Final Paper Guidelines

Transcription

1 Final Paper Guidelines In Chemistry 111, we focus on learning the principles of atomic properties (Chapters 7 and 8) and chemical bonding (Chapters 9, 10, and 11). We have little time to consider how these principles apply to specific elements on the periodic table, or how these principles affect their use and role in the real world. This assignment gives you the opportunity to choose a group (i.e. column) of elements, read in depth about its properties and impact on the world, and write a clear and focused six-to-eight page paper (doubled-spaced, 12 point font) on your research. This assignment will be in lieu of a final examination. Your paper will address the following questions: 1. Atomic Properties: You should discuss the electron configuration of your set of elements, and how its properties vary down the group. Discuss both properties of individual atoms, like ionization energy, and bulk properties, like each element s state of matter at room temperature and its melting point. You should also discuss how atoms of the same element interact with each other. This varies widely across the periodic table. While many nonmetallic atoms form molecules, metallic atoms are held together by metallic bonding (see Silberberg Section 9.6), and atoms in Group 8A experience only intermolecular forces with each other (see Silberberg Section 12.3). 2. Chemical Bonding. Discuss how elements in your group form covalent, ionic, or coordinate covalent bonds with elements in other groups of the periodic table. Make liberal use of the concepts we have discussed, or will discuss, in class. 3. Chemistry in Context. (This was the title of an American Chemical Society textbook originally edited by my predecessor, Professor A. Truman Schwartz.) Select and discuss one application of your group of elements to the real world. You may discuss either one particular element or a set of elements. However, if you are studying Group 4A, you cannot discuss the application of carbon! The real world can involve anything: the environment, interstellar space, new materials, mining, medicine, archaeology. Your discussion must attempt to relate the atomic and/or chemical bonding properties you have considered to this real world application. If possible, explore if there is any periodic trend to your application area. For example, if you decided to study how Group 7A is involved in stratospheric ozone depletion, you should consider if the ability of a halogen to destroy ozone increases or decreases as you go down the periodic table. Timeline and Expectations By Monday, October 22: Prepare for our second library training session as follows: 1. Read this handout, and come to our Monday night meeting with questions! 2. Read an article on plagiarism published in the Chronicle of Higher Education at (I will this link to you), and be prepared to discuss it. Page 1 of 5

2 3. Work on choosing any group (that is, column) of elements on the periodic table. You may choose either one of the main groups or one of the transition element groups. Tough Decisions. So, how do I make a commitment to a group of elements?? Skim through Chapter 14, Chapter 22, and Sections 1-3 of Chapter 23 in Silberberg. Look for interesting chemical properties or intriguing applications. You are also encouraged to find a classmate who shares your passion for, say, alkaline earth elements or halogens. You may find it helpful to share ideas and resources throughout the semester. However, you are not required to collaborate. Furthermore, each person must do his or her own research, and turn in a separate paper at the end of the semester. Monday, November 5: Turn in an annotated bibliography consisting of the following: 1. A brief statement of which group of elements you have chosen and what area of application you plan to explore. 2. A list of your sources, with a one-to-three-sentence summary of what you believe you will learn from each source. Here are my minimum expectations for sources: (1) Your textbook, Silberberg. (2) Another general chemistry textbook. I have put four recent titles on 24-hour reserve at the library. (See and search on Kuwata.) (3) A book besides a general chemistry textbook. This could be a general reference book like an encyclopedia, a more advanced textbook (such as in inorganic chemistry), or any other relevant book. This book may be an online resource. (4) Two articles from the scientific literature. Each article may come either from the popular scientific press (Chemical and Engineering News is excellent) or from a peer-reviewed periodical. (Remember the distinction that Angi Faiks made at our first library session.) The Journal of Chemical Education is a good example of a (usually) readable peer-reviewed journal. For all books you should specify the pages you are using. I know that the scientific literature can get really intense, really quickly. I do not expect you to completely decipher dense, advanced articles. However, I do want you to read from a variety of sources. The books should help you write about atomic properties and chemical bonding, while the articles will inform your discussion of a real-world application. Silberberg s brief discussion of applications can help you decide on a topic, but you will need to go into greater detail than what he provides. Please see a sample annotated bibliography on p. 5 of this handout. From now until November 19: Read and write! Keep these guidelines in mind: A. Audience. Assume that you are writing to a fellow Chemistry 111 student. You should therefore avoid an excessively technical discussion. Instead, seek to explain things using the concepts and language we have learned in class. It will be necessary Page 2 of 5

