Summary of CELS 191 and CHEM 191

In this blog I will be giving a brief recap of the CELS 191 and CHEM 191 first semester papers. In each paper I will touch on the content, the labs, how the paper related to NCEA and high school, study techniques that I used and my overall opinion of the paper.

CELS 191:

Content:

This paper can be split up into 4 main blocks you could say:

1)    Cell Structure and Diversity: 

-       Three domains of life, endosymbiosis.

-       Carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and nucleic acids and their roles and functions in the cell.

-       Plasma membrane and transportation mechanisms, membrane proteins.

-       Endomembrane system, bulk transport processes, lysosomes.

-       Cytoskeleton structure and function, cell junctions and extracellular matrix.

-       The nucleus of the cell.

-       Plant cells, structure, function and synthesis.

-       Mitochondria and aerobic respiration.

-       Photosynthesis.

2)    Molecular Biology, Genes, Chromosomes and Inheritance:

-       DNA, replication structure.

-       Mitosis and meiosis, defects.

-       Transcription and translation.

-       Mendelian genetics and population genetics.

3)    Human Molecular Genetics:

-       Human genome, sequencing.

-       Mutations, CRISPR-Cas9.

-       Stem cells, cell differentiation and modern medicine.

4)    Microbes, Medicine and Microbiology:

-       Prokaryotic cell structure and function.

-       Bacteria, binary fission, growth and energy storage.

-       Different types of micro-organisms.

-       Human microbiome, probiotics and functional foods.

-       Viruses, structure and function.

-       Microbial pathogenesis, koch’s postulates.

-       Antibiotics and antibiotic resistance.

-       Microbial genetics.

-       Stages of infection, evolution and modern medicine.

Labs:

The labs for CELS were probably the best labs out of all the first semester papers. There was a mixture of practical work and book work, no in-lab tests, the demonstrators were most of the time very helpful and you got to see some real-life applications of the course. You could also leave early once you had finished the required work which was an added bonus (some labs were only an hour and a half compared to 3 hours.). There were post lab tests that you had to do on your own device that were worth in total 10% of your grade and were relatively straight forward. The CELS labs (and CHEM, same building) are by far the most modern labs and the technology and resources provided are fantastic. There weren’t many negatives to be completely honest, if I were to be picky it would be that the content in the labs wasn’t really examined and often felt like a waste of time that could be used studying (or sleeping!). Overall CELS 191 labs were an 8/10.

Comparison to High School: 

The first half of the course is somewhat similar to NCEA level 2 biology, everything else was brand new to me especially the last module. What was similar was then explored in more depth, this includes transcription and translation, photosynthesis and aerobic respiration and cell structure. This meant that you had to learn a ton more definitions as well as understand the concepts better. The inheritance and genetic variation lectures could have been taken out of NCEA level 1 science genetics and were pretty boring. Small cross overs in the bottleneck effect and migration as well. 

Study Techniques:

At the beginning I started with handwritten notes, this fell through as I gave up in the first month. I ended up typing my notes online and then printing them out. I based all my notes around the learning objectives and knowing the answers to them in depth. There were quite a few niggly definitions and especially functions etc that I ended up putting into flashcards (quizlet) and rote learning the hell out of them. 

Overall Opinion:

This was my second favourite paper in semester one and the paper I scored highest on. The progress test was pretty easy, and the content wasn’t too challenging, except there was a lot of it. If I would have gone back I would have focused more on a greater understanding of the larger topics (e.g. transcription, translation) and studied more on the last module since there is quite a lot of content and its close to the final. Overall 8.5/10.

CHEM 191:

Content:

Once again, this paper is split into 4 modules with 8 different lecturers (2 per module, each lecturer teaches the whole module and you can decide the one you like better. I always went to the lecturer that was not being recorded and then if I needed to I would watch the recordings of the lecturer I didn’t see).

1)    Chemical Reactions in Aqueous Solutions

-       Stoichiometry, water

-       Equilibria, acid-base reactions

-       Buffers, titrations.

2)    Energetics, Rates, and Driving Forces in Chemical Reactions

-       Thermodynamics, enthalpy and entropy, Gibbs free energy.

-       Kinetics, rate expressions, collision theory, Arrhenius equation.

-       Redox.

3)    Structure and Reactions of Organic Molecules.

-       Chemical Bonding, Lewis structures, VSEPR.

-       Valence bond theory.

-       Stereochemistry, E and Z, chirality.

-       Organic mechanisms, substitution, elimination, addition.

4)    Organic Chemistry in Biological Molecules

-       Reaction mechanisms and chemical basis of carbonyl compounds, carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids and peptides.

-       Chair structures, L and D, alpha and beta.

-       Aromaticity.

Labs: 

Labs were very helpful I thought in revision of content. Especially if you had the lab in the second week of the stream therefore being able to relate to the real-life scenario’s in the lab to the content leant in lectures. Before each lab you were required to do an online pre-lab task on a website called best-choice, I personally did not find this useful rather just annoying. However, the biggest part of the labs were the exit tests. These exit tests were comprised of anywhere between 4 and 6 marks and were a mixture of multiple choice and calculation questions that would make up 2% of your grade per test (10% overall). These were normally not too bad but meant you had to pay somewhat attention in the lab to the experiments that you were doing and the lab book content. Overall, I gave the labs a 7/10,

Comparison to High School:

Firstly, the whole of module three and four are completely new stuff with a little bit of overlap with NCEA level 3 chemistry. Most of the content that is now covered is based off of the reaction mechanisms, how the reactions occurs, where to the electrons move to turn this into that. Module 1 is pretty much a complete copy of NCEA level 3 aqueous so I definitely recommend taking this paper in high school as a good foundation in this will give you confidence in the first few weeks. The second module is about half and half, where redox and some of the thermodynamics is covered in high school but apart from that the rest of the content is new.

Study Techniques:

For CHEM you need to understand the concepts because in the final you need to know the reason behind why things happen. So, for this I didn’t use quizlet, instead I wrote out all the mechanisms and everything like that out on a piece of paper and tried to replicate it until I got a grasp of it. Practice questions were also my best friend as from year to year they tend to not change the content for the papers, these were the best resource of practice, and the chemistry department provided answers and even a podcast explaining every single answer for 2018. The progress test you were also given practice papers that are a valuable resource. I guess overall, I used practice papers a ton to cement my knowledge and then rote learnt what I didn’t know. I have heard good things about anki but never used it, and quizlet didn’t offer any good pictures, especially of the mechanisms and stuff. (you had to draw a lot of stuff out).

Overall Opinion:

This was my favourite paper of first semester, once we got into the organic modules, I really started enjoying it and I think that the enjoyment of a subject correlates directly to the grades. I know lots of people dislike chemistry, but I think after you take this course you’ll see that there’s so much more to chemistry than what you learnt in high school, well that’s what I thought anyway. Overall, I give the paper a 9/10, the resources provided for the paper were top notch and the staff were always helpful. The lecturers for every module were great (except the last one) and definitely made me like and succeed in chemistry (in high school I wasn’t that good at chemistry, like all merits in externals).

I hope you found this helpful, over the next few weeks I’ll be looking at the other six papers I took and giving you the run down on those. In the meantime, if you have any question feel free to email me at hsfyblog@gmail.com