[NUS Module Review] CM3261: Environmental Chemistry

(INTRODUCTION)

Now I would imagine for some of you, the reason why you're taking this module is because this module does seem like the easy option among all the level 3000 modules. Why? Because how hard can the environment be? How much can Chemistry be integrated into the environment that could actually make it a difficult module? Well, if you're gonna think this way, then in the words of A/P Thomas Walczyk, "DROP THE MODULE NOW." But if you're in for the ride like most people and decide to get wrecked later on, welcome to CM3261!

(LECTURERS)

The lecturers are A/P Thomas Walczyk and Dr Fung Fun Man. Again, two contrasting lecturers with varying teaching styles. And already you can hear the groans of where is Dr Emelyn Tan when you wanted her to be lecturing you. Dr Fung teaching style attempts (wink) to be more student friendly by allowing students to appreciate and enjoy environmental chemistry. Even though I appreciate his attempt to make things easier, his style has sadly not win over, many students and we will get there in a minute. A/P Thomas Walczyk is more old school in his teaching; bone-dry content heavy notes with loads of information. Not to mention projects that involve eight to ten pages long reports that are only worth less than 20% of your total grade. 

(EXPANSION OF TOPICS COVERED)

The topics covered include:

• Lithosphere (Dr Fung)
• Waste Management (Dr Fung)
• Food Chain (Dr Fung)
• Toxicology (Dr Fung)
• Element Cycles (Dr Fung)
• Ozone Hole (Dr Fung)
• The Atmosphere (Dr Fung)
• Air Pollution (Dr Fung)
• Hydrosphere (A/P Thomas)
• Energy (A/P Thomas)
• Climate Change (A/P Thomas)

Despite the clear, overwhelming topics taught by Dr Fung, both lecturers have a similar amount of content. Don't be fooled by the lack of chapters taught by A/P Thomas, as one chapter can take up to six or seven lectures. The topics taught are pretty much self-explanatory:

• Lithosphere - Land, types and features of soil, agriculture, erosion and deposition
• Waste Management - Municipal, industrial, electronic and nuclear waste, including how the wastes are disposed
• Food Chain - Animal feedlot, aquaculture, crop diversity, organic agriculture and GMOs
• Toxicology - Types of hazards, sources of toxicants, types of exposure, bioaccumulation, biomagnification, LD50 and risk management
• Element Cycles - Phosphorous cycle, nitrogen cycle, carbon cycle, water cycle and biogeochemical cycle
• Ozone Hole - Atmospheric cleansing, ground level ozone, chlorofluorocarbons and the Antarctic ozone hole
• Air Pollution - Primary vs secondary pollution, outdoor pollution, control measures and indoor pollution 
• Hydrosphere - Water scarcity and uses, water disasters and pollution, heavy metal pollution, the plastic uses and harm, as well as water treatment
• Energy - Nuclear energy origin, causes and effects, prevention and its disasters; Coal origin, causes and effects, prevention, alternatives and its disasters; Renewable energies including hydro, wind, geothermal, solar energy and biofuels
• Climate Change - Global energy and its effects on temperature and carbon dioxide, greenhouse effects and factors affecting it (albedo and aerosols) and the different conventions 

A lot to read, yet so little time.

(PASSING THE ASSESSMENT)

The grading for the assessments in this module are as follows:

• Midterms - 30%
• Classroom Participation - 10%
• Assignment - 20%
• Finals - 40%

Okay, so I'm gonna rant for a bit here. And this is about two things; classroom participation and the assignment. First off, the classroom participation. 10% for class participation is a big deal, especially when the rest of the components don't guarantee you a maximum score. So obviously like any other normal human being would, you would want to get the full class participation. But, the class participation was NEVER made clear to us on how to get it. Dr Fung's part was pretty clear about his percentage of class participation through PollEverywhere, but A/P Thomas wasn't. On one day there was an attendance marking during lectures and on others, there weren't. Apparently tutorials were taken into attendance, but there was no attendance marking whatsoever. So, throughout the semester, everyone was rather confused as to how to get the class participation marks and I think it should've been made clear. And secondly, the assignment. What was so bad about the assignment was that it was doing so much to get so little. And yes, I know I shouldn't be complaining about this because A/P Thomas did tell us that we should expect lots of work. But trust me, when people knew about how much work they needed to do and how much they would get back in return, honey, betcha most will agree with me on this. 20% for either an eight page report and a poster designed by you, in which you have to present it to an audience for five times and once to the lecturer, a ten page report and debate on it in front of the entire LT, a ten minute presentation in front of the entire LT, or a podium discussion with a report. Fam, if I knew I would be doing so much for that 20%, I would have just went to do Polymer Chemistry. But ah well, now you know and be sure not to fall into that trap if you're deciding whether or not to take this module.

Midterms will be totally on Dr Fung's part. He loves to test simple calculations (Primary school level) and things that people won't ever think of remembering from his notes. Bell-curve will be very steep for this one. The finals is anybody's game, though I feel that many people thought it was easy.

(Schedule)

The schedule for this module is very weird. So we actually have a one hour tutorial and two two-hour lectures every week. Dr Fung does not believe in tutorials and that slot won't be used. A/P Thomas obviously does and he will be using it to only answer people's questions. The lectures are conducted like any other lecture for A/P Thomas, but for Dr Fung, his lectures will be treated as a tutorial. Feel weird yet? So where does his lectures go? His lectures are made into videos that you would have to watch it at your own time... So essentially, it is two lectures converted into tutorials and, on top of that, you have to watch his lectures. BUT!!!! I have to give all the credit to Dr Fung for taking his own time to make such lectures. I understand his desire to provide an unconventional teaching experience to us and while many may not have liked it due to the extra work needed to watch the lectures, I myself found them useful.

