This lab is challenging. It is much more work than the 1411 lab, as there is a lab session every week as opposed to every other week. The labs themselves are not hard, but writing good reports requires some practice and going to office hours to find out exactly what the TAs are looking for. The grading rubric and the formatting rubric are very helpful, so use them greatly. The class grade consists of pre-lab assignments, which take a little time but are not challenging, and lab reports. Attending the lecture is not mandatory but very helpful for both understanding the lab better as well as learning how to write the report for the class. Overall, it is not a terrible class and you certainly get used to a rigorous lab setting. However, if you even remotely feel overwhelmed by it, do not take the next accelerated lab (CHEM 1821). It is much more effort, much more time, full 5 page lab reports every week, and not for the feint of heart. In all, a good experience to get ready for subsequent semesters, the TAs are very helpful and friendly, but only take it if you truly enjoy chemistry. There is no shame in taking 1810 with the 1411 lab, your free time will thank you.

i definitely agree with everything the other reviewer from this semester said. i loved being challenged this semester with this lab, as i had never written a lab report before taking this class; however, keep in mind that grading varies heavily based on your ta. in the end zhang curved our grades to even out each class average (if that makes sense), and almost everyone i know made an a or a-, but it was very easy to get caught up in how badly i did on a single report. i spent at least 15 hours outside of lab working on the last lab report, and i ended up writing around 4k words, but that was by far the most difficult assignment that we were given. on average i'd say i spent about 4 to 5 hours per week on this lab outside of class, as we didn't have reports due every week. when reports weren't due i spent around 2 hours on the post-lab and an hour on the prelab. also, zhang also likes to promise extra credit for certain things like participation and such, but i doubt the points were actually added to the gradebook.

This was definitely my most stressful course of the semester. When I signed up for the 1800 series I had been worried about the difficulty of the lecture but the lab turned out to be way harder (Note: You do not have to take the 1800 series lab even if you are taking the lecture, which I did not know). I sort of have a love hate relationship with this lab. On one hand I feel like I have met a lot of very cool people who love chemistry in this lab and we sort of trauma bonded our way through; however, this class was an incredibly large amount of work for only 2 credits.

You conduct a lab every week which means a total of 10 labs and this means both completing a pre-lab and a lab report for this class every single week. Now we did not have to write full lab reports every week, sometimes it was just analysis questions, but I will say we did about 4-5 full lab reports that averaged about 6 pages, although the last one we did was about 16 pages. The lab reports take about 4 hours to complete fully and sometimes longer. In addition, I found the first two labs we conducted to be incredibly stressful as we were pressed for time and unfamiliar with lab.

Another difficulty of this class was that the topics the labs focused on were almost never topics we had covered in lecture at least at that point in the semester which meant reviewing some chemistry from AP Chem for the lab; however, the math and concepts used in lab were not too difficult.

Despite all these drawbacks, I will say that this class was incredibly rewarding for me, and if you are really into chemistry or considering majoring in it, I think it is worth it. I learned a lot about how to write lab reports during this class purely from the practice of doing of it and the feedback from the TAs. During high school while I had had to conduct labs I had never had to do this extensive of lab reports, and so I really appreciate this class for the practice it gave me. Shout out to my TA David, who was very kind and understanding and always explained the lab concepts to me when I was confused.

We did some pretty cool labs in this course, such as a nicotine titration and some analytical chem labs. My one comment on this lab is that it was very disorganized. The lab is expectedly very dependent on the TA, whose main focuses are their research. The TAs often didn't know what was expected of the students up until they were told to grade the reports. But Prof. Zhang was very helpful and sometimes popped into lab to answer questions and help us out. The reports were very difficult, sometimes spanning 15 pages, other times just being a short-answer format. The TAs are VERY stringent in their grading, so be sure to absolutely master "ACS formatting" and ask them what tables/graphs they want and where.

