Feb 2001

Symposium 2001:Green Chemistry

28th and 29th April The Open University, Walton Hall

Featuring: Dr David R. William Cardiff University Dr Nicholas Leadbeater King’s College, London Prof. Ken Seddon Queen’s, Belfast Dr Mike Lancaster York University Dr Lesley Smart Open University Dr Adrian Dobbs Exeter University See inside for more details.

Chemistry on FirstClass

By Kathie Yeowell

Are you aware that there are specific OUSA Chemistry conferences on the OU’s computer conferencing facility, FIRSTCLASS? So, if you’re interested in these but haven’t been able to find them, then here is a very simple guide (with apologies to anyone who already knows where to find them) to both finding those conferences that are of interest to you and setting them up to appear on your desktop. So, let’s start by logging in to the Desktop. Here’s my desktop when I log in to FIRSTCLASS:

Clicking on the Open University icon gives the following screen:

Double Clicking on the Science Icon gives the following screen:

Don’t worry, we’re nearly there now. From here the Sci-ence Chat conference is a general chat conference for anyone who is inter-ested in Science, the Science Course Info Centre is the place to post any question you may have concerning current or future Science Courses and for a specific enquiry, the Science En-quiry Office has a form set up with which you can send such a query di-rectly to the Science Department. We will now select the Sci Courses Con-ferences and double clicking on the icon gives the following screen:

From here the OUSA Science Room gives access to the course specific sci-ence courses within the OUSA study rooms conference. We will now se-lect OUSA Chemistry by double clicking the Icon and here are the OUSA Chemistry conferences. Now that you’ve found the confer-ences you might decide that it would be easier to put them on your Desktop to avoid all the navigation required each time you want to read or contrib-ute. This really is very handy and saves an awful lot of navigation. To do this, select the conference you wish to add to your Desktop by single clicking with the mouse. For demon-stration purposes I’ve chosen to add the OUSA Chem Physical conference (and yes, I do realise it’s not running next year) to my Desktop:

Then select the Edit menu. From this select Add and then choose Add to Desktop. NB. If you are using the 5.6 version of FirstClass, this has changed but can be completed by choosing the Conferencing menu, add and then Add to Desktop. The confer-ence can now be found on the Desk-top as shown below:

As you can see the Icon has been added to my Desktop, however it is not where I would like it to appear. So all that is now needed is to use the mouse to drag the icon to the desired position.

You can of course add as many con-ferences as you wish in this way. It’s simple to delete them too. Just select the conference with a single click of the mouse, choose the File menu and then delete. If you currently do not have access to FirstClass or just simply want to know more about it, then why not try the excellent, FC Guru website. This can be found at http://www-emerg.open.ac.uk/fcguru/

Marx and The Theory of Values “The substitution of one value for another, is here effected by the creation of new value.” Das Kapital, Part 3, Chapter VIII Frank Hollis

Eh! What on Earth is Frank going on about now? What’s Karl Marx got to do with chemistry? Well, nothing di-rectly. But stick with me for a mo-ment. How many of understand the Substitu-tion rule that the OU uses to calculate the final continuous assessment score on many of its courses? No, I mean really understand. Hmmm, not a lot of hands up. It’s my experience that most students (and nearly all tutors) find the calcula-tions involved to be more difficult than anything found outside a 3rd level maths course.

Well, not any more. OU student Paul Warren has written a cute little pro-gram that does all of those calcula-tions. And he’s called that program—Marx (a-ha). You can either run the program straight from the Web, or download a copy that will run from your desktop. Either way, the program is very sim-ple to use. All you need do is select the relevant course and year, then enter the results you’ve got for your assignments and exam. Of course, you already know your grade by the time you’ve got that info. But Marx allows you to play

‘What if” with your marks. So you can figure out just what mark you need for the final TMA to get that Distinction (assuming you can get 85% in the exam). While this program can be useful—it’s not officially sanctioned. So Paul warns students to get in touch with the University if there are matters related to substitution that could seriously affect your study. Also on Paul’s Web site is the first version of his new program—LeninGrad which calculates your hon-ours degree level from your course grades.

