I just sat a Higher Chemistry assessment and I think I missed full marks by 1 because of a question I'm sure must have been wrong, or because I didn't study enough. looking for some help from some *actual* chemists.
What is this CH3CH2CH2OCH3 called? It's definitely not a Ketone, or at least It shouldn't be, and it's not an ester. It's one of the products of a CH2 insertion at the Hydrogen on the Hydroxyl group in propan-1-ol, but I had to draw it and name it and I guessed and wrote butan-1-one even though I know that is probably wrong.
>>5025 Not got an answer for you OP. What difference does it make if you get full marks or all but one of the marks? This seems like an unhealthy attitude to take towards an exam, fretting over insignificant details.
TSR might help if we don't, someone may have already made a thread about it. I fucking hate TSR, by the way.
I'm ridiculously hard on myself because the way I see it if I can't handle the work at this level, then Uni will destroy me. Getting 29 out of 30 is quite annoying, more than anything, from a perfectionist stand point. If I had gotten 28 or less I wouldn't have cared quite as much, though I would have still been internally disheartened and went home and mercilessly beat my fiance.
>>5025 No actual chemist uses the systematic name for any but the simplest of compounds. Walk into a lab and you won't find any propanone, you'll find acetone; you won't find any diethyl ether, you'll find ether. It's simply not worth rewriting the textbooks for standard reagents any chemist is familiar with. Furthermore, when chemists synthesise molecules with tens or hundreds of functional groups they aren't gonna arse about with a name hundreds of characters long, it's gonna be called something short and sweet (aspirin, procaine, NanoBalletDancer (pic related)).
What I'm saying is if you're studying a chemistry degree and they put any emphasis at all on systematic names, it's not a serious chemistry degree. Systematic names are mark-farming for A-level students, nothing else.
See, we were talking about this the other day and decided it was a fucking farce due to the prescriptive nature of the marking scheme for Highers and A levels that you can answer a question 100% correctly using all the correct context and descriptions, but if you don't use the word they are looking for you get it wrong.
>>5035 Yeah, that is definitely the weakest point of Chemistry at that level. It's easy marks that doesn't require any deep understanding which is great for weaker students bumping up their grade, but unfair to those that have greater understanding but poor exam/study techniques.
Physics A-level is worse though, so many questions require to the state the obvious, it is far too qualitative in general and few quantitative parts are too simple and rely on marks for silly things like using an arbitrary prescribed number of decimal places that has no basis in any kind of uncertainty analysis. I tutor students at A-level physics and feel very confident in my understanding, however I would not get full marks in an exam for not knowing the specific blindingly obvious point the examiners are looking for in an explanation question.