S205: TMA-5

Last but one TMA. Not one I'm looking forward too as much. Its got essay like things in, and its so easy to lose marks in these. Oh well, after all the biology essays I've done, and skating quickly over the archaeology ones, I ought to be used to this sort of thing, so hey ho.

Question 1
In this one, you have to prepare an overhead transparency for a 1 minute talk. Of course almost no one uses overheads these days, they use powerpoint or similar. Gone are the days (hopefully) of getting acetates shrink wrapped around the photocopier drums. You have to prepare the overhead, on the subject of "The use of VSEPR to predict the structure of tellurium tetrachloride". You then have to write a script that when read aloud will take 1 minute to read in a normal voice and taking breaths etc. Apparently in some previous versions of the course, you actually had to record the talk and post a tape with it on, but thankfully that isn't required now. Your tutor has to read it and decide if you are within the time limits. You can annotate the script a little with markers to show where you are pointing to on the slide.
Anyway, not too bad a question - the topic is fairly striaghtforward, and a few graphics help spice up the slide.

Question 2
This is about book 9 - p-block materials. You have to identify an element given a few facts about its appearance and its reactions with flourine. Then a bit about its oxidation states, and then its reactions with acid and alkalis.

Question 3
Some entropy sneaks back in, as you have to compose a formation reaction for BCL₃. Then draw a lewis structure for it.
Thats followed up by a full blown thermodynamic cycle for the construction of it so you can work out the molar enthalpy. Finally an equation for the formation of BCL₃ from boric oxide and phosphorous pentachloride.

Question 4
More identification of solids and solutions based on some reactions. Some reactions are described and you have to predict what will be formed, then these in turn react and so on. Of course if you get step 1 wrong, your a bit lost for the rest of the question.

Question 5
Its essay time. "The chemistry of bromine can be predicted from its position in the Periodic Table". A report of 600 words explaining this. You can include graphs, diagrams, pictures, tables etc, and I throw in quite a few of these as it helps give me something to do rather than just writing words, and it also breaks up the structure a bit. Even a picture of dear old Dmitri Mendeleev helps give it a bit of colour.
You have to do all the usual stuff, introduction, conclusion, references etc. Anyway, after a lot of tinkering with it, I get something I'm not altogether happy with, but can't see how to improve it in the time and space available.

So - just one more to go, then the exam looms on the horizon.

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