Overview
Chemistry 1A03 covers basic assumed knowledge from highschool (bonding, gases, atomic theory, etc), electrons in atoms, periodic table trends, acids & bases, equilibrium, aqueous solutions and thermochemistry. This is a rather large first year class, so it's taught by 3 or...

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Originally Posted by lankan_4lif

Do the CHEM 1A03 and CHEM 1AA3 textbooks come with solution manuals that you can purchase along with the main textbooks?
Are there solution manuals as well for the PHYSICS 1B03 and MATH 1LS3 textbooks too?

chem 1a03 and 1aa3 have the same textbook, and there are solution manuals u can purchase along with the main textbook.
physics 1b03 also has solution manuals,
math 1ls3 i can't remember if the textbook questions assigned had answesr posted on our website or what.. the textbook wasn't used very much you get a courseware package with assignments and the answer to those are posted online.

Do the labs and tutorial numbers have to match for chem 1ao3. I am confused bout that.

Originally Posted by nessa18

Do the labs and tutorial numbers have to match for chem 1ao3. I am confused bout that.

Don't worry too much about it. If the numbers match you will have them in the same time slot, but alternating weeks which is always nice. But if you can't get a matching one, look for other tutorials that also have the same time slot as your lab, but in the alternating week (there tend to be a lot at once, so you can usually find what you are looking for).

Although, when I took the course, the tutorials were just "drop in whenever you want", so this is based on other courses that have a similar set up.


The course is tough, but is EXTREMELY well run. Help is always available if you need it, the professors are all excellent lecturers who are very willing to hang around after class to answer questions, and you get tonnes of practice and preparation for midterms and exams.

i'm pretty sure they do. Since the labs are every other week, you sign up for the tutorial with the same number and you attend tutorial on the weeks you don't have labs

Originally Posted by nessa18

Do the labs and tutorial numbers have to match for chem 1ao3. I am confused bout that.

They should be. Don't worry about it though, I'm certain that SOLAR will guide you through that. When you pick a certain lab, the tutorials will be limited to the ones in that timeslot.

How difficult is CHEM 1A03? After reading peoples reviews and comments i hear its hard but from other people, i hear its not too difficult considering they covered some of the stuff in high school.

Its considered to be one of the hardest first year courses, but you shouldn't let that deter you. The material is tough, but the faculty is absolutely stellar. Besides the fact that almost all of the profs are great lecturers (especially Lock) they are all willing to stay after class to answer questions personally. I've seen some stay for over 45 minutes answering questions in the hall outside of the classroom (but I wouldn't recommend that everyday!) They are also more than willing to help you out during their office hours.

There is also an extra help center in Thodes library specifically for Chemistry with TAs who can help you out. While it can be very crowded near exams, tests and quiz due dates, I have heard that you can get great one on one help at any other time.

Just don't be afraid to get the help you need, and you'll be fine.

Thanks for the info. As well, Andrew, how much of CHEM 1A03 is review of high school? When topics like acid-base equlibrium are covered, do you mean like buffers, equivalence points, and such topics or wat other topics?

Well, to be perfectly honest I didn't actually attend many of my high school chemistry classes- which I definitely regretted later. Plus it depends how in depth your high school teachers went.

I know the first week or so was out and out called review, and was pretty much just stoichiometry questions. As far as actual units:

-Quantum stuff- I can't remember what this was actually called, but it dealt with electrons and orbitals mainly. None of it was review of chemistry (you might have touched on some of the stuff in physics though) but it was all pretty easy. Pretty much just plugging things into formulas. The first midterm was mainly this unit, so if you practice a lot you can get some easy grades.

-Molecular Trends- Just trends from the periodic table. It was pretty much all review from Grade 11, if I recall correctly. You just have to add on to your knowledge and memorize a few exceptions. Even if you don't know any of it, its no biggy, super easy to learn. This took like a week.

-Equilibrium Reactions- I know we went over this in high school, but I can't say if it was the same depth. ICE tables and stuff like that. This was a big unit, and is worth a lot of the second midterm.

-Acids and Bases- I think this was mainly the stuff we did in high school, but slightly more in depth. We did some easy stuff with pH, learned to do calculations with and without the small "X" assumption, etc. It wasn't too bad, most of the harder parts of Acids and Bases (titrations, buffers, etc) were all in CHEM 1AA3.

-Thermochemisty- Q=mc(d)t, and stuff like that. Most likely much more indepth than what was done in high school. You had to compensate for state changes and such, and there were questions about calorimetry as well. Was one of the bigger units on the exam. It didn't seem too difficult, but I would advise to practice these a lot.

-RedOx Equations- I can't recall if these were a seperate unit or part of Electrochemistry, but either way they were pretty easy. Pretty much just doing RedOx equations in acids and bases.

-Electrochemistry- I'm relatively sure this was all brand new stuff. Its mainly working with equations again, but I would advise you to practise these A LOT! It was the main component of the exam for us, and most people found that they weren't as prepared for this part as they thought.

You guys might do different things, or use a different order, but overall it should be the same. If anyone who still has their notes wants to clarify that I didn't miss anything, that would be great

Thanks a lot Andrew, dat helped quite a bit. By quantum stuff, do you mean orbitals, electron configuration, quantum numbers n stuff like that, planck constant? Was one of the reasons this course was tough because of the multiple choice format?

Yep, that's exactly what I mean.

I think the multiple choice format might be part of it. For me, it was roughly on par with my high school tests, which were already multiple choice only. But I know some people were used to getting part marks for short answer questions, where as long as you had the method right you could still get a 75% in the class.

If that was something you depended on, you might find your grades dropping a bit. That said, part marks are still available for some questions. Just not to the extent that some high schools had.

oo i see thnx a lot
ye we covered the orbitals stuff in grd 12
my grade 12 teacher covered quite a bit of the chemistry in depth
how r the labs for this course?
is there a lot of formal lab write-ups or?

We had 5 labs, with 1 formal lab report, one semi-formal (had to be typed and have a graph, but didn't need to be that long) and the rest were informal. The labs aren't too bad- I had no high school lab experience and I still got a 70% lab mark overall. (And then a lot better in 1AA3 )

You spend 3 hours, sometimes less, doing an experiment, and handing in work you did in a lab notebook. You also have to complete some prelab questions, which can be a bit tricky since the course is usually out of sync with the labs (i.e. you'll be doing an Acid-Base lab while learning Quantum stuff). They aren't worth much though, so don't stress it. Plus, a lot of students just show up half an hour early to get help from other students who are waiting.

How good your TA is can have a huge effect on your lab experience and grade though. They range from absolutely amazing, to totally terrible. Its really just luck for that part though.

I'd definitely agree with andrew about the T.A's.. they can make or break your lab grade. My T.A in 1A03 completely screwed my marks, but my T.A. for 1AA3 was awesome. Like andrew said though, they aren't all that bad.

the beginning half i found was easy with energy and shapes of molecules, however the latter half, mainly on the exam on gibbs energy and such, I found to be troublesome and had difficulty on the exam as we spent so little time on these concepts and this was a major component on the exam
lock is a good teacher for this course, Britz mckibbinz i found to be useless, he was wrong for most of the time, and when students corrected him he would say he was testing you
overall if you spend time in the course, you'll do well