Puspa Gautam

Prof. Kevin
Chemistry 1010
Reflection
I was nervous when I first started this class. I had very narrow concept about chemistry

and I was not cleared what I will be learning in the entire semester? It was so surprising when I

saw conversion factors in first class which I never learned before. I enrolled in the CHEM 1010

course to fulfill a general education requirement to graduate. I had taken chemistry in high

school 18 years ago, and had always enjoyed the concepts that I learned in that course. Despite

that, I didnt expect to learn much in this course, or to be challenged. I was pleasantly surprised

at how much I enjoyed this course every classes of one and half hour.

Chemistry requires rigorous attention to detail. To solve most of the problems that we

dealt with in this course, we were required to follow a process which would frequently involve

multiple steps of calculations, each of which required accuracy to arrive at the correct final

result. Occasionally, this process could become tedious, when I felt that I already had a firm

understanding of the concepts and was just solving the problems to complete the required

homework, or when I was struggling to grasp a basic concept, and needed to go through several

steps just to arrive at the new idea and understand it. Generally, though, I found this process to

be quite enjoyable.

As an Accounting major with a fondness for numbers, I am accustomed to solving

problems that require strict attention to detail, and analyzing my process for errors when I do

come up with the correct answer. As a result, I enjoyed most of the material in this course.

Dimensional analysis problems, for instance, usually present a fun calculation. Its amazing that

just knowing the units you are starting in and the units youd like to arrive at can lead to such a
massive multiplication and division problem. If you take it step by step, though, these problems

can actually be quite easy.

I found problems that used the ideal gas law to be quite enjoyable, as well. The

relationship between pressure, volume, number of moles, and temperature yields such a clean

equation, into which you simply plug your known quantities, and then solve for the variable. I

enjoyed seeing how the ideal gas law equation had been built from earlier known relationships,

such as Boyles Law (relationship between pressure and volume is constant), Charless Law

(relationship between temperature and volume is constant), and Avogadros Law (relationship

between number of moles and volume is constant).

Although I dont know if I will ever take another chemistry class, the information that I

learned in this class gave me a very valuable understanding of the laws that govern chemical

interactions. Additionally, the disciplined application of principles in a rigorous step-by-step

fashion is an essential skill, and I appreciated the opportunity to practice those skills when

applied to a different field than I generally work and learn in. My signature assignment is given

as a subpage to this section of my e-portfolio. In my signature assignment I chose to demonstrate

water and its properties.