by Vaish | Mar 13, 2018 | Deep Dive, Preparation for AP Chem
I have been quite on a roll trying to work out these extremely complex chapters in your AP Chemistry curriculum and trying to reduce them into 5, 6 or 7 ideas without losing the complexity involved. Thermodynamics isn’t a very hard chapter normally., but it can...
by Vaish | Feb 23, 2018 | Preparation for AP Chem
This is Part 2 of Acids and Bases, with a detailed but very very short 5 point reveiw of the dreaded neutralization reactions. For Part 1, Click here. What is a titration? Very simply, it is a neutralization reaction between an acid and a base. What is a...
by Vaish | Feb 16, 2018 | Preparation for AP Chem
This is a semi- solved problem from the 2014 AP Chemistry Free Response section: Q2. The idea is to give the student (you) some clues to solve the problem without completely solving it for you. (a) learly, the acid is whatever loses a proton (or H+ or H3O+ in...
by Vaish | Feb 12, 2018 | Deep Dive, Preparation for AP Chem, STEM
1. The importance of pH and the many ways to find it. 2. There are weak acids and strong acids. Strong acids dissociate completely. What’s that? This process is known as acid dissociation: This is what makes an acid acidic, i.e., release of an H+ Again, this means...
by Vaish | Jan 27, 2018 | Preparation for AP Chem
Reaction Mechanisms (the small steps that chemical reactions are broken down into) are a big part of Kinetics. And Catalysts and Intermediates are a small part of mechanisms. You may have heard that a catalyst speeds up a reaction, but is not used up during the...
by Vaish | Oct 11, 2017 | Deep Dive, Preparation for AP Chem
Here is the much awaited (or so I hope) second part of Big Idea 1: Spectroscopy. Let’s go over a few key points first! Spectroscopy is the study of matter using light. Light is Energy. Light is not just visible, but the entire Electromagnetic Spectrum: you know...
