CHEM 3811

I cannot begin to explain just how terrible this course is. It is worth 3 credits, but requires far more time outside of class than any course should in order to succeed. In order to sufficiently understand the material, one must do independent research on every topic covered. Professor Metcalf was one of the few good things in this course. He regularly spoke to students and seemed to understand that, beyond learning the material, students needed to maintain their grade. Professor Demas, and the TAs, however, did not seem to comprehend this fact. Demas seemed unapproachable, and would talk over student's heads. The TAs were polite, but rarely understood what they needed to in order to be effective assistants. More lab equipment could be included, as there was a ridiculous shortage of devices necessary to efficiently perform the experiments. If there is any doubt about the quality of this class after reading through these evaluations.

I could write a dissertation about this class and submit it to JCE and it may get published...

Overview:
This class is supposed to be some mix of what principles covered in a typical physical chemistry laboratory, quantitative analysis lab, and instrumental lab at other schools. This is what I believe. Anyways, it involves 6 (maybe 7) labs on unrelated topics. One good thing about the course is that you do not write long-form lab reports for each lab. Instead, you only write two long-form reports. The first long-form report is on a lab chosen by Demas. The second is on a lab of your choosing. For the remaining labs, you simply need to do the short answer questions provided. With that said, the short answer questions practically involve doing all the work for a long-form lab report without actually writing it. Then, you take a final exam. Since there are few labs, you technically have two weeks per lab. Some labs require only one lab session; other labs require both lab sessions. The short answer questions are due on the third week. If I remember correctly, the long form is due after your short-answer questions for that lab have been returned to you with a grade. So, there are times where you have a free week off of lab.

Structure:
I, to this day, still do not understand how the structure for this class makes any sense. It baffles me more than the grading scheme for 2411/2421. Everyone is required to do the same lab during the first lab section. The remaining 6 labs can be done in any order of your choosing. This sounds amazing at first until you realize that the lab manual gives you little insight on how to do the short answer questions. Furthermore, some of the questions come from lab lecture, not from the lab manual. Interestingly enough, lab lecture will probably not follow the order in which you choose to do the labs and every lab group can't do the same lab each week. So you're essentially stuck.
The lab lectures always manage to go to the topic of data fitting or looking at his gallery of pictures.
The final exam doesn't cover principles from the lab report. It focuses only on shadily explained concepts from the lab lecture.
The class does not interface with 3410 at all for the most part.

You have no idea what your grade is until after the class is over as the lab reports/short answer questions were never returned on time. Your Collab can be completely blank, then after the final exam you have an explosion of 6-7 grades.

Godspeed on your journey through this class.

The reviews below make me lol. anyhoo..

Eun Yi - talk to him about everything, literally he is responsible for everything, he types your final grade into sis. yep, so theres that.

Most unorganized course in the history of unorganization. It's ridiculous actually. Different TA grades each lab report/tells you different things/all are dicks. Id recommend doing the labs that take two weeks at the beginning of the semester unless you can do an independent lab(which I pray you make easy, lets not be overacheivers here). Lecture is only useful for: pre-labs which will take you 5min to do, pop quizzes which are guarenteed because its his only way to get people to go to lecture, and the final, because Demas pulls material from there, and thats it. On the more unsavory side of life, I say by mid-semester just refer to your friends lab reports for what to do/not to do, but you were gonna do that anyway, weren't ya?

Absolute worst lab I ever took in my undergraduate career. Period.

This class is just as awful as everyone says. Metcalf is helpful and approachable. Demas is not. The reports take forever and I just gave up on asking anyone for help and worked on them myself. In the end, things turned out okay for me, I guess.

This was the most unstructured class I have ever taken. The lab lectures are useless. Demas is incredibly unorganized. The only reason I went to lecture was because Demas started giving out pop quizzes on least squares/chi square derivations. I personally thought the final was okay. I memorized the material from the slides and the lab manual. I did run out of time and had to scribble down some last minute answers. The lab reports were awful. The TAs graded the reports differently. Each TA emphasized different things. I remember I asked a TA for help on a question and wrote what he said verbatim. The grader marked my response as incorrect (even though Demas also confirmed it). Some of the graders are absolute dicks. They try to take off unnecessary points because you forgot to state the beaker was a "Class A" piece of glassware. Eun and Kerui were fair and helpful, but everyone else was clueless and useless.

