Tips for Mastering High School Chemistry

Chemistry is the study of matter.  In your chemistry class you will explore the properties of matter and how it reacts with other matter.  You will also experience chemistry through class discussions, demonstrations, practice, and activities.  You may see exploding eggs, bubbling chemical concoctions, or color-changing reactions.  While it may seem to be all about fun, exciting visual displays of chemistry, the class is not without challenges. Chemistry can a difficult class, full of equations, formulas, and facts to memorize. With the proper attitude, behaviors, and tools, you can have an enjoyable and successful school year.

Having observed the behaviors of successful students over 30 years as a high school chemistry teacher, I have collated the following suggestions to help you increase your chances of having a great year in chemistry.  

Pay attention in class
The teacher explains all the important information that is usually on the tests! Focus on the content and be engaged in the lessons.  Zoning out in class, playing with your phone, coming late, disturbing others, or leaving the classroom frequently for long periods of time will only rob yourself of valuable learning experiences.  

Keep up with the class 
If you fall behind, it will be very difficult to catch up. There is a lot of content in a typical high school chemistry class. If you are absent, it is important that you quickly find out what you missed, because the content is cumulative. Any missed content will make it difficult to learn new content that is build on the previous material. If you fall too far behind, you may want to invest in a private tutor to help you understand the material.

Review new material each day
 There will be important facts and formulas that you will need to retain over the course of the year.  You may be asked to memorize element symbols, charges, or polyatomic ions. It is helpful to review the material every day to make sure that you remember the information.  Reviewing after class also will help you to know if you truly understand the material.  If you don’t, you will know what to ask the teacher the following class period. Waiting until the night before the test to review the material is a poor decision. There won’t be time to learn what you may just discover you don’t understand.

Show your work 
Write down all equations and show all your work. When solving mathematical problems, write down the information you know from the question.  Often your teacher will give partial credit for showing the correct work even if you accidentally miscalculate the answer.  Some teachers will not provide ANY points on a test if you do not show your work because they do not know how you got your answer.

Do your own homework
The purpose of homework is to make sure you understand the day’s lesson.  If you don’t attempt the homework, your teacher will not know what you do or do not understand. Homework helps you learn the material and it lets the teacher know if you understand the material or need extra help.  If you simply copy someone else’s work, you will not learn anything, and it will become apparent when you have an exam on the material. Giving up on the homework after a quick glance is not a useful strategy.  Struggling with the material helps you remember it better.  Use your notes and textbook to help you if you get stuck. It is also a good idea to save your homework in a binder so you can use it to study from for tests.      

Take notes
Copy everything that the teacher writes on the board or shows on a slideshow.   If the teacher feels that it is important enough to write it down and share it with your, then it is important enough for you to copy it.  It will probably be on the test. Relying on your friends for their notes is not as useful as writing them yourself. Writing helps you retain information.  Also, you never know when a pop open-notes quiz may occur. Besides, your friends will soon tire of you taking advantage of them.

Ask for help
When doing problems on your own you may come across problems that you don’t know how to do.  Always seek out help either from the teacher or from a classmate to help you understand the content more completely. Ask the teacher for help if you don’t understand something. Also be specific about what you don’t understand. Telling the teacher you don’t understand “any of it” doesn’t allow the teacher to know how to help you.  

Actively participate in lab activities 
The experiments that you teachers choose for you to are designed to help you learn the material first-hand.  Your teacher might ask you to read the lab prior to coming to class or even answer some pre-lab questions.  You should do so if asked because you will have a better idea of what you will do in the experiment and you will be better prepared to participate.  Often there are calculations that must be done in order to draw conclusions. from the lab.  The more you practice these calculations, the better you will get at solving them. The post-lab questions also help you further develop critical and analytical thinking skills.

Utilize mnemonic devices
In chemistry there will be many things that you will need to memorize.  Some of these will simply require you to make note cards or review them out loud.  For example, remembering the charges of the groups of the periodic table, the names, symbols and charges of polyatomic ions, such as nitrate, and the rules for naming compounds.  There are some word tricks, however, that make memorizing certain things easier. Mneumonic devices are word tricks or simple sentences that are acronyms for things you need to memorize.  Here are a few examples that I teach my students to use:

a) Redox Reactions:  
To help you remember what happens during oxidation amd reduction reactions, you can one of the following tricks:  

ii.  LEO the lion says GER, which stands for Lose Electron Oxidation (LEO) and Gain Electron Reduction (GER).  

ii. A different mnemonic for the same information is OIL RIG, which stands for "Oxidation Is Loss and Reduction Is Gain.  "

b)  Electrochemical Cells:  
In an electrochemical cell (or voltaic cell) the anode is the site of oxidation, whereas the cathode is the site of reduction.  You can remember with electrode in a voltaic cells is the anode and which is the cathode by the fact that the word “anode” begins with a vowel and so does “oxidation,” whereas the words “cathode” and “reduction” both begin with a consonant.  

c)  Acid/Base Litmus Test:  
To  remember the litmus test results for acids and bases is to look at the last letter of the color and the word acid or base:
aciD  is   reD                       
basE  is  blueE   
You can also simply remember that the words “base” and “blue” both begin with the letter B.

d)   Cation and anions:  
Cations positive ions and anions are negative ions.  How can you remember this?  If you write the word “cation” with a plus sign instead of a “t” you will easily remember this.  You can also write the word “anion” with a negative sign instead of a dot for the letter “i.”   

               ca+ion      

e)  Diatomic Elements:  
There are seven elements that cannot exist alone and must be diatomic.  Hydrogen (H), Nitrogen (N), Oxygen (O),  Fluorine (F), Chlorine (Cl), Bromine (Br), and Iodine (I).  There are several ways you can form to help you remember this.  Choose the one that is the most memorable and the easiest one for you to remember.   

1. HOClBrIFN  which can be pronounced Huckleberry Finn is one mnemonic that can be used.  
   
   
2. Another mnemonic doesn’t spell an actual word, but after a student told it to me several years ago, I found that it is unique enough that my students remember it.  HNOFClBrI – pronounced “He-NOF-Cul-Bree.”  This year a student of mine turned it into a rhyme:  “HNOFClBrI cannot be Free!”  meaning that they always exist as the diatomic elements: H2, N2, O2F2, Cl2, Br2, I2.  
   
   
3. You can also learn which elements are diatomic by looking at the periodic table.  If you look at the second period, nitrogen, oxygen, and fluorine are located in groups 15, 16, and 17 respectively.  Then chlorine, bromine, and iodine are located just under.  When you add hydrogen to the mix, you have all of them.  
   
   
4. There are 3 gens and 4 ines: The three elements that end in “gen” are hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. The four “ines” are fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine.

Succeeding in a chemistry class is not difficult if you approach it with a systematically using strategies along the way. It is important to remember that chemistry is not a spectator sport! By being involved in all aspects of your course, you will come to truly understand and appreciate chemistry.  If you are a disciplined, proactive, and active participant in the process of learning, you will not only excel in the class, but you will enjoy it as well.  

Elene is a certified teacher who has taught a wide variety of science and engineering classes in private schools for the past 30 years and online for the past 4 years.  She holds a Masters Degree in Chemistry and has led her students to win prizes at local and national science and innovation fairs.  Her classes focus on scientific experimentation and Arduino coding.  She is also available for private tutoring in Chemistry and Arduino coding. For ore information, please  refer to her bio on IndyEd and her website.