So how the Hell do they expect me to do this?

OK, so I have to write lab report for my Chemistry of Material II class, due tomorrow (Thursday.) Granted, I should have started earlierm in case problems like this arose, but I am still angry about it for a couple reasons.

  1. The lab was about creating polymers. We did two experiments. In the first, we mixed three chemicals to form a poyester. The type of polyester was never mentioned. To top it off, some groups had different chemicals, resulting in different polyesters. For the lab report, we have to provide balanced chemical equations and product structures. OK, without knowing the end reuslt, that is actually impossible. I can’r predict which of those molocules and elements will be part of the plymer and which will be by-products. A little more informaiton would be helpful. I looked in the book, and found one structure and formula for one type of polyester. I used that formula, but I still had no idea what my by-products there were. And there had to be by-products, since not all of the elements used in the reaction were in the polymer itself. Very frustrating. Again, this problem could have been avoided if I started earlier and was able to go see the TA or prof., but I didn’t excpect to get such little information.

  2. The other problem…the worse problem. The last quesion in the lab asks us to predict the reaction between one of the chemicals we used in the lab, and another chemical we didn’t. First of, I honestly don’t see how college students that have been in the course for three weeks, and have been on the current topic for a week, can possibly be expected to predict chemical reactions without having even the foggiest idea of what the end result will be, other than that it is a polymer (which, since there are hunderds of, helps not at all.) To top it off, the other chemical that is used in this hypothetical reaciton doesn’t seem to exists. I cannot find any refernece to it in the book for the class, and even a google search revleaed nothing. Npow I am really pissed off. DOn’t ask us to predict reactions with chemicals we can’t find the properties of. Maybe the chemical is in another book…OK, but this class has only one required text book, and it’s not in there. I seriously am wondering who designed this lab and what they were thiking in asking us to do this.
    Again, most of this is my own damn fault, but I still feel like pissing and moaning about it.

If the lab was set up ineptly to begin with, you can say, “conclusion X could not be drawn because of the following flaws in the experiment:” and then list what was wrong. In science, saying an experiment is broken is a valid conclusion. If your lab teacher is good he’ll recognize this and give you some credit. As for the parts that are your fault, well suck it up. :slight_smile:

Does the lab manual come with the textbook, or is it something you buy from another publisher/person/whatever? Or, rather (worse, really), is this a lab that’s clearly been Xeroxed about fifty times and looks like it ought to have, on the reverse side, Uncle Sam doing his whole “We Want YOU for the US Army!” thing?:slight_smile:

The lab manual was purchased seperatly, and it’s what is bad, since it doesn’t tell me the end result or anything like that.

Well, I got some help from a couple friends and found out the following from them:
They spent a long time looking online for chemical reaciton equations fro the first quesiton and finally got them. They provided me with the links so save me time. The second part, however, is the kicker.

I recently changed majors, from electrical engineering to biomedical engineering. EE does not requiore chem mat 2, biomed does. Itook chem mat 1 first semester of my frosh yearm I am now in my second semester of my junior year. The chemical that had no refernces? It was apparantly a chemical that last semester’s chem mat 1 peopel dealed a lot with. Well, gee, that help me out a whole bunch, doesn’t it? That is just an example of piss poor class structuring. You shouldn’t make one class rely on material that was not taught to all students who took the pre-req, especially without telling them. Maybe a little note could have been attached to the lab? This just fits right in with the professor thinknig that everyone in the class is a freshman and took chem mat 1 just the previous semester, and rembers every little thing about it.