The College Board AP Chemistry Course
Description states that the “course is designed
to be the equivalent of the general chemistry course
usually taken during the first college year.” The
text goes on to say that, “Students in such a course
should attain a depth of understanding of fundamentals and
a reasonable competence in dealing with chemical problems.
The course should contribute to the development of the
students’ abilities to think clearly and to express
their ideas, orally and in writing, with clarity and
logic.” Therefore I have adopted the following goals
for this course:
Students will work to learn the material as in a
typical college-level introductory chemistry class and
achieve an acceptable score on the AP Chemistry Exam, held
in May every year.
Students will work to become critical and independent
thinkers with a focus on general, non-algorithmic
problem-solving.
Students will learn the applicability of such
problem-solving techniques as applied to societal, cultural
and technological issues making them well-informed citizens
of an increasingly technology-saturated world.
Students will leave the course with a better
appreciation of the natural world through the application
of the concepts and mathematical modeling used in this
course.
Students will learn to work well in groups in labs,
class, and study groups to accomplish complicated tasks. In
doing so they will hone the important communication skills
also required for good writing, as in formal lab reports.
Instructional Techniques and Assessment
Grades in the course will be broken down as follows:
Tests: 50%
(1 per quarter)
Quizzes: 25% (4 - 6 per quarter)
Labs:
25% (6 - 7 2-hr labs per quarter)
The schedule at the end of this introductory material shows
what to expect for each unit. Specific dates are not given
in the interest of maintaining flexibility. The number of
hours of class time for each unit is indicated as a goal.
Also in the schedule is recommended Memory
Work which are items that you should commit to
memory.
For each unit you will be required to complete a
brief Outline of the important points in
the reading assigned for that unit. This Outline must be
separated into the sections used in the chapter. Sometimes
one or two entries on the Outline will be sufficient for a
given section. For other, more complicated sections you
will need to use your judgment as to what the most
important ideas and problem-solving techniques are. Keep
Outlines brief! This is not meant to be a burden but rather
a way to encourage you to prepare thoroughly for class.
Outlines should be completed by the first day of a new
unit: you must read ahead!
A tip about reading textbooks: they are
not novels. In a novel you typically read a passage once
with full comprehension. The action carries you forward
through the text. Textbooks build sequentially in each
chapter and you will at times need to read a section
several times—and work through its examples on
paper— before you can move on to the next section. Be
self-aware and check in with yourself: Did I understand
that passage? Could I solve problems based on it?
Each unit has a Problem Set that consists
of questions and problems from the ends of the chapters. At
times I will assign problems from supplementary material
for the Problem Set. These problem sets will be approached
in several ways:
You will work independently to solve the problems using
only your brain, the text, a calculator and paper and
pencil.
You will work in study groups outside of class to help
one another to solve the problems. Use this time not to
copy another student’s solution but to compare notes
about the best way to get to a solution.
Both Outlines and Problem Sets count as Homework. Homework
is not collected, graded, or checked off. Instead, you must
keep Outlines and Problem Sets neatly in a dedicated
binder. At the end of the quarter you must show this binder
to the instructor for a Homework Quiz grade. It will be
graded on completeness and organization.
The date of the Homework Quiz will be set
whenever we begin a new unit. The Homework Quiz will draw
on problems directly from your homework and will be short.
Test dates will be near the end of each quarter.
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Tests will be designed to simulate the AP Chemistry Exam as
closely as possible. Tests will be comprehensive and will
be designed to be completed in one hour. Timed tests will
help you to prepare for the AP Exam.
Labs will be offered six to seven times
each quarter. Lab assignments will vary in scope but at
minimum will require completion of pre-lab work by the
first day of work and completion of post-lab questions.
Three to four times each quarter you will be required to
submit a full formal lab report (format available
separately). A portion of your lab grade will depend on
your diligence in keeping a good scientific lab notebook.
Required for this purpose is a permanently bound ruled
notebook. In this notebook you will write your lab
procedures, lab notes and data while you work in the lab.
