Syllabus
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Syllabus

Instructor: William McKean	Teaching Assistant: NA
Office: 318 Bloedel Hall	Office:
Office Hours:	Office Hours:
wmckean@u.washington.edu
Phone:206 543-1626	Phone:

Course Description

This course will introduce you to the fascinating (really) world of natural products chemistry. You'll begin with the basics: the chemicals that make up plants. We will learn about cellulose, hemicelluloses, lignin and extractive compounds. By the middle of the course you'll actually know what these terms mean. What is new in this class this year is that we will be discussing the chemicals found in not only the wood, but also the bark and foliage. Additionally, we will look into what happens to these chemicals when the plant is degraded by microorganisms. The class meets for a 50 minute lecture three days a week. Although this is a lecture class, a significant amount of class participation is encouraged.

Chemistry 237 or Chemistry 335 is a necessary prerequisite for the class. It is assumed that the student has obtained an understanding of simple carbohydrate chemistry so that only a cursory review will be needed. This is especially the case with chemistry of monosaccharides.

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Assignments and Grading

All of the lectures and readings will be available to the students on the web well before class time. I expect that all the students will have looked through the lecture notes and and done the reading before class. Class time will hopefully be used more as a discussion and exercise time time rather than as a lecture time. Of course there will still be quite a bit of lecturing coming from the instructor because he can't help himself. Since the lecture notes are available to the students as powerpoint slides, it would be an excellent idea for the students to bring a copy of the slides to take notes on. Although I attempt to include as much information as I can on the slides, they still are mainly an outline of the lecture. I will be providing you with lots of information in class that you will want to include with your notes.

Tests

There will be two exams each covering a third of the course given during the quarter each accounting for 15% of the final grade. There will also be a two part final exam which will account for 30% of the grade. One half of the final will cover the last third of the quarter and the other half will be a comprehensive type exam. Make-up examinations will be given only in cases of documented illness or emergency.

Homework

For each day of class, you will be given (posted on the web site) a very short class assignment which will be due by the next class. Overall there should be 25 of these assignments but lat year we only had 15. These will be graded. These class assignments will account for 25% of your grade. There will also be occasional lengthier homework assignments which will account for the remaining 15% of the final grade. The course assignments and homeworks are designed to make you think about what I am trying to teach you so their purpose is to help you learn not give me something to grade.

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Readings

We do not have a text book for this class. Past classes have complained enough about the text book we were using: Wood Chemistry, Fundamentals and Applications by Sjostrom. Most of the students said it was too hard to understand and they didn't use it much. For each class, the readings for each lecture are listed in the schedule section of the web site. I will do my best to make sure that the readings are put on the site at least a week before I expect you to read them. These references will come from several sources: 1. web sites with links in the powerpoint slides, 2. Readings from reserve books, and mainly pdf files in accessible through library references..

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Other Information

If you would like to request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact Disabled Student Services, 448 Schmitz, (206) 543-8924 (V/TTY). If you have a letter from Disabled Students Services indicating that you have a disability that requires academic accommodations, please present the letter to me so we can discuss the accommodations you might need for the class.

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Last Update:
09/20/05

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