Atomic and Molecular Structure
taught by G. Sundar
Firstly, being taught in a tutorial class of 30-40 students is vastly different compared to being taught in an LTC of 500 first years for Chemistry I. This course, a pre-CDC, is supposed to be an introduction to quantum chemistry, but we covered (and probably learned) more than we did in our quantum chemistry CDC. The professor’s knowledge in the field is plainly obvious and his pedagogical methods aren’t like most other classes in BITS. Questions were posed to us and, though the material was tough to digest (and the questions seemed too tough to answer), once the answer was provided you would wonder how you failed to get something so simple. It showed most of us had pretty poor concepts (or a poor ability to link concepts).
There is a lot of maths involved (it’s quantum chemistry after all) and most of it is pretty involved (not to mention very tough to understand and boring at times). But, the professor managed to present the subject in a fluid manner, accompanied with a great sense of humour and a focus on concepts and learning (rather than marks). Most of the test papers featured questions that required you to apply yourself [The answers were always short, most of our time was spent figuring it out – if you could], with a small part consisting of numericals [As opposed to most other BITSian examinations where upto 90% of the paper will be formulaic number-crunching]. Seeing our enthusiasm (I guess?), we were also given an additional assignment, but none of us had the smallest idea where to start the assignment from and in the end, no one submitted it.