Welcome to the second CHEMMAT blog! I hope you are surviving the second semester; I remember having a rough time with it, but with a little Rusteez and an insane amount of work, you too can look like me! A second-year engineer! I hope this blog helps to inform you about what life will be like next year so you, my wonderful first-year friend can fully prepare for the battle ahead.
In this blog, I will discuss the three CHEMMAT Papers you will be undertaking in the first semester of your degree. I will discuss the positives and challenges and share my tips on surviving each course. So buckle up, keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle, and enjoy the ride.
Please Note: Courses can change yearly; this information is dated as of 2024, so things may change.
CHEMMAT 201: Process Engineering 1: Introduction
In this paper, you get thrown into the world of material and energy balances. If you cast your memory back to ENGGEN 140, with the box flow diagrams, it’s basically that on steroids. You learn about the fundamentals of material balances, including multiple phases and energy balances with multiple processes.
The Positives
- When you finally understand the materials balances, it is so satisfying. It becomes methodical, and the sense of pride you get when you get the correct answer is unbeatable.
- The lab is fun! That might sound weird since our reaction was to inflate a balloon using soda and baking soda. Still, it was a fun experiment, and I enjoyed the lab competition, where we got two tries to get our balloon to inflate to a specified diameter.
The Challenges
- Deadlines sneak up on you in this class; I cannot stress this enough: START YOUR GPPS EARLY!! Nothing is more humbling than having two weeks to do a practice question assignment and you leave it till Thursday night when it’s due Friday night.
- It’s a lot of math! The math is quite simple, but there is a lot of it; I would recommend getting a calculator that can integrate or borrowing one from a friend for tests or exams.
My advice for this course is don’t get discouraged! It isn’t like the previous CHEMMAT paper you would have done, and it has a bit of a learning curve. It’s a bit of work, but you will do great. Attend the tutorials, do the practice questions, ask if you get stuck, and most importantly, have fun :).
CHEMMAT 204: Materials
This is CHEMMAT 121, part two, electric boogaloo. If you loved the CHEMMAT paper, great news, it’s more of that! This course dives a lot deeper into our beloved golden child Steel <3, and even further into diffusion mechanisms and failure methods. The one completely new thing will be X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy, where you learn about different X-ray methods and how we can use them to identify materials and their properties.
The Positives
- Steel. Need I say more?
- You undertake three fun labs: heat treatment, XRD, and Metallography. I found all the labs incredibly interesting. They can be a bit lengthy, at 3 hours each, but it’s worth it!
- It has a 40% Exam! You heard me right; this may be the most straightforward course you take all semester. Still please do show up to the exam.
The Challenges
- You must complete a piece of work for each lab. XRD and Metallography have an online quiz, while heat treatment requires a 20% Lab report. These deadlines like to sneak up on you, so I cannot stress this enough: get them done as soon as possible!
- Soooo many tests! We were lucky that one out of four potential tests got replaced by an assignment, but there are still three tests. On top of the amount of information they unload on you is by no means small.
This paper is not too difficult, but it is a lot to take in. My advice is to take notes and keep up with the classwork. You get no cheat sheets in this course, but make them anyway! Honestly, summary sheets and notes pulled me through this course, and they will get you through it as well.
CHEMMAT 206: Applied Chemistry
Are you a chemist in engineer’s clothing? If so, you will love this course. It is exactly as it sounds: chemistry for engineers. You will cover fun and real-world applicable topics like phase equilibrium, reaction kinetics, thermodynamics, surface chemistry, electrochemistry, and polymer chemistry.
The Positives
- If you have done chemistry past year 11, much of this knowledge will be a repeat of what you have already done. There is still a lot of new and fun information, as this course aims to get everyone up to speed with the necessary chemistry knowledge.
- The labs are super fun! You get to grow polymers using an electrolytic cell and identify substances’ compositions using a UV -Vis spectrometer.
- There is only one test! It’s an acceptable 10%, but this can also be put into the challenges as being unable to test your knowledge on all the other topics apart from the first made exam study quite difficult.
The Challenges
- The exam is 60%. That is an awfully scary number for a course filled with information.
- The lab component is 30%; you will be writing two lab reports due right before exams. This gives you plenty of time to start it, but knowing we are engineering students, we always leave it to the last minute.
Something that we have been warned about for years and years from the bloggers before me, our lecturers and I’m sure even potentially the bloggers after me: DO NOT LEAVE THE 206 REPORTS TO THE LAST MINUTE! I cannot stress this enough. It is due when everything else is due, and from experience, that makes life incredibly difficult. Most of your percentages in this course will come at the end of the semester; my forever advice is to keep up with the work during the semester so you aren’t accidentally cramming a whole semester’s worth of work in a few days before the exam. While the percentages may sound scary, it’s very doable, and I found the content very interesting and fun; you will get through it, I promise.
To summarise, keep positive and keep up with your work. Second-year engineering is a bit of a shock to the system but is very manageable :). To those who have decided to do our wonderful specialisation (which you should do, we have lots of fun), I want to wish you good luck. You can absolutely do it. It may get a bit tough sometimes, but you will pull through, just like we all have!
Part two, where I review the second-semester papers, will be posted in my fifth blog, so stay tuned!
I hope you enjoyed my info dump, and I will see you all in my next post. Please check out my fellow bloggers!
Zlata
(Kaaaachow!)