| MadSci Network: Chemistry |
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I'm 16 years old, and I've never had any sort of formal high school chemistry.
Now I've enrolled in my second semester of college, and I've decided to take
it. I've always loved chemistry, but when I got the book from the book store
today it really really scared me. The class is a 100, and it's listed as a
basic intro to chem, without any prior skills needed. But the problems are
*hard* hard...requiring math skills that I just don't have. The class starts
August 30th 2001, what can I do to better prepare myself for this? I understand
numbers are an important part of chemistry, but this is way over my head.
Dear Stephanie, I sympathize. What you are calling "chemistry skills" are really math skills. There's no way around it: to do any chemistry more than "touchy-feely" stuff with almost no content, you need a good command of algebra. If you are running a reaction in the lab, you need to be able to deal with mass calculations and be able to go from mass to moles (amount of chemical substance) and back again. If you are dealing with gases, you need to be able to do calculations with the ideal gas law. And so forth... I recommend (and I would recommend this for your college, as well) that you take college algebra as a pre-requisite for CHEM 100, even if it's not required in the catalog. Or talk to the professor who is teaching the course; s/he may be able to advise you.
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