AP CHEMISTRY SUMMER ASSIGNMENT
Hi, everyone! Hope you're enjoying the summer break! Here are some things I need you to do, though, so you'll be ready to go in September with the AP Chem course.
1. Invest in a review book for the AP Chem course (not the SAT II). It can be the College Board version, or Princeton Review, Barron's, etc - anything, as long as it's for "AP" prep, and has review notes, exam hints, and lots of practice questions with answers and explanations. If you and a friend get different books, you can exchange and have even more practice questions to work from. We may use the books during class time, or you may find yourself using them to study for tests throughout the year. In any case, it's a good idea to have them from the very beginning of the course.
2. Use your notes from first year chem to review the following topics:
a. The SI system of measurement and unit conversions - you have to be able to do conversion factors.
b. Use of significant figures, rounding off answers to calculations, and calculations with scientific notation. This should be "automatic" all year.
c. Properties, changes, and classes of matter (element, compound, solution, mixture)
d. The early history of the atomic theory, from Democritus to Dalton
e. All of the experiments done by Crookes, Thomson, Goldstein, Millikan, Rutherford, and Moseley
f. The layout of the periodic table and names of the common representative groups of elements.
g. Naming and writing formulas for ionic and covalent compounds, including those with polyatomic ions, and acids and alkanes.
3. The topics listed above are the main ideas in chapters 1 and 2 of the AP textbook. We will take one or two class periods to check on that material, and let you see how it is presented in the AP text. We will have a test on the first two chapters during the first cycle in September.
4. You also need to review the ever important "MOLES"! Chapter 3 in the AP book is "Stoichiometry", and it includes relative atomic mass, molar mass, percent composition, empirical and molecular formula, writing and balancing equations, and mass-mass problems, limiting reactants, and yields of reactions. In the first year course, all of this was covered in three chapters - now it's just one chapter. There are some new ideas, and some "twists" to the problems, so we won't have a test on that for a while, but you do need to be on top of the situation from the start.
5. Get used to the idea that you will have homework every day, and plenty of it. You're in college now, even though you're on a high school class schedule - what doesn't get done in class has to be done at home.
That's it for now. The assignment isn't as specific as those for English or History AP, but you still have to be prepared for new work. You may do some surfing and see if you can find some college websites that seem to be understandable. In the past, I've used the Florida State site run by Prof Wine, and the Frostburg site - I forget the Prof, but it's a Chem I course. Nearly every university has a chemistry site for its first year course, but some of them are out of action for the summer. Look around and see what you can find to help yourself next year.