Great Youtube video

This has nothing to do with organic chemistry, but it is a very very cool nature video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

Summary: Lions attack a water buffalo, have to deal with a croc, then come up against something more fierce than the croc. 

And for all of you saps out there, it does have a happy ending. 

Helpful Chemistry Site of the Week

This week’s site is www.AceOrganicChem.com.  I was surfing their site and found out that they are the ONLY site on the web that offers live, totally online tutoring and final exam review seminars.  It is actually an ingenius idea to get students organic chemistry help.  Using a webmeeting software, they tutor you on whatever topics in organic chemistry that you want.  Final exam review seminars start at $8/hour, private tutoring is a little more expensive.  They also have a Best of the Web Resources page which isn’t too bad. 

 Professional help for this cheap a price is not easy to come by.  I imagine that this would be very helpful for the college student who does not have easy access to a good tutor. 

 The site is www.AceOrganicChem.com, give it a peek sometime. 

Helpful chemistry site of the week

Today’s site of the week is www.chemicalforums.com.  I have been a part of this site for a while, and have been pretty impressed with it so far.  Once you register, you can post chemistry questions for the experts to answer.  The experts are extremely knowledgable, and you get a bunch of responses in a very short time.  Great resource for the undergrad who wants a quick answer to a topic that has eluded them to this point.  An even better resource for the grad student who wants to run a research idea by a 10,000 lb brainiac.

This site gets 4.5 beakers out of 5.

Tips for writing organic chemistry lab reports

As to properly reference the authors, here is a guide from Lynchburg College on how to write a science report well.

A Few General Characteristics of Good Writing in Chemistry

1.  Clear.  This is perhaps the most important characteristic of all writing, but is especially important when detailed, complicated experimental data is discussed.  Be sure you say what you mean and mean what you say.   Use short sentences and get to the point.

2.  Dispassionate.  Good scientific writing is free of bias and personal opinion.  Report the facts.

3.  Mechanically sound.  This goes without saying.  If your writing is free of grammatical and spelling errors, it is easier for the reader to understand.

4.  Documented.  Statements and conclusions are supported by data, not feelings or opinions.  If your data are inconclusive, it is better to state this than to force the data to fit some hypothesis or literature value.

Other hints and suggestions for written work in chemistry:

• Do not use first person (“I,” “we,” etc.). Use the past tense (you did the experiment already).
• Do not be verbose.  Get to the point!
• Do not start a sentence with a number unless it is part of a chemical name.
• Do not capitalize the names of chemicals unless you are beginning a sentence.
• Do not use the words or phrases “basically,” “dealt with,” “dealing with,” “create(d).” Leave bases to baseball and solutions with pH > 7; leave dealing to Las Vegas and Atlantic City; and leave creating to the Fine Arts department.
• Regardless of  what your spell-checker says, “absorbency” is not a word unless we are analyzing diapers.  Always use “absorbance.”
• Do not say things like “the goal of this experiment was to introduce to the student the technique of chromatography.”  Say “Carotenoids were purified using chromatography.” Leave the student out of the discussion.  Everyone knows you are a student. Tell the reader what you DID and HOW you did it.
• Use the words “precise” and “accurate” correctly.  Accuracy refers to how close your value is to the standard or known value.  Precision refers to how close together your results are; data cannot be precise unless you have done more than one trial.
• Use the words “clear” and “colorless” correctly.  Water is clear and colorless.  Sunglasses are clear and green.  Milk is cloudy and colorless (white).  Muddy water is cloudy and brown.
• Report data and results with units and with the appropriate number of significant figures.
• Do not include statements of opinion.  For example, stating that the experiment was difficult or tedious is your opinion and does not belong in a reporting of the results of your study.
• The literature value of a physical property is just that; it is not the “literary” value.
• Use numbered endnotes for referencing.  You need to reference anything you have to look up, even if it is in your textbook, the lab manual, or the CRC handbook or Aldrich catalog.
• Please run the spell-checker.
• Please staple together the pages of your reports.