Physics for Chemistry

I am going to study chemistry at univeristy. I did/ am doing Chemistry maths and biology as a levels. I have heard that there is a lot of physics in a chemistry degree, so a few questions;

1. How disadvantaged will i be because I didn't take physics?
2. If so are there any books you would suggest to help strengthen my physics knowledge in order to prepare for uni?
3. Will not taking physics a level really disadvantage me that much past the first year of uni (assuming I understand the first year material) and will it stop me going into physical chemistry which I have read into and really like?

Reply 1

LGrosvenor101

Hey,

I am in EXACTLY the same position as you! What universities have you applied to/got offers from? As many universities acknowledge that not everyone does physics/maths on top of chemistry, so they usually have 'Maths/Physics for Chemists' modules :biggrin:

Reply 2

LL'94

Nice to meet another non physicsing chemist.

I have offers from UCL, Imperial and Bristol and an interview at Sheff, how about you?

Reply 3

Olibert

I did physics at A-Level and aced it.

I'm blown if I understand what some of the physics-ey stuff I've been studying in chemistry means.

Reply 4

LL'94

So what do you mean by that?

Reply 5

Olibert

If you can do maths, you can do the physics side of chemistry. Don't be fooled, the physics side of things is very small compared to the chemistry side of things. Obviously this will differ from university to university and from personal opinions. In my opinion the most physic-ey thing I've had to do is about wave functions, molecular orbital theory, quantum chemistry and some others (can't name them off the top of my head). Maths will give you a good grounding in these subjects. I did maths and physics and have faired a lot better than some of my friends on the course who did neither of them. But out of the two, maths is the biggy.

Reply 6

LGrosvenor101

Original post by LL'94

Nice to meet another non physicsing chemist.

I have offers from UCL, Imperial and Bristol and an interview at Sheff, how about you?

Hey

I have offers from Warwick, Birmingham and Keele, and interviews at Southampton (this Thursday!) and Imperial in January! Please may I ask how your Imperial interview went, in terms of structure rather than content? I am so much better at inorganic and physical chemistry compared to organic, so I am dreading whether they ask me about organic! And congrats for Imperial! What are they offering? :biggrin:

Reply 7

EierVonSatan

Some elements of chemistry at university are more like physics than what most people expect, so it can throw people off guard. That's not to say there is a huge amount of physics in chemistry. An understanding of certain physics topics past GCSE is helpful, but not having an A-level in physics is not crippling. Physics at university level is heavily intertwined with maths and so if you have A-level maths, that's more important in my humble opinion.

At the end of first year, everyone should be at the same sort of level and the A-level subjects you did previously will fade into the distance :yep:

Reply 8

LL'94

Yeah the imperial interview was tough (i got offered aaa)

Mine was organic based but t hats because i talked quite a bit about organic on my personal statement, if you talked about inorganic/physical on your PS then maybe they will cover that.
As for content it was basically one big question session, it went through things like polymers, intermolecular bonds and bond geometry.

The level of difficulty wasn't that bad tbh, just don't panick and you will porbably be fine

Reply 9

Bradshaw

I'd definitely agree that Maths is much more important than physics (although Physics will be useful). That said, although my degree course is called chemistry I can't think of a single lecture course that's been Chemistry this year (it's all physics).