CHEM 14B
General Chemistry for Life Scientists II
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Enforced requisite: one course from 14A, 14AE, 20A, or 20AH with grade of C- or better. Enforced requisite or corequisite: Life Sciences 30B or Mathematics 3B or 31B with grade of C- or better. Not open to students with credit for course 14BE, 20B, or 20BH. Chemical equilibria in gases and liquids, acid-base equilibrium; phase changes; thermochemistry; first, second, and third laws of thermodynamics; free energy changes; electrochemistry and its role as energy source; chemical kinetics, including catalysis, and reaction mechanisms. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Winter 2024 - I can't believe I'm saying this, but take Scerri if you can. Scerri's tests are easier than Lavelle's and students usually do better in his class. Lavelle spends the entire lecture teaching the super in depth calculus behind chemical equations (which you don't need to know for the exams and just adds extra confusion for no reason) then doesn't do any practice problems so you have to figure all the homework out on your own. Lectures weren't even worth going to, but at least they were recorded
Winter 2024 - I can't believe I'm saying this, but take Scerri if you can. Scerri's tests are easier than Lavelle's and students usually do better in his class. Lavelle spends the entire lecture teaching the super in depth calculus behind chemical equations (which you don't need to know for the exams and just adds extra confusion for no reason) then doesn't do any practice problems so you have to figure all the homework out on your own. Lectures weren't even worth going to, but at least they were recorded
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2024 - I'm also in the pool of people who think Scerri isn't that bad. I feel like he's nicer than what the reviews say, but again I think it's mostly personal preference. He was (surprisingly?) understanding around midterm times and offered to give us a "no-harm" midterm where we could choose to take the midterm, and if we do better on the final then our final grade will replace our midterm grade (or if we did worse then at least we had the midterm boost). Unfortunately school got moved online too much and Scerri was afraid of online cheating, so he canceled the midterm. Our grade breakdown should have been 30% achieve, 30% midterm, and 40% final, but he changed it to 50% achieve and 50% final. Here I'll just say what worked for me in this class. I walked in afraid just like everyone else. I think the fear of doing badly really pushed me to study more. Usually I don't take notes (bad habit, don't follow me), but in Scerri's class I watched every single lecture 1-2 times and took notes on almost everything in the slides and what he said. I admit---I fell two weeks behind on lecture (once in the first half of the quarter and once in the second half :| ), but I still watched those lectures and caught up with everything before I went to class in person again. Scerri changed his exam structure starting this school year, and I panicked a lot because everyone says he used to reuse his exams and now I had nothing much to practice with. Scerri did post his past midterms and finals from 2016-2018, which I thought were good practice but I would have preferred more multiple choice questions because our midterm and final was completely multiple choice. I didn't have any extra practice material on top of that. I didn't go to discussion sections after the first week because I didn't like my TA and got too lazy to go to other ones... but I'm sure the TAs are good resources if you need extra help. I did go to one of Scerri's office hours and he's pretty fun! Do you know he has two cats? Scerri's final had a lot of math problems, which was fortunate for me because I understand equations and calculations more than conceptual problems. He's also nicer to the 14 series than to the 20 series, so don't worry too much :) tl;dr: I personally don't think Scerri was that bad. Go to lecture, take notes on everything, understand everything, practice with past questions, understand chem in a mathy way (know how to do calculations!), go ask for help if needed. Good luck, you got this!
Spring 2024 - I'm also in the pool of people who think Scerri isn't that bad. I feel like he's nicer than what the reviews say, but again I think it's mostly personal preference. He was (surprisingly?) understanding around midterm times and offered to give us a "no-harm" midterm where we could choose to take the midterm, and if we do better on the final then our final grade will replace our midterm grade (or if we did worse then at least we had the midterm boost). Unfortunately school got moved online too much and Scerri was afraid of online cheating, so he canceled the midterm. Our grade breakdown should have been 30% achieve, 30% midterm, and 40% final, but he changed it to 50% achieve and 50% final. Here I'll just say what worked for me in this class. I walked in afraid just like everyone else. I think the fear of doing badly really pushed me to study more. Usually I don't take notes (bad habit, don't follow me), but in Scerri's class I watched every single lecture 1-2 times and took notes on almost everything in the slides and what he said. I admit---I fell two weeks behind on lecture (once in the first half of the quarter and once in the second half :| ), but I still watched those lectures and caught up with everything before I went to class in person again. Scerri changed his exam structure starting this school year, and I panicked a lot because everyone says he used to reuse his exams and now I had nothing much to practice with. Scerri did post his past midterms and finals from 2016-2018, which I thought were good practice but I would have preferred more multiple choice questions because our midterm and final was completely multiple choice. I didn't have any extra practice material on top of that. I didn't go to discussion sections after the first week because I didn't like my TA and got too lazy to go to other ones... but I'm sure the TAs are good resources if you need extra help. I did go to one of Scerri's office hours and he's pretty fun! Do you know he has two cats? Scerri's final had a lot of math problems, which was fortunate for me because I understand equations and calculations more than conceptual problems. He's also nicer to the 14 series than to the 20 series, so don't worry too much :) tl;dr: I personally don't think Scerri was that bad. Go to lecture, take notes on everything, understand everything, practice with past questions, understand chem in a mathy way (know how to do calculations!), go ask for help if needed. Good luck, you got this!
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