Improving your lab scores

A few trends are emerging that are causing people to lose points in lab.Hopefully this will help.

Pre-Lab Quizzes:
1. Do them. One of the fastest ways to fail Gen Chem lab is to skip quizzes.
2. Look at them early enough to ask questions. Pre-lab quizzes are due by 8:00am on Thursdays this semester. If you email me a question at 11:45pm on Wednesday night, I will not see it or answer it in time to be helpful for you. Please do not interpret this as "Don't ask questions." I WANT you to ask questions if you don't understand a problem, but it's more effective to ask those questions on Monday or Tuesday.
3. Read the questions carefully. This actually applies to any situation in any class. There are ALWAYS little clues in the way a question is asked. They may be subtle at times, but they're there. For example, "assume volumes are additive" probably means that you might have to add some volumes together at some point. There may be times that I include information that is NOT necessary to solve a problem, but I definitely don't go out of my way to put a bunch of non-essential information in a problem, especially when it's an online quiz question.

Hand-In Assignments:
1. Circle, highlight, or otherwise clearly indicate who your Lab Assistant is on everything. When I'm trying to sort 100+ assignments, it's much easier if you've obviously done this. On future assignments, if you do not clearly and obviously indicate your Lab Assistant, you will lose points.
2. All assignments must be typed. This includes sample calculations. There are only 2 (maybe) exceptions to this: experimental set-up diagrams in lab reports, and questions that ask you to label things on a printed graph. In both of these cases, it would be BETTER to do everything electronically so you have a back-up copy to print. ("I lost my only copy of the graph as I was walking to Hagen to hand in my assignment 5 minutes before it was due.") If you don't know how to use an equation editor in MSWord or other word processing programs, look into it. They're great tools and can make really nice looking sample calculations.
3. Read the questions carefully and answer them completely. If your answer to a question takes fewer words than the actual question, you're probably not answering the question completely. Especially in lab, there are very few questions that have "Yes" or "No" as an answer. Always explain at least a little bit why the answer is "Yes" or "No".

Look back through old posts on this blog; this isn't the first time I've posted tips on how to improve scores. Use the resources you have available to you.