A very difficult course. Zhang is very intelligent, but his lectures come off as confusing. However, the lab assignments are outlined and easy to understand via canvas and the workbook. The class is challenging, but prepares students to write formal lab reports and get the hang of ACS formatting. The labs themselves vary, with some taking 1 hour to complete and others the full 3 hours. They are very engaging, with interesting topics that somewhat overlap with 1810. Overall, I liked the class and worked well with my table, which is crucial. Ben the TA is the absolute best, his office hours were so helpful and he is really good at teaching.

this class was definetly a lot more stressful and unclear with grading expectations. really comes down to having a good ta and being able to attend your specific ta's office hours. the lectures are ok i guess but really brutal because they were 8 am on fridays. very heavy weighting on lab reports (i think it was like 70% is just lab report category) so it can be a bit stressful and easy to fluctuate your grade. worth it in the end because it covers a lot (covers what would be 1411 and 1421, so do try to get this lab if you are doing 800s sequence) and then u dont have to take a chem lab second semester second year so it works out.

This was my most stressful class this semester. I ended up with an A, but I had to dedicate 4+ hours (a lot for a 2 credit class imo) for this class on top of the lab session each week to achieve that. While most of the labs were pretty fun and sound more interesting than the 1411 labs, what made the class really annoying are the assignments related to the labs. The formatting/structure is incredibly specific (and you can get a lot of points taken off for it) and the concepts were not aligned with what we were learning in 1810. Highly recommend going to TA office hours to get help with that!!

I had an awesome duo of TAs (shoutout to Ben and Kwan) and they made the sucky Friday labs so much more enjoyable. Prof. Zhang doesn't show up in the lab that often, but he was very considerate after what happened last month and waived the last two lab write-ups. Overall, a class with relatively fun labs and not-so-fun assignments/grading -- if you don't want to spend hours writing lab reports, then probably would not recommend. #tCFfall22

This lab was my favorite class of the fall semester! While the labs were more difficult that the 1411 lab, they were much more fulfilling and reinforced the material much better. The first lab feels very crazy simply because you are learning where everything is in the lab, but as the class moves on, the labs calm down until lab 9 which is extremely difficult. Sometimes, the lab is far ahead of the lecture so you'll find yourself learning a lot independently in order to be able to perform the lab. This class was definitely worth the extra time and effort, especially if you love chemistry. For example, while the 1411 lab was measuring the accuracy of glassware, we were measuring atomic orbital energies with computational chemistry software. However, our class was not curved at all and graded on the bell curve. If you want an A, you will need to do better than the other people in lab which he doesn’t really make clear.

The labs are interesting, and the professor explains things well, but this class does not align at all with the CHEM 1810 lecture. Right now I am trying to write a lab report on chemical reactions identifying unknown compounds, but we literally haven't discussed a single reaction in the lecture. we are still learning about the structure of molecules. the TAs and professor help when you ask, but it's so frustrating to constantly spend hours every week googling the pre-lab and lab report questions because there is no way to answer them without previous knowledge. definitely use office hours. It is curved a lot though so that helps!

There are pros and cons to taking this course over 1411. I think overall, if you want to major in Chemistry or something closely-related to Chemistry or you just really like Chemistry, you would get more satisfaction out of taking 1811 over 1411. However, if you are taking General Chemistry because you’re premed or for whatever reason you need it to get a check in the box, 1811 is not the course for you. The labs in 1811 are definitely more realistic, more interesting, and more fulfilling than the labs in 1411. However, 1811, is significantly more work than 1411. The lab reports take a LOT of time and the grades are often mediocre. Furthermore, your TA plays a major role in how well you do. The two most frustrating things about this course were the inconsistencies in grading among the different TA’s and the amount of work invested in the lab reports not being commensurate with the grade you receive. Each section has a different TA and each TA graded wildly differently. Furthermore, going to the office hours for a TA different than your own was often not helpful since each TA had different expectations for style and content. Additionally, no matter how much time I spent on a report, I felt that I would have received the same grade had I invested half of the amount of time and effort in it than I actually spent on it. The TA feedback is valuable but the grading is extremely frustrating. However, there were opportunities to boost your grade although some of them backfired because they were based on peer grading, and even if one of your peers gave you a much lower grade than the other and the TA, their score would still be factored into your overall grade for the assignment. Overall, this course was often very frustrating; however, I do not regret taking it and if you are driven and invested in Chemistry, you should definitely take this course over 1411. Moreover, if nothing else, being allowed to take 1821 makes taking this course worth it.