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A Level Chemistry

On a scale of 1 to 10 exactly how hard is chemistry? Also, why is it considered so hard by loads of people?? What aspects of it are difficult? Is it the amount of learning or is it that people cannot understand it?

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Reply 1

Excalibur

I personally didn't find AS that difficult - I was prepared for something impossible, considering the number of people who told me it was difficult and the number of people at my school who failed. But it's OK if you put the work in. Some of the concepts take a while to get your head around, so you'd have to work to get those into your head (people who never get their head around will find Chemistry seemingly impossible). There's also a fair amount of memorisation to do, like industrial processes, organic reactions, trends and patterns, etc.

The good thing with Chemistry is that once you understand the concepts, there isn't as much rote learning - you can apply the same kind of knowledge to lots of things (e.g. the concept of charge density of an atom can be applied to their solubility, reactivity, thermal stability, strength of bonds etc). With Biology, on the other hand, there is a huge amount of rote-learning to do which just has to be learnt, and you cannot get away with applied knowledge from elsewhere. In that respect I found Chemistry easier; also because the questions are more predictable than Biology, and you can usually guess the points that the marks are allocated to, unlike the randomness and utter shambles that is a Biology mark scheme!

Reply 2

mercexe

Chemistry is fine if you have an excellent memory and can rote-memorise all of the stupid and pointless and uninteresting and boring and ridiculous and long equations and mechanisms and then regurgitate them like a parrot in the exam.

I'd rank AS Chemistry as about 5/10 (not too hard at all) and A2 Chemistry as 9/10 (if you have a crap memory like me).

Reply 3

mercexe

My above post was probably a little critical. I'm just ****ed off with Chemistry right now, probably because I have only done about 20 minutes of revision for my synoptic exam tomorrow. Yes, I know that is my fault and not Chemistry's fault (although Chemistry could have been more helpful by being a little more interesting). :p:

Reply 4

K!&R@N

Thanks for that! I do have a good memory, well sort of, so that part should be fine! However, i'm not a fan of chemistry but need it for my career, is it hard or even impossible if you don't exactly enjoy it that much?

Reply 5

mercexe

K!&R@N

As long as you are willing to spend time learning the content then it should be fine. All depends how motivated you are.

Reply 6

Excalibur

I'm not particularly a devotee of Chemistry either. I enjoy it reasonably, probably because I can do the questions and it's quite logical. But I don't think I have fundamental interest in Chemistry or anything, not like how I'm interested in Biology or German. It's not necessary for it to be your favourite subject in the world, but you should really enjoy it to an extent because it'll just become a chore otherwise.

Reply 7

K!&R@N

mercexe

As long as you are willing to spend time learning the content then it should be fine. All depends how motivated you are.

That's good coz i am extremely determined to get an A/B in GCE Chemistry and am more than willing to put the work in! By the way, how much of a leap is it from GCSE Double Award Science?

Reply 8

mercexe

K!&R@N

That's good coz i am extremely determined to get an A/B in GCE Chemistry and am more than willing to put the work in! By the way, how much of a leap is it from GCSE Double Award Science?

I did separate Sciences at GCSE, but for me the leap from GCSE to AS was nothing at all really. However, I found the leap from AS to A2 :eek:

Reply 9

pinkrules

last year i found it easy due to havin a brilleint teacher now i hate it i find it so hard a2 due to crap teacher! but iv heard that chemistry is one of the hardest a level subjects so if u can do it .. u must be a genis or somfin

Reply 10

leonkurosaki

check the AQA unit 4,5,6 thread, 60% of ppl are pulling their hair out and are about to lose their will to live , me included

Reply 11

Oh Dear...

Its a big step up from GCSE...

Its my hardest subject. Its very specific with what the mark scheme wants, and there seems to be no scope, unlike Biology... So wording plays a factor...

Id say 7/10...

But with everything, what you put in, is what you get out...

Unless your like me and make cumulative errors, and therefore dont get what you should... Lol...

Reply 12

Peelark

Chemistry, for me, is by FAR the hardest subject I've taken.

I took geography, maths, physics and chemistry for AS level and got A in the first three, then a high B in chemistry.
That shocked me good, as I realised I actually had to do some WORK to get a top grade!
I'd rank AS chemistry a good 7/10 in difficulty, and A2 is probably about an 8/10, but there's just SO much to LEARN! Understanding has got me so far (to the point where my Physics/maths revision was minimal, just flicking over topics) but it just doesn't take you all the way in chemistry.
No level of understanding will tell you what colour a Cr²⁺ ion becomes when you add ammonia to it!
(it's a blue precipitate, if anybody's interested :p:

)

Reply 13

SaturdayGirl

ARGH!!!! Chemistry (at present) is ridiculously hard for me...

Found AS fine and got high As in all modules with little revision. AQA module 4 was fine too; but module 5 and synoptic... WTF?!?! Must say I'm one of these people who prefers exams that actually test your understanding of the subject rather than how much you can recite... and being a hopeless dyslexic I can recite very little! Spent all last night learning the stupid colours only to find they don't appear much in past papers.

Reply 14

arpeggio

For AS I'd say 7/10... it's do-able if you put the work in. I can't speak for A2 as I haven't done it yet. The little bit of A2 work we've done after our exams is a mixture of being not too bad and being completely :eek:

ish. Although maybe that's because I've sort of switched off in all my lessons and have no motivation whatsoever. But seriously, Born-Haber cycles?! And to think I was planning on doing Chemistry AEA :s-smilie:

Reply 15

Swyn

If you have a good teacher it's probably easier, but at the moment I'd say at least 8/10.

Reply 16

K!&R@N

Thanks for all those comments and from the looks of things i'll have to work extremely hard to succeed! From what the posts have suggested chemistry is difficult but i would now also like to know whether it is boring or interesting?

Reply 17

Sir Spanky

Chemistry is known as one of the harder A-levels.

Reply 18

Hana88

I would say 8/10
There's a lot to learn, but not only that, once you've learned the stuff you have to know how to apply it well to different situations. A good memory helps a lot . . . not like me that i'm so bloody crap to memorize stuff . . . i need to memorize everything the night before to make sure is still in my head for the next day, and also an EXCELLENT teacher helps a lot!. Not like me that i had a crap teacher (out of about 20 people in AS, only 5 of us passed with decent grades (i mean, above C)

Reply 19

leedsmedic_07

well wen u start AS it can be a daunting 8/10. but by the time u get to A2

AS seems like a paltry 2/10. whilst some of the A2 can be difficult so overall

8/10.

mind u when u finish alevels people usually look back and think that was quite easy why couldnt i get that. just the way things are i suppose.