Buddhadev Sen Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Analytical Chemistry Course for Chemistry Majors
T h e Chemistry Department of the Louisiana State University is presently reorienting its undergraduate majors' program. The process of reorient.ation was initiated about three years ago and was progressively phased from the freshman to t,he senior level. This article describes the undergraduate qnantitative analytical chemical course that is being developed and the basic philosophy for such a course. It is expected that the great variety in the course will be stimulating to the student and will provide him with first, hand experience in the principal analytical operations, and conditions under which they may be profitably exploited. The course is designed to produce a scientist capable of planning and executing a scheme of analysis for a given chemical analytical problem. The primary objective of any course revision is to modernize and upgrade it so as to minimize the distance between the substance of the course offering and contemporary ideas and practice. The problem in attaining t,his objective is due to two irreconcilable conditions. The growth of human knowledge is an exponential function of time, whereas the time available for formal academic and professional learning has remained more or less constant over the centuries. Quite obviously the extent of learnedness cannot he absolute or whole; it is relative and may be expressed by an identity such as: Learnedness quot,ient =
Knowledge acquired
