A2 chemistry

Hi!

I've just started A2 too and although I don't do chemistry I'm feeling the exact same way with law. I had a lesson a few hours ago and I felt like I had never studied then subject in my entire life. I'm sure everything will come back to you though. Make sure you spend a few hours a week going over your AS stuff so it sticks.

Good luck!

Hey all so I did AS chemistry and got an A in my mock at the end of the year ( new specification so linear exams ) and I haven't touched chemistry over the summer and today I had an A2 lesson on thermodynamics and born haber ad I totally had no idea what was going on .. like I was so confused I felt dumb as hell. Is this normal to feel like you leave the lesson not really knowing stuff at A2? Is it perhaps A2 takes more independence and that the teachers are only supposed to introduce the topic ? Or maybe it's because I havent touched chemistry in a while but I mean this is the first time this has happened to me. ( first week back ) but like yeah I'm worried so any real advice On why I'm feeling like I've never done dop of chemistry in my life , is A2 really that much different ???

I felt like this nearly every chemistry lesson - do a brief bit of reading before every lesson so you grasp the idea of the lesson quicker so it's not a waste of time.

I mention brief - don't study the whole lesson in advance as you'll have nothing to do.

Hey all so I did AS chemistry and got an A in my mock at the end of the year ( new specification so linear exams ) and I haven't touched chemistry over the summer and today I had an A2 lesson on thermodynamics and born haber ad I totally had no idea what was going on .. like I was so confused I felt dumb as hell. Is this normal to feel like you leave the lesson not really knowing stuff at A2? Is it perhaps A2 takes more independence and that the teachers are only supposed to introduce the topic ? Or maybe it's because I havent touched chemistry in a while but I mean this is the first time this has happened to me. ( first week back ) but like yeah I'm worried so any real advice On why I'm feeling like I've never done dop of chemistry in my life , is A2 really that much different ???

I think you were probably just not quite prepared to learn chemistry and the born haber cycles are not really very complicated just you need to be switched on to work out what is actually going on. They're like the enthalpy diagrams from AS just a bit odd because of inconsistent signs that confuse everyone. The idea is from that rule from AS where what ever route the reaction takes the enthalpy change will be the same if the start and end points are the same - so if you go round in a circle then then enthalpy change will be 0 (same as not doing anything). So really you just have a big long route around different states and the enthalpy changes need to add to 0. All the arrows are a sort of algorithmic way to make sure your signs are correct. I didn't really like the way it was taught to me as just understanding what was going on and working through it logically made me make fewer mistakes.

I don't think there is that much of a change from AS to A2 in terms of what is expected of you, but the stuff you learn requires a good solid knowledge of AS, in sort of the same way AS needs GCSE. So if you haven't looked at AS for a while (even for like certain techniques or ways of thinking about things) then you might struggle with A2.