General and Inorganic Chemistry

The course aims to provide the foundational knowledge necessary to approach other chemistry-related and professionalizing courses within the degree program with scientific rigor and method. Students will study the structure of the atom based on quantum mechanics principles, study the theory of intramolecular and intermolecular chemical bonding, and analyze chemical processes through balancing chemical equations and stoichiometric calculations in moles. Furthermore, students will quantitatively analyze aqueous solutions by studying: dissociation equilibria of acids and bases, buffer systems, acid-base titrations, hydrolysis reactions of inorganic salts, and electrochemical processes.
Students will acquire a solid understanding of general and inorganic chemistry topics, with specific references and applications to enological chemistry.

Students will verify the acquired competencies by solving exercises of varying difficulty levels. Additionally, some of the acquired skills, such as chemical equilibrium, solution pH, buffer solutions, acid-base titrations, and oxidation-reduction potentials, will be practically verified by students through laboratory experiments. Critical thinking abilities will be developed through collective and individual exercises and the analysis of practical laboratory cases, where students will need to describe their observations, process data, and draw conclusions that either agree or disagree with theoretical knowledge. Moreover, students will develop the ability to predict cause-and-effect correlations of chemical variations in aqueous solutions (e.g., the effect of concentration changes on the shift of a chemical equilibrium, the pH of an aqueous solution, or the redox potential).