Exam Revision - The Final Frontier

The leaves falling are now a distant memory - the first half-term of the year seems so far away. Yet, at that time, this moment probably seemed very far in the future. But here it is - one month to the exams!

I hope if you are reading this, you are a better prepared student than I ever was. Organisation is the key to success in so much in life, and that includes exams. Unfortunately, it is a lesson that is often hard to learn.

However, the good news is that all is not lost. Much of the advice that you will have been given still applies at this late stage: work for set periods with short breaks, get enough sleep and avoid panicking. There may seem a lot to learn (and there is) but the key is to work smarter not harder (another over-used cliche).

Chemistry is a good subject to study because it is underpinned by a few relatively straightforward concepts. For example, across a period electrons enter the same energy level, but the nuclear charge increases: atoms generally get smaller on going left ot right across the period. This means that electronegativity increases in the same direction, ionisation energies generally increase in the same direction (but look out for the effects of electron pairing) and cations become more polarising (because the charge to size ratio increases as the size decreases). Down a group, the atoms get larger, the electrons in the outer shell are easier to remove (lower ionisation energies), electronegativity falls and anions (e.g.halides) are more polarisable. Putting these simple ideas about size in place helps to make a lot of the learning easier - learn the concepts and models, and make sure you understand them. If you do this, many of the facts will be reduced to predictable consequences.

The take home message is understand the reasons, and the facts will be easier to remember, or even just predict. Of course, it`s not all like this. There are still some hard facts to learn, but if you try to focus on the underlying models, you should find that there is a lot less like this.

Good luck in your preparation!