CM3011 CHEMICAL SPECTROSCOPY & APPLICATIONS (3.0 AU)

Took in AY21/22 Sem 1 Grade: A
I believe it’s the same two profs who took the AY20/21 batch from the way the other review sounds. So I’ll just add on my 2 cents.
In contrast to the other reviewer’s view on the profs, I find the second prof better as a teacher than the first although he might sound more strict and direct.
For the first half involving MS, IR and NMR the prof will basically just read off the slides and although he gives some additional useful info that you can take down, he’s quite bad at explaining and skips steps. Can basically sum up my views on him with one sentence: what’s obvious to him, is not obvious to an undergrad. My advice is just practise like siao, go use the online resources and practise how to elucidate compounds.
For the second half, the content might seem a lot and intimidating with lots of slides. This prof is better with teaching although some of the things he will go through will not be tested and he usually fall back on the same few fundamental questions. It’s better to practise his past papers and online questions (especially on point groups) than to do notes for the entire slides (most of it are from his research, and the finals is open book so no point going into so much detail). He awarded bonus marks to people who can answer his questions at the end of each lecture and these questions are the closest to what you will be tested. One major pet peeve is that whenever students ask questions he refuses to give a direct answer. If you can understand his explanation you can get the answer yourself, if not just ask someone else in the class who knows what’s going on lol.
Overall for the mod, don’t focus so much on the slides and lecture content, it’s open book anyway. Practise questions and get used to problem solving.

Taken in: AY 20/21 Sem 1
Grade: A

Midterm 1 (20%): 81/100 [average: 74, median: 77]
Assignment (10%): 10/10
Midterm 2 (20%): 80/100 [average: 65.8, median: 68]
Problem Set (5%): 22.5/25
2 Online Quiz (5%): 4/5 & 5/5
Finals (40%)

If you did 2 quizzes and a survey on an app: 2 bonus marks
If you present in-class tutorial: 3 bonus marks (if your ans is correct), 2 marks (if your ans is incomplete), 1 mark (if your ans is totally wrong but you still tried): I did not present any answers

The first part of this mod was relatively simple, you will learn how to do structure elucidation using IR, 1H & 13C NMR and MS spectrums. There is no memorization needed since all midterms and finals are open book, so what you need is a clear understanding of what to look out for in each spectrum to help you deduce the structure. For the assignment, you have to predict or use actual spectrums of your assigned compound and assign the peaks to the corresponding hydrogens/carbons for eg. There’s more to it, but it’s not difficult, the prof will also have a sample for you, you just have to follow the format but do it for your assigned molecule. The prof is also very nice (compared to the other prof hahah oops) 😶 The midterm was held online with zoom invigilation (coz covid). The midterm was quite easy, you just need good time management and not make careless mistakes! For some reason, I was really confused about DEPT135 spectrums and did not clarify and I thought it won’t come out but it did ._. Format: open-ended. Since this part was taught first, I thought 3011 was going to be a breeze, but boy was I wrong.

The second part was crazy difficult hahah 😂 I think the content has changed from previous semesters, the prof teaching the second half has changed too (so there isn’t any pyp to practice for 2nd part). In the past, seniors were taught different types of NMR, but now it has changed to point groups, symmetry, character tables, Tanabe Sugano diagrams and applications of Raman spectroscopy, XPS, XAS, etc. There are ~2 in-class tutorial questions that students can choose to present their answers, but it means that you need to prepare your ans before class which didn’t make sense to me because the content was taught on Mon and Tues, and at the end of Tues class is the in-class tut. So to present, you need to learn the content yourself. BUT his notes has blanks, so how are we supposed to learn the content ourselves? Okay maybe it was possible but it will be super time consuming (a lot of people do not like this prof’s teaching style lol) We were not sure if the applications examples were going to be tested in exams or not, I think it was not tested much in midterms but was touched on a bit in finals, but I’m not sure though because our batch was the first or second sem with this new syllabus. I remember being super confused for this part, but after studying and rewatching parts of the lecture, it didn’t seem too bad. So I guess maybe the prof teaches really fast-paced so usually I’d feel lost in the lecture which is bad lol. Midterm 2 was held physically in school. If good time management is needed for the 1st midterm then superb/excellent time management is needed for the 2nd midterm LOL I didn’t manage to finish the paper, left close to 10 marks blank/incomplete 🙃 His midterms will leave you writing to the very last minute. A piece of advice is maybe don’t refer so much to your notes, just do the question based on what you know, move on & check later. A mistake of mine was that in the beginning, after each question I will refer to my notes to check if my ans was correct, which wasted a lot of my time. It was only towards the end that I realised I don’t have enough time then I just did the paper without touching my slides at all lol, thus I was super surprised by my results, was expecting to get 60+ only. Format: MCQ, true/false qns and open-ended.

The finals was okay to me, not really sure how others felt because I didn’t take this mod with my close friends. Also, because my finals were quite spread out, so I had time to do all 5 pyps for 1st part, there was actually the same qn that came out phrased differently, so I could just copy hahah, IF I had to deduce the structure during the finals, I probably won’t be able to finish the paper lol

Didn’t realise this was going to be so long 😅 hope the info helps! 🙂

This review was reposted with the kind permission of Awesome NTU CBC Student. Originally published at https://awesomentucbcstudent.blogspot.com/2020/12/ay2021-y3s1-review.html

Year Taken: AY 18/19, Sem 1

Midterm 1 – 20% (open book)
Midterm 2 – 20% (closed book)
Final – 60%

The first part of the course is more about determining the structures of compounds when given spectroscopic information about them. The main concepts taught were interpreting the spectra of different tools: 1H NMR, 13C NMR, mass spectrometer, IR and the degree of unsaturation formula. The thing is that even if I felt I understood all the techniques used, I had difficulties guessing the right structures. The first mid term is even an open book exam yet I did badly x_x. It is important to know the fragmentation mechanisms for different functional groups in the mass spectrometry well. The lecturer also taught a little on 2D NMR which was not tested for exams, but I would advise to pay attention too cos it was in one of the experiments during lab in sem 2.

For the second part of the course, it was entirely on the different types of NMR. The important thing is to be familiar with the calculations of coupling constants and the number of splitting peaks. I would recommend doing the practice questions a few times to get the hang of it, or maybe I just wasn’t paying attention in lectures. We were required to calculate the chemical shifts of each peak to precisions of 4 decimal places which I totally flunked it. So sad cos the way the lecturer taught made everything sound so easy, he even excluded transition metals and told us that the test would be a breeze. I tried the past mid terms and they seemed manageable, but the mid term I did was more complicated than I expected(again overconfidence). Obviously I did badly for the test and what’s worse was that 73 people got full marks for it. -_- How stupid am I to have done so badly sighs.

Finals was similar to midterm, except that it is entirely closed book so remember to memorise the mechanisms!

This review was reposted with the kind permission of Hairdryer. Originally published at https://ionhairdryer.blogspot.com/2019/08/ay-201819-ntu-spms-cbc-y3s1.html