Surviving AP Chemistry

AP Chemistry is the second AP science class I have taken and in some ways the two are similar. In both classes you go into in depth detail of concepts covered in the regular classes, and the material always seems harder than it actually is. The first science AP course that I took was AP biology and it can be compared to AP chemistry, difficulty wise at least.

When it comes to AP chemistry it is important to understand the main concepts, and then know how to provide evidence for them. Especially with the free response questions, you need to explain concepts and what they are. It is alright if you don’t remember all of the specifics because if you show that you have a general understanding of the correct answer, you will typically get the point. However, typically the multiple choice section of the tests could test you on some of the details.

With this class if you don’t understand what you did wrong, it is important to go back and look at it. This is because you will be tested on the basic concepts of the class; so if you don’t know it, you are missing a major objective of the class.

Currently in our class we are learning about net ionic equations. The thing I struggle most about these is that you are going to need to know the details. Because in these equations they could give you the name of the ion and you are going to have to identify what it is and what its charge is. So, in this class it is important to both know the overall concept with some exceptions where the smaller details are important.

Lab reports are going to be a part of your grade in this class and here are some tips for surviving them:

1.      Listen to directions. As long as you include everything that the teacher wants you to include, you should get the majority of the points available.

2.      Turn it in on time. If you struggle with these, you don’t want to lose even more points because it is late.

3.      Make them neat and organized. You worked hard on these; you are going to want your teacher to be able to understand them.

4.      Don’t stress about them too much. All they are is just a summary of what you did in the lab. Just explain what you did, the results you got, and why or why not those results make sense. As long as you know those things, the lab report is a piece of cake.

Helpful Tip: Don’t get too far behind in this class; there is a lot to cover and not a lot of time to do so.

Word count: 458