By the end of the course you will have accumulated the
documentation necessary for colleges to determine whether
to give you credit for the lab portion of the AP Chemistry
class. A handout is available separately that describes how
to make good use of your lab notebook.
Study Groups are required. During the
first week of class you will form study groups of 3 - 4
people. Make a regular time to meet and work on AP
Chemistry together. Working together makes tackling the
difficult material of this course a bit more manageable.
These groups will continue to work together during class.
Re-shuffling of Study Groups will be allowed, if necessary.
Frequently I will ask students to present problems
at the board. Presentations will consist in
writing out the detailed solution to a problem on the board
and explaining how you came to it to the class. The other
members of the class are active participants in the process
and are expected to ask questions and demand that the
presenter justify his or her work. Problem presentations
will be a frequent part of this course and will usually
precede a Homework Quiz.
Metacognition
In this course our motto is FIO (an acronym that I leave to
the reader: you will figure it out if you think about it
for a bit).
It is important that you evaluate yourself frequently as
you work to find out what you have learned. Try repeating
to yourself the contents of class discussions. Even better,
go over the concepts and problem-solving techniques with
your study group: communicating something you have learned
forces you to organize your thoughts about it. When you do
so, you learn it better yourself. This is true also about
writing in the course. Your lab reports and the answers to
lab questions are learning opportunities. When you explain
what you have learned in writing you often find that you
have not learned it as well as you thought you did. Go back
and learn it properly and your writing will improve.
We will spend time in this course developing your mental
math skills. The multiple-choice portion of the AP
Chemistry Exam must be done without calculators.
The
multiple-choice problems usually work as follows:
All answers are different by an order of magnitude or
more.
All answers are different mathematical manipulations of
the given: knowing the kind of operation required will
often be enough for you to be able to guess the answer.
Some answers are close and you will need to do some
actual calculation: these are designed so as not to be too
difficult.
Sometimes answers will be close but a quick calculation
with a rounded-off answer will still be enough to select
the correct response.
Finally, reviewing the available responses before doing
a calculation is often a good way to get through a problem
quickly.
Texts
Primary textbook: Chemistry: The Central Science,
11th edition, Brown, LeMay, Bursten & Murphy,
Pearson Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2009.
Laboratory Experiments for Advanced
Placement Chemistry, 2nd edition,
Sally Ann Vonderbrink, Ph.D., Flinn Scientific, Inc.,
Batavia, IL, 2006.
Supplementary Materials available on instructor’s
web site
(http://kaffee.50webs.com/Science/).
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Schedule
First Quarter*
Topic
and Time
Text Information
incl. Problems
Lab(s)
Memory Work
Matter and Measurement
Dimensional Analysis, Scientific Notation, Significant
Figures, Density, Temperature
1 hour
trends in ionization
energy and atomic radius
Trends for atomic size, ion size, ionization energy, effective nuclear charge, and electron affinity
Chemical Bonding: Ionic, Covalent,
Metallic and Hydrogen Bonds; Lewis Structures,
Electronegativity, Hybrid Orbitals; Organic
Nomenclature and Structure
10 hours
I. A. 5 I. B. 1 a b c, 2 a b c, 3
Building Models (hands-on covalent bonding activity)
Lewis Structures method, pg 314 & pg 316
Trends for atomic size, ion size, and electronegativity
VSEPR model method, pg 346
alkane and functional group nomenclature
saturated alkane 2n + 2 rule
Solutions: Intermolecular Forces and Phase Changes
2 hours
II. B. 1-4
Electrochemistry: Galvanic Cells,
Reduction Potentials, Thermodynamics of
Electrochemistry, Batteries, Corrosion, Electrolysis
6 hours
III. A. 1-3 IV. 1
*The letters ‘cd’ in the syllabus
indicate the Course Description Recommended Experiment
number. An effort has been made to cover as many of the
recommended labs as possible. Also, each unit has a set of
letters and numbers associated with it. These refer to the
Course Description and indicate which topics in the Topic
Outline are to be covered in that unit.
