Chemistry 243
Ye Olde Physical Chemistry
Kinetics, Dynamics, Transport, and Surfaces
Fall Semester 2002

Class Time/Place:
MWF 10:30-11:20, 126 Schrenk Hall

Instructor Information:
Frank D. Blum, fblum@okstate.edu, 107 Physical Science I
Office Hours: 3:00 - 4:00 M, W, or by appointment.

Tentative Outline
Topic (Houston Chapter)

The actual material to be covered on each exam will be announced in class. The information below is only a rough guide.

Schedule of Events:

Please check out the "other problems", plus any others you may want. Most of them are good practice.

E-mail List:
If you would like to send e-mail to the entire class, you can do so by sending the mail to [List address given in class].

Text:
Primary: Chemical Kinetics and Reaction Dynamics, P. L. Houston, McGraw Hill, 2001.

Grading/Exams (Tentative):
Grades will likely be based on 3 - 100 pt. exams, and homework sets worth 60 pts. total. I may raise the homework pts. if people are not giving them sufficient attention. Exams will be announced prior to being given. You will be allowed to bring a calculator and one notecard (w/ equations, etc.) to class for the exam. The material covered by the exam will include the text and lecture material.

Advice and Homework:
- Try to work the problems assigned by yourself. If you don't get the right answer discuss the approaches with your classmates at that point.
- Please try to be neat.
- Do not wait for the last minute to do the problem sets. Look at the problems assigned after each lecture. Solve the ones that we have covered material for then.
- Graphs are really useful in understanding how functions and physical phenomena behave. Resist the temptation to blindly use fits without graphing the problem to see if the appropriate functions fit. Good graphs have the following:

• Title
• Labelled axes, tic marks with reasonable divisions, symbols for data points, smooth curves through the fits.
• Axes in log, not ln
• sizes that allow the reader to see the quality of the fit/data (not tiny)
• units when appropriate

- There is a lot of software on campus that both graphs and fits the data to functions.
- Think about your answers. Are they physically reasonable? If not then comment on why they might be unreasonable.

Resources
A Useful website with information about linear least squares fits can be found at: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~mowat/H&M_WebSite/LinLeastSq/LinLeastSq.html

Informational web pages dealing with the kinetics of polymerization: http://www.chemeng.ucla.edu/che112/Notes/course_notes.htm
(has background information)

http://web.utk.edu/~kit/340/notes340.html (has some nice .pdf files )

http://www.engin.umich.edu/~cre/course/lectures/thireigh/index.htm

http://www.engin.umich.edu/~cre/course/lectures/thirsix/ (Has two sets of lecture notes: Coverage is a little more than we need, but there is some nice background material.

Homework Hints and Additional Questions:

Problem 2A. The following data were obtained at the UMR reactor for a sample that was irradiated in the nuclear reactor. The count is proportional to the number of atoms activated which decayed.

Disclaimer:
I will attempt to keep this information current and accurate. However, changes will need to be made in class from time-to-time and these may not necessarily be reflected in this page.

Frank's Home Page

Suggestions for this page should be made to fblum@okstate.edu.