[NUS Module Review] CM3291: Advanced Experiments In Organic & Inorganic Chemistry

(INTRODUCTION)

Welcome to the last and yes, I do mean LAST lab that I'm required to clear in Chemistry excluding FYP/FYI!! Never knew that I would be able to come this far to be honest. Thought I would be dead and buried after CM1191 but hey, life turned out great and so will this module.

(LECTURERS)

The lecturer/facilitator for this module are Dr Zhang Sheng and Dr Edith Chan. Since I've been taught by them in CM1121 and CM3212 respectively, I sorta know their teaching style already and most of my feedback for them has been largely positive. Most people actually do fear Dr Zhang Sheng mostly because of his exams, especially his VIVA. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I didn't get to experience his daunting VIVA due to COVID-19, so it'll be a bit unfair to judge his VIVA. Nonetheless, his lectures have been interesting as usual (though less interesting than when he was teaching CM1121 or CM2121). Maybe it's the content bah... zzz

Next is Dr Edith Chan and I could safely say that she is one of the best lecturers in Chemistry, simply because the method she uses to teach resonates with my learning; straight to the point teaching. For CM3291, we didn't get to experience her live teaching and of course, VIVA. But, if you're lucky enough to experience her teaching, you may make your own judgement of her. But I like her teaching. :p

(EXPANSION OF TOPICS COVERED)

The lab experiments covered include:

• Asymmetric Synthesis of the Jacobsen's Ligand - Synthesizing the ligand and test for its optical purity
• Medicinal Chemistry - Synthesizing a pyridine compound and classify it using NMR
• Sonogashira Coupling -  Synthesizing the catalyst and classifying it using NMR
• Homogeneous Catalyst: Synthesis of the Ruthenium(II) Catalyst 
• Metalloprophyrins

I would think that the more interesting experiments were the organic ones. Even as an inorganic specialist, the organic chemistry had much more fun steps, synthesis and products alongside its classification. However, the steps to complete those experiments are much harder. On the other hand, the inorganic experiments were more straightforward and easy.

(PASSING THE ASSESSMENT)

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

• Organic Reports - 30%
• Inorganic Reports - 30%
• Organic + Inorganic Final Exam - 20% + 20%

As usual, I'm sure this breakdown of grades would not faze you since you would have seen this before. Since there are 3 Organic experiments, the breakdown of those 3 experiments would be 15%, 7% and 8%, with the 15% belonging to the lab report (Asymmetric Synthesis of the Jacobsen's Ligand). On the other hand, the Inorganic report gradings will be split evenly at 15% each. 

(SCHEDULE)

The schedule is similar to every other lab module; 2 hours of lectures and 6 hours of pure fun. Due to COVID-19, all the lab lectures will be held online live. Although I'm not too sure about Dr Edith Chan's part, where she pre-recorded her lectures and didn't hold it live.

(EXPERIENCE AND FINAL GRADING)

So this was the last time I'm gonna take a lab module. And to be honest, I was really looking forward to just deal with this lab once and for all so I could get it over and done with. After completing CM3292, supposedly the hardest lab (not really) there was, I was pretty optimistic with this one. Because if CM3292 was the hardest lab that is, then it can only get better in this one. 

We started off with the Organic part of CM3291. Live lessons was not really the best thing that could happen for me because after getting used to watching videos in CM3292, reverting back to live lectures for lab wasn't really my thing. Nonetheless, the live lectures were useful in helping me understand some concepts. What was really interesting about the Organic part was the experiments. Oh, and did I say that you need to do column packing? Yeah, that part sucks. There was one time I was packing the column halfway and my pipette tip broke and fell directly in the middle of the packing. And it goes without saying, everything needed to be restarted from scratch. Cue sad end credits.

And I have to say that when COVID struck, all I was hoping for was that VIVA was cancelled. Everyone who has read my lab module blogs before would know that I feel strongly against VIVA. I never saw a point of showing that you could answer a bunch of questions (sometimes ridiculous and unfair questions) when being placed under pressure. It doesn't reflect the knowledge of someone at all. I also do feel that VIVA is very, very biased to a certain group of people, but hey, if you know you know. But anyways, I really wanted VIVA to be cancelled so bad because yes, I didn't like VIVA and secondly, I wanted to end off my VIVA journey with a good memory from CM3292; I rocked that VIVA. So when I realised that VIVA was cancelled, trust me, I led that celebrations harder than anyone else. Heh!

It wasn't long before it was time for the Inorganic part. Nothing really much to say here except that everything was pretty straightforward. With that said, there wasn't anything interesting to say either except that on one of my lab days, I celebrated my birthday. How unfortunate to be spending my 24th birthday in front of chemicals and refluxing. :(

Anyways, finals soon drew nearer and now we are forced to stay at home due to the lockdown. A little piece of me was just hoping that the finals would be cancelled and that the final weightage would be redistributed to the rest of the report. But alas, that was never gonna be the case haha. It was worth to dream and hope though. So the finals came and I gotta say those were pretty stressful moments. 50 minutes for one part and wow time passes faster than you can ever imagine. The Organic part was the hardest one out of the two in my opinion, although I could say that 75% would disagree with me right here. The Organic part required you to answer a simple yet trivial questions like the apparatus to use or the number of moles of a compound. Perhaps some lazy work due to the sudden change from a live test to an online test, but to me, the test wasn't that easy. The Inorganic part was pretty straightforward and easy to score, so I wasn't that scared of that. 

Overall I did pretty good for CM3291 and hey, what's more important is completing the lab module series once and for all. Byeee!

(CONCLUSION AND TIPS)

I think CM3291 is harder than CM3292. But this is just an unpopular opinion as others would say otherwise. NMR would be the most difficult part of the analysis so I would highly recommend for you to do it earlier so that you could correct and change whenever you need to. So once again, byee!

Ratings out of 5⭐:

• Should you take this module - Do you have a choice? Lel
• Degree of Difficulty - ⭐⭐⭐
• Effort Required - ⭐⭐⭐
• Timetable Impact - ⭐⭐⭐

**For more queries, kindly comment down below or follow/message my Instagram (geraldgg__). Thanks**