Dear ChE 313 students,

Greetings. First, I wanted to share one of my suggestions with those of you who weren't at the review session. When I create the problems for the final, I'm going to look at the objectives listed on the course syllabus. My questions will be designed to help me measure if you have learned the material listed in the objectives. I'll have to be selective, of course, but that's a starting point. If you need a copy of the syllabus, stop by.

Second, I owe you all a decision about what material you can bring to the final. I've decided that it will be open-book, open-notes. Despite that flexibility, I encourage you to collect some main ideas together onto a piece of paper. As you may have learned before, it's hard to find everything in the text on short notice. There will be enough time to do the exam if you have a reasonable grasp on the material. If you don't know the material and figure you can learn it on the spot from the book, then I don't expect the exam will go too well.

Third, I thought I should share an individual answer that I just sent concerning the project.

> I have a brief question about the write up for the second project. Would you > like me to discuss the potential method of doing all the calculations by hand > or rather simply discuss the method I actually used, which was all done on the > preos.xls file.

My response:

I'm looking for something more than "I used the preos.xls file." Explain what the spreadsheet was doing: what kind of results did it give you, why were they right (did it have to make a decision? how did it?), etc.

The idea is that you need to inspire confidence that the method you used was correct. It's possible to use a spreadsheet incorrectly, after all, and that's one reason that "I used the spreadsheet" isn't enough.

If a hand calculation helps, that's fine. Do whatever you think is necessary to explain why your answer is correct from a thermodynamic perspective.

Hope this helps, Prof. Greenfield

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