Inorganic Woes...

Sigh... UCLA teaching of Inorganic is really bad. I hope that this problem is contained to the lower levels like my module.

I keep hearing half-filled shells as a reason for justification of various anomalies.

For fuck's sake! There is nothing magical about half-filled shells! It's the comparative analysis of the electron repulsion, within the same orbital, between the different principal quantum shells, between the subshells, etc... that is responsible for the anomalous trends in the periodic table! Half-filled shells is an easy answer that is at the fucking A-level standard!!! It explains nothing!!!

And tonight review session was also equally hopeless. Sigh... Year 3 students the class is made up of, and we're still asking questions on what is a Covalent, Metallic, Ionic and Macromolecular Solid? WTF have these Americans been learning in Chemistry? No wonder the prof remarked at the start that many students have the misconception that Chemistry is only about Organic Chemistry.

And for the record, I don't think the prof went through Solid State Chemistry. I think maybe he's gonna skip it considering that we spent an obsessive amount of time on MO Theory and Symmetry. Granted... those are not easy concepts for beginners... but this is ridiculous! Trust me, Solid State Chemistry is way harder than both combined together. I still can't visualize close-packed structures off-the-hook just lidat...

And so if he did went through Solid State Chemistry, I expect the class to be frantically bombarding questions about that... which nobody is. So my guess it's not in the exam...