Knowledge Sharing of Postechians: Educational Manual for General Chemistry
Knowledge Sharing of Postechians: Educational Manual for General Chemistry
  • Reporter Kwon Woo-jung
  • 승인 2013.05.01 00:00
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Four undergraduate students, Kim Seungsoo (CHEM 10), Youn HyungJun (CHEM 10), Lee Changmin (CHEM 10), Chung Seyoung (CHEM 10), wrote a great educational manual for general Chemistry. They all entered POSTECH’s Chemistry undergraduate department in 2010. The book about which they wrote the handbook is titled Principles of Modern Chemistry, which is a famous chemistry textbook used by most of universities. In order to know how and why they tried this manual, The Postech Times asked them some questions.
Why did you make this general chemistry manual?
SMP (Student Mentoring Program) was the major motive which made us to start to write this manual. As all of us participate in this mentoring program teaching freshmen chemistry, we were able to figure out which parts of chemistry most students have problems with. Also, asked to learn a great amount of knowledge in a short period of time in the class, there was an obviously huge gap between those who had already learned those materials before and those who had not. Thus, as senior students, we decided to make something that can be informative for those who are taking Chemistry now. At just the right time, the Knowledge Sharing Contest was held. That motivated us to make a team of four people and prepare the manual for the contest.
What kinds of difficulties did you have while making this manual?
First of all, it was hard to adjust the amount of the materials. At the beginning, we intended to fill with somewhat brief and concise explanations. However, it ended up being 160-page detailed handbook. Also, choosing the most concise and straight forward expression was very difficult. Since the materials we were dealing with were complicated chemistry contents, we had to explain those in a simpler way. Another tough part was that all the work was done by computer, which came with more limitations than expected. For example, we could not draw or edit the pictures by hand; thus, some sketches by hands had to be scanned in order to be put in the handbook.
Do you have any suggestion for students using this handbook?
Even with this hand book, it is still important to read the original textbook thoroughly. It is not only because students need to improve English abilities for further studying but also the textbook is the only thing that covers all the material students should know.

This handbook they made was awarded the first prize in the Knowledge Sharing Contest and uploaded on the internet for other students to use. Professor Changill Ban (CHEM) said, “The quality of the explanations of this handbook are so great that it is hard to believe undergraduate students made it.”
This manual is available at JiSik Nanum of Center for Excellence in Education.