Phew! Am I glad I handed in that attempt at TMA 02. Check out: http://www.westnet.u-net.com/

This meeting was held in Birmingham and was fairly well attended by over 30 of the university chemistry socie-ties. It’s main theme this year was the problems student societies are experi-encing in starting up, the yearly hand-ing over to new committees and mem-bership as well as general apathy in attending any event organised. I am afraid that the only problem we have in common with these societies is the general apathy among student these days and even here we are streets ahead as well because our students are already stretched by running homes, working and studying part time. The others are amazed we exist at all. The general programme was for the younger student so here I felt a little superfluous as we started with a pres-entation on the skills required for em-ployment. There was a short session

on What does the RSC do? At the end of this it was quite clear that between us all we did know most of the func-tions of the RSC although the main one does seem to be accreditation of courses and work done in the develop-ment of careers. The next few sessions were on what the RSC thought it could do for student chemical socie-ties and asking if there was anything else we thought would be a good idea. Here was where the differences be-tween the OU and everyone else showed the most but I do hope I have managed to make a difference for us in the future. Now I was unaware that all new chemistry student receive in-troduction packs from the RSC in standard universities. They did won-der why we had so few student members of the RSC in our midst considering out size. So if

they did listen to me hopefully all new second level chemistry student should receive information about join-ing the RSC in the second mailing in 2002. Now any one wishing to join the RSC as a student member it is £12 this year. The other thing that I am hoping they will change is that on the form you need a department heads signature. I suggested this be replaced for OU students. As they are going to revamp all the paper work in the near future it was felt this could be done. It may well be able to be circumnavi-gated by calling the RSC and asking if they would accept another form of proof of studentship. They did seem keen to help us in any way. Now who would like to go and repre-sent us next year? Janet Smith.

RSC Student Chemical Society Conference 2000

President Ruth Williams 5 Devonshire Place Exeter EX4 6JA

Chair Valerie Rutherford 4 Wright Way Newstevenson Motherwell ML1 4LB

Secretary Pat Wilson 106 Coronation Road Southville Bristol B53 1AX hpw2@student.open.ac.uk

Membership Paul Everett 14 Masefield Road Droylsden Manchester M43 6QR pe2@student.open.ac.uk

Publicity Kathie Yeowell 4 Bevil Court Hoddesdon Herts. EN11 9LX kmy6@student.open.ac.uk

Marketing Carol Houghton 385 Liverpool Road Hough Green Widnes

TouchPaper Frank Hollis 92 Little Pynchons Harlow Essex CM18 7DE fjh4@tutor.open.ac.uk

Treasurer &Events Debby Deputy 71 Allerton Road Woolton Liverpool L25 7RF dmd26@student.open.ac.uk

Revision Weekend Carole Arnold 51 Paddock Lane Halifax HX2 ONT ca22@tutor.open.ac.uk

Region 02 Jan Williams Kempsford Cottage Steeple Aston Oxon.OX6 3AR

Region 04 Denise Ingram Aston University Birmingham B4 7ET d.s.ingram@aston.ac.uk

Region 07/08 Margaret Lister 21 Elston Place Selby Y08 OES

Region 06 Janet Smith 27 Fairford Crescent Downhead Park Milton Keynes MK15 9AJ jes39@student.open.ac.uk

Region 10 Jan Davidge 19 St Mary’s Close Griffithstown Pontypool Torfaen NP4 5LS

Region 11 Valerie Rutherford 4 Wright Way Newstevenson Motherwell ML1 4LB Valerie@avrutherford.co.uk Colchester Revision Pat Moye 28 Hickory Ave Colchester Essex CO4 3NZ Moyegold@ntlworld.com

Who’s Who in OUCS

Revision Events OUCS run four Revision Events. At each one there will be tutors covering all of the chemistry courses being offered in 2000. In addition the Revision Weekend at York will cover S269, S207 and S281. The York Weekend runs from 28th to 30th September and costs from £125 to £155. One day events will be held on 15th September. The cost for each of these will be about £35. Further details from: York: Carole Arnold Colchester Pat Moye Bristol: Jan Davidge Glasgow: Val Rutherford All addresses are on the back page of this issue of Touch-Paper. Please include an SAE (two for York) and a £5 deposit if you wish to secure a place.

Membership Renewals Many people will be coming to the end of their member-ship if they took advantage of our special three-year rate when it was first introduced. This is just a quick reminder to check if yours is one of them.

TouchPaper Editor Required

After over four years of putting TouchPaper together I’ve decided that I’ve run out of ideas, motivation, patience, impetus and time. So it’s time for somebody else to take over the post of Editor. I know that many people have had their complaints over the last two years. So here’s their chance to show how the job can be done properly. If anybody would like more details as to what’s involved then please contact me—Frank Hollis