3 in some cases to go beyond course content (this is a research paper, after all), but even in these situations you should strive to describe things in a way that a classmate could understand. B. Content. Address the issues identified on p. 1 of this handout. C. Overall Writing Goals. Strive to be as clear and organized in your writing as possible. You should present a highly coherent narrative whose ideas flow from sentence to sentence, and from paragraph to paragraph. No writer achieves this in his or her unofficial first draft. You should therefore expect to revise your paper a number of times before you turn in your official first draft. Good writing takes lots of hard work, but it is worth it, both to yourself and to your readers. As Samuel Johnson once observed, What is written without effort is generally read without pleasure. 1 Coherence within a text presupposes that each sentence is free from errors of grammar, syntax, and punctuation. Microsoft Word s spelling and grammar checker, and your own careful proofreading, should eliminate most errors. D. Writing Mechanics 1. Structure: This will be rather different from the structure of your lab reports. The only things you are required to provide in this paper are a Title, a References section, and a section of Acknowledgments. In the acknowledgments section you must mention everyone who has helped you with your paper, students, staff, and faculty, and state briefly how they helped you. Beyond that, you are free to organize your paper in whatever way makes sense to you. If having explicit sections for an introduction and a conclusion helps you organize your writing better, you are free to include them but you are not required to. 2. References: Insert a superscript number the first time you cite a particular reference in the main body of the text, and always use the same superscript number whenever you cite the same source in your paper. Instead of using footnotes, list all references at the end. Visit the link for a reminder about proper citation format. One variation: I encourage you to type out the full name of a journal instead of using its CASSI abbreviation. Using tables, figures, mathematical equations, and chemical structures may improve the clarity of your discussion. Here are my expectations for each textual device: 3. Tables: Use Microsoft Word s Table utility. Be sure to label each column and row, and give the table a brief title. 4. Figures: You may either draw figures using computer software (don t draw by hand), or use figures from other sources. Remember to give credit to the books, articles, or web sites you took them from. Each figure must have a (brief) caption. Page 3 of 5

4 5. Equations: They must not be hand-written. Make sure that subscripts and exponents look like subscripts and exponents! Equations that involve more than one line of characters should be entered using Microsoft Equation. For example, d[mo(co) 6 ] rate - k[mo(co) 6 ][P(OPh) 3] dt is far preferable to rate = -d[mo(co)6]/dt = k[mo(co)6][p(oph)3] 6. Chemical Structures: Either scan these in from another source, or use the program ChemDraw to render them. See me, a Chem Department tutor, or Dresden Gagne for help with ChemDraw. You can run ChemDraw either on a Mac in the department computer lab, or on a PC in the NMR computer lab. (Learning this software now will give you a head start on Organic Chemistry next year!) Monday, November 19: Turn in the first draft of your paper. Aim for six to eight pages. Sometime after Thanksgiving: Meet with Dresden to discuss your first draft. Friday, December 14: Turn in your final draft. Grading Dresden and I will assign letter grades (A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+) on both scientific content and writing quality. Successfully meeting the above content and writing expectations will earn you a high grade. The correspondence between letter grades and points is summarized here: Annotated Bibliography Graded by Keith Kuwata Total Possible Points = 20 First Draft Graded by Dresden Gagne Total Possible Points = 60 Final Version Graded by Keith Kuwata Total Possible Points = 120 Content Writing Content Writing Grade Points Grade Points Grade Points Grade Points Grade Points A 20 A 42 A 18 A 84 A 36 A- 18 A- 38 A- 16 A- 77 A- 31 B+ 16 B+ 34 B+ 14 B+ 70 B+ 26 B 14 B 30 B 12 B 63 B 21 B- 12 B- 26 B- 10 B- 56 B- 16 C+ 10 C+ 22 C+ 8 C+ 49 C+ 11 References (1) Finlayson-Pitts, B. J.; Pitts, J., N., Jr. Chemistry of the Upper and Lower Troposphere; Academic Press: San Diego, 2000; Preface. Page 4 of 5

5 Sample Annotated Bibliography I have chosen to study the elements of Group 6B on the periodic table. I am interested in explaining how chromium (Cr), the first member of Group 6B, gives steel the ability to resist corrosion, and I would like to explore how the other members of this group, molybdenum (Mo) and tungsten (W), could play a similar role. These are my references to date: 1. Silberberg, M. S. Chemistry: The Molecular Nature of Matter and Change, 6th ed.; McGraw-Hill Higher Education: Boston, 2012; pp , Silberberg provides basic information about steel as an alloy of Fe and Cr. He also describes a few of the properties of Cr. 2. Oxtoby, D. W.; Gillis, H. P.; Campion, A. Principles of Modern Chemistry, 6th ed.; Thomson Brooks/Cole: Belmont, CA, 2008; pp Oxtoby et al. discuss the mechanism of corrosion. Typically, electrons are transferred from Fe(s) to H 2 O(l) in the presence of O 2 (g) and low ph. One can protect the Fe from H 2 O and O 2 by covering the Fe with a paint containing Cr (present as K 2 Cr 2 O 7 ). 3. Cotton, F. A.; Wilkinson, G.; Gaus, P. L. Basic Inorganic Chemistry, 2nd ed.; John Wiley & Sons: New York, 1987; pp Cotton et al. state that Mo and W actually do not behave the same as Cr in most compounds. However, like Cr, Mo and W make steel harder and stronger than pure Fe would be. The authors do not make clear if Mo and W also help steel resist corrosion. 4. Freemantle, M. Stainless Steel Failure Explained. Chemical and Engineering News 2002, 80, 11. Freemantle explains that chromium keeps steel from corroding because the chromium reacts with oxygen to form an oxide coating which protects the surface of the steel. However, there is always some sulfur present in a steel alloy as well. There is evidence that the sulfur sucks the chromium out of the oxide coating, making the steel vulnerable. 5. Ryan, M. P.; Williams, D. E.; Chater, R. J.; Hutton, B. M.; McPhail, D. S. Why Stainless Steel Corrodes. Nature 2002, 415, This article from Nature was the basis of Freemantle s article in Chemical and Engineering News. The authors used a technique called secondary ion mass spectroscopy to take pictures of steel samples in the vicinity of MnS particles embedded in the steel. The authors confirm that unless a steel alloy has at least 13% Cr, the steel corrodes as easily as pure Fe. Page 5 of 5