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Chemistry 104
From Caveman to Chemist
Meets GV period in Gilmer 220
Suppose one minute were spent recounting the events of the past year. What would you include in a one minute summary of 1995? 1945? 1865? A lot can be told in a minute. If we were to allow one minute for each year, all of recorded history could be recounted in a mere three days (of continuous talking)! Here, then, are the Cliff Notes for human civilization: one year = 1 minute. The present moment is 11:59:59 PM of December 31. January began 525600 years ago...
January 500000 BC Homo Erectus has fire and stone tools. November 60000 BC Flowers used in Neanderthal funeral at Shanidar cave in Iraq. December 40000 BC Homo Sapiens has fire and stone tools.
Chemistry 104, "From Caveman to Chemist" is a course exploring landmark technologies on the road to modern industrial civilization. We will begin by learning to make fire and stone tools and progress up through plastics and semiconductors. Your grade in the course will be determined by the number of technologies which you master. Although this is not a lab course, it is very much a course about doing things. You will not only read about these landmark technologies, you will be expected to make things like paper and metals and batteries from scratch. By the time you have completed the course, you will have an intimate knowledge of most of the top 25 chemicals used in modern industry.
Projects
The unit of work for this course is the project. Most projects consist of a written quiz and a product. To get credit for a project you must have a perfect quiz and your product must meet the specifications outlined in each project description. No credit is given for a quiz without its associated product or for a product without its associated quiz except as described below. Your projects will be documented in your notebook.
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