This is by far the worst class I have ever taken at UVA in all regards. The lab is completely unorganized. The TAs for the lab are generally clueless. The ONLY saving grace this semester was the head TA Eun who is extremely knowledgable and helpful. Everyone else was useless. Had no idea how to do the experiments.. oftentimes gave wrong instructions that required students to repeat parts of experiments.. just generally awful. A different grader grades every lab report, and you can pretty much count on getting terrible grades unless you spend insane amounts of time reading articles in order to understand the theory behind what is going on in lab. IF YOU HAVEN'T TAKEN PCHEM LECTURE AND ARE THINKING OF TAKING THIS CONCURRENTLY -- AVOID AT ALL COSTS. Much of the lab deals with quantum mechanics which aren't taught until the second semester.. you'll spend an insane amount of time doing background reading in order to understand the labs. Demas is the WORST PROFESSOR IN THE HISTORY OF THIS UNIVERSITY. He is difficult to understand, writes nonsense on the board, and presents disjointed, unintelligible powerpoint slides during lab lecture. The lecture is USELESS. Absolutely USELESS. Demas sent out a review sheet for his exam, and almost NONE of the 3 pages of the review sheet were on the exam. If you are a chemistry major that is required to take this class and it's too late for you to turn back and change majors, sucks for you.

Make sure to ask the head TA, (right now its Eun Yi) what is going on in all of your lab reports, all of the other TA's dont know what theyre doing, the class is managable if you stay on top of your lab reports which can take 10-12 hrs to really do completely

The TA's for this class are really helpful, but Demas' lectures are TERRIBLE. There's no great reason to go to them, except that lecture material is all that appears on the final exam. The lab reports take FOREVER, and as of now (3 days after I took the final exam), the TA's still haven't graded three of my lab reports. So basically, you have no idea how you're doing in this class until the grade shows up on SIS.

THIS IS THE WORST CLASS OFFERED AT UVA. the chemistry department should pat itself on the back for making a horribly run class required for its fourth year majors. the class is horribly run, with no guidance on whatsoever. the lab is disorganized, the TAs and professors do not know where any of the supplies are or mostly how the equipment functions. the TAs grade in about a year, and you never get your reports back, nor do they help answer questions. the lab manual does not specifically state what is expected in reports, but you are still graded according to that secret information that the TA expected you to know and mention but was never said in lab lecture or the manual or during lab. the lab lecture talked about nothing applicable to lab. the TAs are rude (except one or two) and do not want to help. this all adds up to a horrible semester where you put in HOURS to prepare the lab reports and still do not satisfy "requirements". be prepared to stalk the TAs for any information to improve your reports which is the only way to succeed, no need to go to lab lecture except the first one, and pray your TA is nice. loads of fun.

Talking to Demas or hearing Demas talk makes me want to blow my brains out. He is horrible. Absolutely work with Metcalf when at all possible. I wish they had a box on here to show TA's you would not recommend. To put the cherry on top of all the misery, my TA (Amanda) was horrible as well. Rude, unfair, and just plain unknowledgeable. THIS CLASS SUCKSSSSSSSSSS.

Demas is horrible, work with metcalf whenever possible. Try to work with your TA, becuase they take forever to give reports back and prob dont know what they are talking about. Try to be above the average and you will be fine.

This class is a huge pain. The lab reports wouldn't take very long except for you spend most of your time in excel doing data analysis and error propagation. Every lab report is graded by a different TA so what may be a A lab report for one TA can be a C for another which is a huge pain.

class is challenging. the course is harder than orgo, but more laid back. the experiments are ok- you learn some useful techniques for the 'real world'. your grade is based on 7 or 8 lab reports and a final (worth one lab report). the lectures can sometimes be hard to understand. TAs are awesome. Demas is pretty chill just don't let your cell go off in class or dispose of chemicals improperly. You'll do well in the class if you go to your TAs before turning in the lab reports.

Professor Demas was useless for this lab because 80% of your grade is determined the lab reports. If you write four, 30 page professional looking reports, you will receive an A. The labs you choose are done in groups, so have a good partner, and get good results. Plus, in the reports, show you know the math throw a calculations section. Professor Demas required two short, painless problem sets that were answered straight from the lab manual and a final exam that had answers you could have found on the internet. The amount of work required in lab was relaxing because you had 3 weeks to complete the experiment and write the report, but it only required one day to complete the experiment. Keys are good lab partner and good knowledge of the lab report format. Other than that, don't need Demas for help because the T.A.'s were all the help you needed. Lab lecture was useless for the lab itself.