dahallbsu - 1-5-2010 at 13:09
Hello everyone,
Just want to start out by saying this forum is awesome, its great to see science thats free, accurate and readily available to the public.
I want to start out by saying that i am a complete beginner in the area of chemistry, as the only experience i have is 2 semesters of highschool
chemistry which was about 5 or 6 years ago.
Right now i am a recent college graduate with a BS in Psychology and philosophy, and will be attending graduate school for clinical psych in exactly
one year from now.
The problem being is that im a complete science geek, but unfortunately my entire psychology/philosophy university education is based around reading
texts and working with concepts that are almost entirely abstract, which is starting to get boring.
Like i said before, i basically have a free year with which to do what i want, and i want to get involved in some hobby science that is much more
hands on and involved than psych which is what im used to.
As of right now my plan of study/home curriculum was going to be based around the MIT Open Corseware site, which has the syllibi, classnotes,
exercises and labratory videos from the majority of the classes in MIT's chemistry major. Browsing through ebay i have assumed one could find the
majority of all the chemistry textbooks one would need, as long as you find an older edition, for fairly cheap.
Does this seem like a good plan of action? Would this be feasable? Any other suggestions or advice would be greatly appriciated.
Paddywhacker - 1-5-2010 at 16:28
Yes that sounds good. Last time I checked, a couple of years ago though, there wasn't much in chem except some short safety & technique videos.
What got me interested in chemistry, maybe 45 years ago, was a home experiments book from the library that led you through isolating acetylsalycalic
acid from asprin, hydrolyzing it to salicylic acid, nitrating it, reducing the nitro group to an amine, and then diazotising and coupling it with beta
naphthol to make an azo dye. I've never seen that book since.
psychokinetic - 1-5-2010 at 17:13
Wow, I never even thought of that. In school this semester we have focused on acetyl/salicylic acid. One lab we did that was more for fun than
learning was making azo dyes.
Only difference was that we made aspirin, not the other way around.
My manners - welcome to ScienceMadness. Your ideas of a curriculum look good to me.
[Edited on 2-5-2010 by psychokinetic]