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First ever chemistry essay - referencing?!

Hi,

I'm a humanities graduate on an Access to Science course - so while I'm no stranger to essays and Harvard referencing, I'm feeling clueless!

I have to write 1500 words on the following:

- describe the structure of the nucleus from an atom of my choice
- describe the subatomic particles
- outline how electrons are involved in the formation of bonds between different atoms to make molecules.

What books/online sources would you recommend? I've emailed my tutor but all she said was A level text books...

Is referencing in a chemistry essay the same as in normal essays? I've always been told that for every 100 or so words there should be a reference. But this was at degree level and for English-based degrees.

Any help would be much appreciated!
Reply 1
Avatar for AH127
AH127
12
One cheat-ish way is to go to relevant wikipedia pages and look through all of their sources, and mix those in with whatever comes up on Google. When it comes to referencing, there's a website called https://www.refme.com/ that has a lot of different types of referencing stored and you can just put the name of a book, or a link to an article, journal etc. in. If you're not sure which type of referencing to use, maybe ask your lecturer/tutor/whoever assigned it to you? No idea if any of this will help, I'm terrible at essays.
Original post by AH127
One cheat-ish way is to go to relevant wikipedia pages and look through all of their sources, and mix those in with whatever comes up on Google. When it comes to referencing, there's a website called https://www.refme.com/ that has a lot of different types of referencing stored and you can just put the name of a book, or a link to an article, journal etc. in. If you're not sure which type of referencing to use, maybe ask your lecturer/tutor/whoever assigned it to you? No idea if any of this will help, I'm terrible at essays.


Thanks - I may look on Wiki and see what sources come up! Any idea how many sources would be expected for a 1500 word essay?
Reply 3
Avatar for AH127
AH127
12
Original post by thtgreeneyedgirl
Thanks - I may look on Wiki and see what sources come up! Any idea how many sources would be expected for a 1500 word essay?


It looks like it's more of an informative piece than anything you'd have to add much of your own knowledge to, so I assume it'll be more about how you word it and get the information across than how well you cite sources or how many sources you use, but 1500 words isn't a lot, so I don't think they'll be expecting you have too many sources just yet; especially if she's only told you to use the A-level textbook. If you wanted to know for sure though, I'm sure your tutor wouldn't mind you asking.
If you want to understand the stuff before you write about it, chemguide is pretty good, but I don't think it's exactly a reliable source.
Reply 5
Avatar for alow
alow
19
Take a look at the Journal of Chemical Education, they have loads of papers that explain basic concepts very well.

Also, if you're going to be writing any chemical equations or maths, use LaTeX\LaTeX or it'll look like ****.

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