(EXPERIENCE AND FINAL GRADING)

I actually looked forward to this module thinking it was an easy module. There was only one module review online so I thought that maybe it wasn't that bad based on its description, but nooooo it was just the beginning of a very long ride.

We started with A/P Thomas constantly reminding us that same sentence "If you think this module is a breeze, drop this module now!" And this would go on for about four lectures. Of course, barely anyone did, due to the feeling that this module couldn't be as demanding as some of the other Chemistry modules. After those four lectures, Dr Fung took over and he is a really cool guy. You can see that he really does put in effort into his work to try to make things easier for us. But things didn't really favor him from the get-go when he split us into groups using a computerised generator and we had no choice of our groupmates. Many were complaining about this move, but according to Dr Fung, this aimed to help us get used to work with people we don't really know or like, which I kinda agree with him.

The purpose of these groups is meant for the lectures (i.e. tutorials) that were conducted. Every lecture, Dr Fung will give us worksheets to do that we are supposed to discuss it with our groupmates. Many didn't like what was being done in the lectures and stopped going after a while. And although attendance was taken, many of these people relied on their groupmates to record their attendance (being a lil snitch here). For the record, I attended every single lecture.

Dr Fung brought some guest lecturers on, including a lecture on source reliability and another conducted by a student whom I found absolutely boring. Sorry Dr Fung :(, someone's gotta say something about that. Let me spare you the details because if you were to take the module, maybe you would see that person lecturing again.

Soon, the midterms came. And as I mentioned earlier, easy math questions and concepts you would not expect to be tested (like name 4 types of compounds found in GMOs), will be tested, along with some questions on source reliability in which you can write anything and still get marks for. The bell-curve was steep bruh. The trick here is to not overthink, and eventually, I did overthink and I didn't do super well for this test. 

Next, A/P Thomas took center stage and the first thing he said was "I don't see the numbers changing that much despite me tell you to drop the module." And that's when the fun truly began. He wasn't lying though; his lectures were bone-dry and long asf. Sometimes to the point where you would end lectures just ten minutes before the hour interval. Nonetheless, Singaporean's are so used to traditional lectures anyway, so try to stay awake for the whole duration.

As for the project assignment, I was tasked to do the poster. The hard part of this assignment was choosing the damn topic. My topic was rejected for nearly over five times before it was finally accepted. And the reason for that was because I was either not being specific enough or that the issue was not a pressing issue that requires much attention. To skip the whole dramatics, I did the topic about the effects of plastics in the Yangtze River and I actually enjoyed the process of being able to research more about it and share it with the people that heard me give a presentation. Unfortunately, the poster presentation was just one day after VIVA, so I only had that much time to prepare for it, but I still managed to deliver something great. A tip for you though, don't pick the poster option. Why? Because you have to pay for your own poster printing and the workload is way more than the other options I feel.  

Oh oh and I got some piping hot tea for y'all. So backstory first; one of the assignment actually involves students forming a group, and out of the members of the group, all except for one need not write the report, but instead do a presentation in front of the entire lecture. All he or she had to do, was to collate information from his or her group members' reports and do up a ten minute speech on their topic. In case y'all are wondering, unlike the poster assignment which was an individual assignment, some managed to do this other assignment. So it was kinda the same grading, just different assignment. Anyways, when he gave his talk, you can tell that he wasn't prepared at all. By the seventh minute, he was only at his third slide when he had possibly seven more to go. In addition to that, he was fumbling and going off track too many times. And by the ninth minute, when A/P Thomas reminded him that he had one minute more. Instead of summing up everything he had to say in a proper, calm manner, he literally told everyone to shut up a COUPLE of times and laughed when he tried to summarize. At the end of it, he told everyone that he will send the slides to each one of us. Despite him getting a couple of applause and laughter from the audience, I personally saw zero professionalism in the way he ended. Like bro, all you had to do was to do a ten minute talk on your topic; no report, no poster, nothing. And it's already bad enough to not prepare prior, but to say shut up to an audience is disrespectful and unprofessional on your part. Alright, that's all hahah! Just thought that it was worth a mention here because I was very disgusted with what I heard and I hope A/P Thomas actually didn't approve of his actions either.

Anyways, finals seemed pretty doable. I guess the most difficult part came from Dr Fung due to his weird calculations again. But, you will definitely not be rushing for time in this finals because you are allowed to write in point form to save time. Most of A/P Thomas part are of open-discussions and there doesn't seem to be a right or wrong answer. So it's probably him just tryna see how your thinking process works. 

(CONCLUSION AND TIPS)

So that is it for this module review. Apologies if I actually went overboard in my rants and the piping hot tea of a story. But all in all, this is a fun module to take and a break from all the technical chemistry terms that you would possibly learn in other chemistry modules. Would I recommend it out of the three core modules (CM3212/CM3242/CM3261) that I took this semester? Probably not mainly because of the workload and overall layout of the module. But I'm sure that there will be some students who will not read module reviews, think that this is a light module and take it, before realizing that it's not what they think it is and then come here to find out the absolute truth. Don't say I didn't warn ya.

Ratings out of 5⭐:

• Should you take this module - If you're looking a fun module to do without expecting it to be a light module.
• Degree of Difficulty - ⭐⭐
• Effort Required - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Timetable Impact - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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