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Year One Chemistry at McMaster The 1997-98 Year I chemistry class at McMaster had the highest enrollment ever. In September 1997, approximately 1350 students, mainly from the Faculties of Science and Engineering, thronged into the four lecture sections led by Jacques Barbier, Randy Dumont, Adam Hitchcock, and Joe Laposa. Over the years the introductory course has grown so large (about 95% of entering science students take the course) that now more than 70 undergraduate and graduate teaching assistants (TAs), supervised by Barbara Russer, are needed for the delivery of the Level I laboratory and tutorial programs in chemistry. The 550 Year I McMaster Engineering students are required to take only one term of chemistry, so the second term's class population could be accommodated into two sections, lectured by Mike Brook (last year's recipient of the McMaster Student Union's Faculty of Science Award for Excellence in Teaching) and Brian McCarry. This was the first year of implementation of the new Faculty of Science policy of splitting year-long first year science courses into two half-year courses. Consequently the Chemistry 1A06 class so fondly remembered by thousands of former students is now history. McMaster Year I chemistry continues to make use of live demonstrations to illustrate lecture concepts. The torching of a large balloon containing hydrogen and oxygen continues to be one of the more popular demonstrations, illustrating the lifting power of hydrogen, the formation of water, the combustion of hydrogen, and the exothermicity of a chemical reaction. A new feature was added to the course this year. The textbook was supplied bundled with a CD-ROM disk containing many animations and demonstrations of fundamental chemical concepts. Lecture notes, assignments, tutorials, model solutions and other materials for the course also appeared on the McMaster Computer Clusters and the World Wide Web. Several sections of the course provided multimedia lectures, including access to laser disk videos projected onto the large screen in the Burke Science Auditorium. Joe Laposa |