 30, 31, and 32 on this campus, and three semesters of calculus-based physics (11 ABC on this campus) or one year of non-calculus based physics (equivalent to 5A and 5B here). If you don’t have these prerequisites, we need to discuss the situation.

Material to be covered: You will see that your text book is divided into three major sections called equilibrium, structure, and change. Traditionally, these are called thermodynamics, molecular structure (quantum mechanics), and chemical kinetics. This semester we will focus upon the second and third sections. Throughout the semester I will assign the reading and homework problems associated with the material we are covering in lecture. I strongly encourage you to keep up with the reading and the homework. This is a course that covers a substantial amount of material that builds upon previous material. In other words, you don’t want to get behind.

Grading: We will have weekly quizzes, generally on Tuesdays, three hour exams and a comprehensive final exam. You will be given occasional special homework exercises which may require the use of a spreadsheet (Excel for example) or numerical methods software such as Mathematica. Special tutorial sessions will be provided for those who are unfamiliar with these software packages. The computers located in the science computing lab have these packages installed and are available for your use.

Quizzes / special homework 10pts each 100pts

Hour exams (March 1, April 5, May 3) 300pts

Final exam (Tuesday, May 22nd) 100pts

Total 500pts

• Come to Class!
• Do your homework and don’t procrastinate. Although I will not collect the homework, your weekly quizzes will be based on these exercises. Notice that your quizzes add up to an exam score (20%) of the total possible points.
• Come to office hours for help when you need it