Chemistry

There are three facets to the Chemistry preparation for A Level course:

Core Skills – This aspect of the course will focus on helping you to practice and refine the skills that will be important for success post-GCSE. These will include, formula and equation writing and practical and numerical skills.

Green Chemistry – A topic from the pre-2015 specification. Green Chemistry was unfortunately removed from A-level courses, despite being a really interesting and topical area of Chemistry. We are taking this opportunity to revive it, and to give you experience of some A Level qualification material.

Project: Mechanisms in Organic Chemistry – The first two facets of the course will be covered during lessons. This part of the course is chosen as a unit for independent study. Mechanisms in Organic Chemistry is an important part of the A Level specification but this online module goes beyond what you would learn at A Level. Hopefully it will set you up with a deeper understanding of this fundamental concept.

Lesson Outline:

Week 1:

Core Skills – We will focus on writing equations and formulae, which is an absolutely fundamental skill in Chemistry. You’re probably already pretty good at it but we’ll aim to test you with some challenging extension tasks.

Green Chemistry – Your introduction to Green Chemistry will concentrate on anthropogenic climate change and carbon footprint.

Mechanisms in Organic Chemistry – This part of the course is intended to be self-directed; however, we would recommend that you at least work through the first section on example mechanisms.

Week 2: Walking the Line – Immersive landscape drawing

Core Skills – In the second week of skills practice, we will be looking at practical chemistry and learning about how to work safely and accurately in the laboratory.

Green Chemistry – The chemistry of ozone layer depletion will be our area of interest in week 2. We will bring this topic up-to-date by looking at recent research in the field.

Mechanisms in Organic Chemistry – To keep on track with this part of the course, you should finish working through the ‘Core Background’ section this week.

Week 3:

Core Skills – This week we will begin working on the key numerical skills needed for A Level Chemistry. There won’t be anything scary or particularly new. We’ll just establish the conventions that you should aim to use from now on.

Green Chemistry – This will be our case study week. We will be looking critically at various different processes and considering how we could improve them.

Mechanisms in Organic Chemistry – If you’re following our timings for this part of the course then you’ll look at the ‘Substrate Inspection’ and ‘Reagent Inspection’ sections this week.

Week 4:

Core Skills – We’ll tie up any loose ends in terms of numeracy and finish things off with a fun team quiz.

Green Chemistry – Once again we’ll bring things right up-to-date by looking at some of the latest research into Green Chemistry, including how it is making a huge difference in the developing world.

Mechanisms in Organic Chemistry – If you haven’t started the final part of this course then that’s what you should be doing this week – ‘Reaction Mechanisms’ features some challenging online quizzes. We may even award prizes for this!

Project Outcome: To complete the RSC online tutorial on Mechanisms in Organic Chemistry. This will lay the foundations for understanding of one of the first principles of this field of Chemistry. Some basic mechanisms are studied at A Level but this project will allow students to cover some undergraduate level material in a guided and accessible way.