Intro to Chem and Bio Engineering

Description of Course Goals and Curriculum

Basic course in engineering calculations for material balances, phase equilibria, energy balances, etc. Precursor to thermo for CBEs

Learning From Classroom Instruction

Lectures aren’t meant to teach you concepts as Dr. Brynildsen expects you to learn from the book and to come to class with questions and to do problems for practice applying concepts you’re supposed to pick up from the reading. Thus, it is essential that you complete readings assigned ahead of lectures and come to class with at least a basic understanding of the material and questions to clarify anything you don’t understand or you won’t be able to get much out of lecture.

Learning For and From Assignments

Like you’ll find out if you take any further CBE courses, most of the learning is done from doing the pset problems which are often lengthy and individually take a long time to complete. If you have no background from the reading, these will be very hard to do and you’ll get stuck/waste a lot of time stuck on something. Once you get the hang of the psets though, they do a reasonably good job of preparing you for the exams as they’ll teach you a problem solving skillset for approaching balances which makes up the majority of the course. Just make sure to go over the reading, example problems, and psets before the exams and don’t be fooled into thinking they’re easy just because it’s open book.

External Resources

Again, as you’ll learn if you take any further CBE classes, psets take a lot of time and you can’t expect to just complete them the night before they’re due. I would start to develop the habit of going to office hours to start and mostly complete your psets as it just makes it much more efficient. If you get stuck on something, you can quickly get help and keep moving rather than spending a lot of time stuck in one place when a quick hint from a TA can solve you problem.

What Students Should Know About This Course For Purposes Of Course Selection

This is a problem-solving heavy course that does not require much chemistry or biology knowledge but rather, requires fast math skills (e.g. setting up equations, solving systems, etc). If you develop good study habits early on however, it isn’t a very difficult course to do well in, its just a bit of a shock coming off of your senior year in high school when you probably barely did any work.