Over the summer, I want to self-study chemistry. My option are taking it at a local college or self-studying. I am not willing to pay 500 for the local college and need advice for the best honors chemistry books. Are there any textbooks that are easy to understand and sufficient in material? Could review books replace learning from a textbook?
Using a review book from the Princeton Review or Barron’s would definitely be a good start. There are also great resources online that will help you learn and master the material.
Off the top of my head, Khan Academy offers chemistry videos which cover a whole year of college chem. You could pick and choose, reviewing the stuff in a Princton/Barron’s textbook (per @azwu331 's rec), and end up getting a good grasp of the chemistry you’ll need.
However, I would highly recommend taking the class in person, just for the labs alone. I keep hearing they’re invaluable! o.o
You can’t self study chemistry, because in addition to the textbook learning, you need to do the labs.
I do not understand this importance of labs that you are emphasizing. Labs are meant to supplement learning. A textbook has all the information that labs are based upon.
^ And THIS is a reason why you shouldn’t study chemistry at home :). Labs ARE learning in the field of Experimental Sciences (Chemistry and Physics).
AP Chem will have regular labs and your grade will depend on them. You’ll be judged on your ability to form a hypothesis and carry it through. During your first labs, there will be many mistakes - you learn by doing. Writing a lab report, like writing a paper, takes time and experience. You don’t want to be the clueless doofus in AP Chem Lab, especially since a large percentage of your grade will depend on the lab and lab report.
You are misunderstanding the importance of labs. Would you want a doctor who only studied from books…no hands on experience? I know that’s an extreme example, but it’s an example that I hope you’ll understand.
Haven’t you ever read instructions and “thought” you understood what they were saying, but once you’re actually doing the instructions, it becomes more clear?
There’s another benefit of labs and that’s the write ups. In AP Chem, you’ll be expected to include certain info, results, etc and present that data in a strict format. Kids lose points or lose all points when they don’t perfectly follow lab write-up instructions. They also lose points when they don’t follow lab protocals…that would be taught in regular Chem or Honors Chem…
Take the chem at the college this summer.
You need to think ahead…do you want a C or WORSE on AP Chem because your classmates were so much stronger than you are?
Ok, I understand now. But do you think the same thing is applicable to bio.
Yes, it is. Bio is also a lab science.
All that said, in some mysterious way, homeschoolers manage to get credit for all these lab classes. Not sure how that happens.
Why don’t you just take chemistry at your high school?
In NY State, you cannot take the Regents Exam-- the exam that certifies that you have knowledge of Chemistry-- without taking a number of labs. (I forget the number; I think it’s ballpark 18.)
There are some things-- MANY things-- that you have to learn by DOING, not watching or reading. Chemistry, and most of the lab sciences, are among those things.
Exactly. There are certain life lessons in abstract theory vs. “hard” reality that come from actually doing the things you read about, and chemistry labs demonstrate this well. It is one thing to read “A student subjects 10 samples to Test A, filters the precipitates, weighs them, and gets the following results…”; it is another to do it yourself and experience all the little obstacles that come into play in doing that the right way and getting meaningful and accurate results, writing it up correctly, etc. That only comes with the actual doing and in fact doing it more than once. As a general lesson it goes well beyond chemistry, emphasizing that there is a lot of real, precise, intricate work that goes behind much of what we read in a simple sentence.
For example, there was just the amazing news about the detection of gravitational waves for the first time. It is one thing to just read about that and say “wow, that’s neat”. It is another to stop and think about what went into building the detectors, the incredible precision of the mirrors and other components, etc. Without even some rudimentary time in a lab, it would be impossible to truly appreciate all of that. To me at least, that is what an education is largely all about, even if you end up being a banker or a chef or a history professor.
I thought of something else that demonstrates that taking the course without labs is not the same thing. Now I am not saying you plan to go to med school, but it is a real life example. US med schools insist that anyone applying take 2 semesters of freshman chemistry, 2 semesters of organic chemistry, and 2 semesters of biology all with laboratory sections. With only a couple of exceptions, they won’t even accept AP Chemistry credits in place of taking freshman chemistry, in part due to the lack of real lab sections in most high schools.
Now in the old days that was because doctors actually had to do a lot of their own testing right in their office, and so had to have these skills, But that hasn’t been true for about 65 years. They don’t hold on to those requirements out of nostalgia, but instead because of the kind of understanding it gives students about the chemistry that is really going on behind all those symbols on the page, as well as insight into what can happen in a lab that does the testing. Which is that the results are obtained by humans, or humans running instruments designed and made by humans, and thus are not infallible. When you only read something on a page, it is easy to lose sight of such things.
well, in that case, I think that labs will not be necessary. Labs have absolutely no value in bio. I suspect exactly the same will be true for chem
???
spoken as a true teenager who knows better than professional scientists. 
Why do you want to self-study this class? Are you going to test out of it at your high school?
@Levnerad Labs are so, so so important in Chem. I cannot express how important they are in words. You can study concepts and know how to do things all you want, but it will NEVER be the same as doing an actual lab. One of the things that many consider to be a key feature of hard sciences (physics, bio, chem, etc) are the fact that they have labs. (Of course, the division between hard and soft sciences is a much disputed thing, but that’s another story)
If you absolutely must self-study rather than taking a class (I’d HIGHLY recommend taking a class with a lab portion instead of self studying), at least look up videos or something of the labs themselves, and read through procedures and use sample data to do calculations.
@Levnerad Chemistry is heavily steeped in experiment. Experiment is very difficult without a lab, and certain experiments are simply impossible without the resources schools are provided. For example, I know liquid nitrogen distribution is controlled in my state; the only way a student can get hands on some is at school.
If you reaally want to self-study one lab science, please let it be physics. So far as I know, you can recreate many of the labs and experiments from that class on your own- and, to my knowledge, they are /far/ less important than in chemistry.
I would also give heed to the words of other, much more experienced posters in this thread, including (but not limited to) the actual chemist
All i am trying to ask is
Is it possible to pass a midterm and final after self studying during the summer without performing the labs. I do recognize the importance of labs for people engaged in the field or trying to advance by studying in high school/university. I also realize the importance AP chem will place on labs. However, with all your respect, honors chem is simply a barrier which I need to cross as quickly as possible in order to maximize the amount of AP classes next year. After all, there are many students that leave a year’s space between honors and AP chemistry. Surely their knowledge of labs is not completely embedded into memory. Many of them are not even committed students. Is it not reasonable to be able to learn the procedures of laboratory work once I reach AP level.
Why do you want to sacrifice a core understanding of a subject in order to take more AP classes?
Could I please get an actual answer???
I am not sacrificing a core standard. That is why I am taking these 2 Chemistry classes in succession. I will learn this “core standard” in AP.