Chemistry Grades and Chemistry Help

A new article in Nature from the Putterman lab at UCLA shows how peeling scotch tape in a vaccuum emits XRays.

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081022/full/news.2008.1185.htm

Camara, C. G. , Escobar, J. V. , Hird, J. R. & Putterman, S. J. Nature 455, 1089–1092 (2008).

In almost every chemistry lecture the nearly magical molecule of water is present. For acid-base titrations, electrochemistry, thermodynamics, hydrogen bonding, covalent bonding, solvation, boiling….the list goes on nearly forever.

In my videos I will frequently use H2O as the example. It can be a gas, a liquid, a solid, a solvent, a solute, a reactant, and a product. It has so few electrons it’s reasonable to count all of them. It has so few atoms we can calculate where they are.

Here is one example, what happens when you open the cap on a bottle of soda water? What is dissolved in the water, what is in the gas above the water, and why does opening the cap change the liquid?

The answer is that when you release the pressure of the cap, a lot of excess CO2 leaves the bottle. This CO2 is used to keep the dissolved CO2 in equilibrium. When the cap is removed the partial pressure of CO2 above the water drops to nearly zero, and LeChatlier’s principle pushes the dissolved CO2 to leave.  But it does not simply evaporate from the surface, because the solution is now supersaturated with CO2. If this bottle held perfectly pure water and the inside walls of the bottle were perfectly smooth then we might never see bubbles. But nothing is perfect, the water has tiny particles floating around which act as nucleation sites for CO2 bubbles. The CO2 “knows” it is now supersaturated and it wants to leave. It aggregates on the particle surface as a gas, and soon a bubble lifts off from the particle.

Now, why does shaking the bottle make more bubbles? The number of particles in the liquid isn’t changing. Or is it? (probably not).

www.chemistrygrades.com

The goal of my website is to offer help to those chemistry students who need it the most, to those who cannot afford expensive tutors. For a $25 fee I will offer a full month of access to all the chemistry videos on this site and to the forums. That’s about the price of a 30 minute session with a chemistry tutor. If you want a full year of access the annual rate will be $150, the same as 6 months. You are welcome to join for a month before finals each semester if you prefer.

Within a few weeks this site will host videos with simple explanations of the most confusing concepts in chemistry including moles, redox reactions, Lewis structures, counting electrons for the octet rule, orbitals, and weak acid buffer solutions. If your topic is not yet here send a request, but understand that we will schedule the video release to meet the syllabus of a typical chemistry course. The video should online a few weeks before you need it.

The level of these topics is targeted for high school chemistry students and for freshman college chemistry. Teachers may also use it as a private chance to enhance their understanding of a few topics which always seemed a little challenging.

Students who want someone else to do their homework are advised not to join. The comments in the forum will be monitored for this situation. If you post a specific question we may delete or change the response to avoid any hint of cheating on homework or take-home exams.

This website is a resource, a reference which should sit alongside your books, your notes, and Google. It cannot replace your teacher or your own hard work. My goal is to bump you up 1 or 2 letter grades, from a C to a B, or maybe to an A. I doubt this website will help you improve 3 letter grades, meaning that if you are going to fail chemistry this website might lift you to a D or a C, but almost certainly not to a B.

If you work hard and study and use this site then your understanding of chemistry homework, tests, and concepts will improve. I can’t make any moneyback guarantees because I’m not there to see how hard you worked. I can guarantee you that if you don’t work hard your grade will not improve. That will be true with or without my videos. If you are not satisfied with the content please contact me and we will work out an answer.

Do you want to improve your chemistry grades?

Try our online chemistry videos and discussion forum.

Live tutoring can cost as much as $75 per hour.

For only $25 per month or $150 per year you can have

unlimited access to all the videos on this site and the chemistry forum.

Our current plan is to have at least 30 videos with

All important concepts and chapters in chemistry are here including:

moles, ideal gases, redox reactions, acid-base titrations, chemical bonds.

This material is meant to be a study aide, an addition to

your teacher, your books, and your notes.

It will be a few more weeks before we are up and running.

If you want an early discount of only $100 per year send an email to

admin@chemistrygrades.com

with “DISCOUNT” in the subject.

Our video content will feature a scientist involved in Nobel Prize research.

Dr. Sean O’Brien was on the team which discovered buckyballs and fullerenes.

The 3 professors on the team won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.