Anatomy can be a difficult topic to study for- especially when you have a whole semester’s worth of memorization and re-learning to cover and don’t know where to begin! Trust me, I’ve been there. However, there are some strategies that you can use to memorize the material and approach questions that will help you get a good score on the final if you stick to them. Let’s dive into it…

• When a reaction is allowed to ‘run’ for some time, at some point it will no longer be favorable to continue forward or reverse and it will be at equilibrium

• It is important to remember that equilibrium does not mean that the reactant concentrations and the product concentrations are equal, but that the rate of the forward reaction is equal to the rate of the reverse reaction until something were to change (add more reactants/products, temperature, etc.)

The electrochemistry unit at CU begins with redox reactions. Make sure you understand the basics of this before continuing through this article.

A voltaic cell, a.k.a. a galvanic cell, requires several parts. In official terms, you’ll need a cathode, an anode, and a conductive substance (usually wire) and salt bridge connecting the two. Less formally, you’ll need

A buffer, by definition, is a solution that resist change in pH. In a buffered solution, adding acid will only result in a small decrease in pH whereas adding the same volume and concentration of acid to a non-buffered solution will cause a much larger change in pH.

Voltage

• Voltage from a point particle

• Voltage from an electric field - The only distance Δd that matters is the distance that is parallel to the electric field

If you need to find a particle’s speed from its voltage or energy, use the work-energy theorem from Physics 1

Each element in a chemical equation has an oxidation state, and you will have to assign these oxidation states to each element in order to determine the correct redox reaction stoichiometry. These states can be fairly easily determined just by looking at the periodic table. 

Quick recap of Force Problems

1. Write down knowns + unknowns

2. Draw a picture

3. Choose a coordinate system
+ Usually x is horizontal, y is vertical
+ For ramps choose x to be down the ramp and y to be perpendicular to the ramp

While meeting with students in beginner level CSCI courses I have noticed a fairly common theme, many students are just typing code into a file with little to no organization. By the end of the project their code is so messy that the flow is almost impossible to follow. Because of this I have put together a simple set of rules for keeping your functions ordered.

The following will be covered in this article:

• General notes

• Definitions

• Strong vs. weak acids and bases

• Major species

• Conjugate acids and conjugate bases

• Basic pH calculations

Computer science is a complex subject that requires a thorough understanding of concepts. It doesn’t matter how smart or prepared you think you are, there is going to be a point in your career where you stare at your screen and think “what the heck is going on here?”.

Elimination reactions are helpful in many situations, especially in synthesis when you have an alkane and need an alkene. Similar to substitution reactions, eliminations produce similar products but depend on different factors. Most notably, E1 reactions have a carbocation intermediate while E2 reactions do not (for more information on E1 reactions, see “SN1/E1 Reactions”). 

SN1 and E1 Reactions have very similar mechanisms, the final result just depends on whether the nucleophile or the base is attacks first. Compared to second order SN2 and E2 reactions (see “SN2 Reactions” and “E2 Reactions”), SN1/E1 are first order, the rate of the reaction depends only on the substrate.

Graphs in computer science are different than what most people consider a graph to be. Graphs are a data type consisting of connected nodes (much like a linked list), only, with graphs, nodes have no limit to how many connections to other nodes they have.

Consider the following mechanism for the overall reaction A+B→C

How do we find the overall rate law for this reaction? 

First of all, we need to know the Rate Determining Step (RDS) to write the rate law. Note that this is the slow step, as the part of the overall mechanism that proceeds the slowest will ultimately determine the overall rate of the reaction.

A vector is just an arrow from the origin to a point. It has magnitude (how big it is) and direction (which way it’s pointing). A variable will have an arrow above it if it’s a vector!

Vectors can be in any number of dimensions

Method for Solving Kinematic Equations

1. Draw a picture!

2. Write down every variable you know, and every variable you don’t know / want to find. Sometimes known variables are super obvious (e.g. if a ball is launched horizontally, then you know that its starting y-velocity, v_y0 = 0)