Students

Chemistry 123: Thermodynamics, Kinetics and Organic Chemistry

Course Level: 
First Year
Academic Year: 
2020/2021

TEXTBOOK: Required custom course notes will be available from UBC Bookstore. There is no required textbook.

PHASE EQUILIBRIA
(three lecture hours)
•Phase diagrams of one-component systems.

EQUILIBRIUM AND CHEMICAL THERMODYNAMICS
(nine lecture hours)
•The equilibrium constant for physical and chemical changes; K in terms of activity.
•Thermochemistry and the first law of Thermodynamics (energy, work); Hess's law.
•Entropy and the second and third laws of Thermodynamics (ΔS, ΔS°, S°) and spontaneous
processes.
•Free energy (ΔG, ΔG°), K in terms of ΔG°, and the temperature dependence of K.
•Spontaneous processes: ΔG = ΔG° + RtlnQ.
•Electrochemistry and the Nernst equation.

KINETICS AND CHEMICAL EQUILIBRIUM IN AQUEOUS SOLUTION
(four lecture hours)
•Rates of chemical reactions, rates laws, first and second order reactions, how factors such as temperature, concentration and activation energy affect reaction rates, reaction coordinate diagram.

•Weak acids and bases and their salts, breakdown of usual approximations in these calculations, buffer solutions and buffer action, how to make a buffer solution.

ORGANIC CHEMISTRY
(eighteen lecture hours)
•Hydrocarbons - isomers, physical properties, nomenclature
•Conformational analysis of hydrocarbons and cyclohexane
•Functional groups - structure and nomenclature
•Stereochemistry - enantiomers and diastereomers, optical activity, absolute configuration,
resolution, cis-trans isomers
•Reactivity - substitution reactions (SN1 and SN2), mechanisms, stereochemical consequences of SN1 and SN2 reactions