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@biochemistryandbeyond-blog
hmm? what’s that? oh, you don’t like my seeds? *evolves into a fruit that bears no seeds but is now a monoculture that is especially susceptible to pests and disease* how about that idiot
Don’t vague post about bananas you scum
How To Survive A2 / Year 13 Chemistry*
*Quick note: I did the (now) old OCR specification, which on looking through the new A Level seems almost the same in terms of content but slightly changed in terms of layout. Just be aware of that :)
So what the hell do I know?
Chemistry went from being my most hated subject at GCSE to my favourite by Christmastime Y12. Good teachers and smaller classes helped, but mostly it was me getting my shit together and actually learning&understanding the course content, instead of just memorising. Science is fab, but only if you actually know what is going on. Also, I went to a great school with awesome resources and got a pretty good grade. I’m also studying it at uni.
The Most Important Thing: be realistic about your workload.The jump between y12 and y13 is two or three times the jump between y11 and y12. You will find yourself doing a lot more practice than you expect. Even if you were someone who coasted through gcse&y12, you will need to put effort in. (my friend explained it as: in y11 they throw you into the middle of the swimming pool, in y12 they give you a life raft and dunk you in the deep end, in y13 you have to throw yourself into the pool.)
This is maybe half of all the practice questions (questions, not exams!) I did during revision:
(excuse my shoes.)
It gets real, people.
Notes
Take notes however is most comfortable for you. I found that printing off the specification points for each module and writing notes underneath really helped me, because I knew exactly what the examiners would be asking me for.
Textbook spreads usually coordinate with the specification so you can find the exact page you need. Here is the new specification for OCR Chemistry A. Here is the AQA one.
Also, I’m going to introduce you to the holy grail of chemistry: ChemGuide. Whoever writes this is a saint. It’s better than a textbook and completely free. (this is in bold and italics and headline for a reason.)
additional point on notes: a quick scour of the internet with some basic key words will turn up literally hundreds of “A Level Chemistry Notes”. I’d like to point out that these are often riddled with mistakes and should probably not be used as the main source of your information. Khan Academy is good if you prefer videos, although of course their content is not based around the A Level spec. Have a look at their organic chemistry section and chemistry.
Practice Questions
These are your lifeblood. You will fell a small forest doing questions. The end of each chapter in your textbook will have practice questions, which I would do as soon as you finish the module to check your understanding (or you can be like me and do an entire textbook’s worth of questions one Saturday. Do not be like me.) You can also find questions at
Physics&Maths Tutor: this guy is my saviour. you can find notes, past paper questions arranged by topic (this is so helpful you’ll never have to scroll through ten past papers to find two NMR questions to practice ever again), and also pdf links to every past paper EVER. Also grade boundaries for when you are lazy and don’t wanna work it out yourself.
Doc Brown. i never really got into this because his website makes my eyes hurt, but if quizzes are your thing go here.
A-LevelChemistry: they have great question packs broken down very neatly into modules, and the answers right there too (sometimes answers are impossible to find and its very annoying.) download them to pdfs & print or work from your screen.
EXAAAAMMMMSSS (& study leave)
For the record, I hated study leave. If I don’t have a regimented day plan (and someone forcing me to stick to it) my life descends into chaos. That said, three hours of intense practice beats seven hours of twirling a pen around and staring listlessly at your page. Make a plan for what you want to do each day, not how many hours you want to revise for. I would sit down and say, “okay, today I will do two A2 practice papers, mark them and go through corrections.” That might not sound like much, but each paper is 2h, plus another hour each for marking and correcting - that’s six hours without all that much to show for it.
Our school gave us calendars with due dates for practice exams to keep us on schedule; you can easily make your own. I also made a google docs with all the past exams, my score and what I needed to improve on. My teacher had access and would check up on me - I could also use this to ask her questions about issues I was having (Mrs P, on p10 of the F324 2013 paper my answer x was wrong, where did I mess up on polymerising the molecule? as a wild example.)
(this isn’t filled in bc I used an electronic copy instead, not bc i didn’t revise :p)
You are aiming to complete each past paper at least once. For chemistry OCR, that would be 7+ organic papers and 7+ physical papers, doubled because there is a june series and a january series. Thats 28 papers in total, at an average of roughly 100min each (organic used to be shorter, physical longer.)
Thats about fifty hours purely on past paper practice, assuming you can finish within the allotted time, and not considering marking and checking time. If you do say two hours a day (remember, you have other subjects to revise as well!) it will take you 25 days to finish one round of papers. My chemistry teacher recommended (for an A*) that we do each paper three times. (i did not do that, btw. I probably did one and a half rounds, revisiting my “bad” papers.) Thats 150h of papers, plus say 75h to mark and write corrections&learn corrections, putting us at the 225h mark. Now if you do two hours a day it will take you over 100 days to get through everything.
A Levels are hard. Start revising early.
(we started “informal revision” ie no new learning around jan/feb 2016, had the last round of mocks in march, had a massive easter break where i went on a frenzy and rewrote all my notes, came back for another two weeks of “class” aka no one gave a fuck and our teachers bought us coffee, and then had study leave. exams started may 2016.)
I am weirdly proud of myself.
Turn down for WATT?!
So I was thrilled to hear that Australia was starting their own space program. And then they named it.
Ah, nice.
They knew what they were doing.
Oh are you actually surprised? Our state, the North Territory, had a tourism slogan a few years back that was “C U in the N T”
things ive heard people say in class:
“what if i just straight up break down in class and scare the shit out of ms neo so that she’ll postpone the test?”
“is it too early if i have a breakdown in january?” “its the second week, man.” “i know.”
“let’s all just collectively skip the national exams, fuck the system!” *aggressive cheering*
in a really choked up voice, “i have rights.”
“what if i become a monk? do monks have to take exams?”
“in this context, what does ‘rapid’ mean?” “FAST AND FURIOUS”
“did y’all do the chem homework?” *collective ‘no’s* “alright, good. nobody be a wimp and do their homework, alright? if we’re fucked, we’re all fucked together.”
“wait, you mean to say that this school still teach fun stuff like music??”
*scandalised gasp* “you stole my circle template’s virginity!” “all i did was hook a finger through one of the holes!” “exactly!”
“i bought this $2 knee guard just because i want to pretend that i’m injured so that i can sit out of PE.” [slides knee guard on] “i have three consecutive tests after this and lord knows i need all the extra study time that i can get.”
in an increasingly panicked voice, “i can’t just do my lit homework in 30mins!” “well, i did.” “what did you put for characterisation and further analysis?” “i said the protagonist was a fuckboy, and then proceeded to write 3 paragraphs and a conclusion consisting of utter bullshit on why he’s a fuckboy.”
“don’t they call people from Germany, germanese?” said by a top student.
“i think i’m a hermaphrodite.”
“fuck, i hate this. can i just be an escort? or have like 67 sugar daddies?”
in the middle of physics class: “i’m leaving, i’m fucking leaving. i’m going down to the canteen to buy takeouts of 3 fishball noodles. y’all want anything?”
“i want the saddest pepe the frog meme you can find as our class logo.”
“i found a salsa dip in my bag, anyone have some chips?” [a girl sighs, puts down her calculator and reaches into her sports bag] “i do.”
covalent bonds: molecular socialism, electrons belong to the collective ionic bonds: molecular capitalism, electrons obtained on the basis of electronegativity, more electronegative atoms exploit less electronegative ones
What is the hepatitis virus? Well, the hepatitis virus invades liver cells and causes inflammation in the liver tissue. There are five known hepatitis viruse...
Study tips backed by science: https://youtu.be/p60rN9JEapg
[@scienceasfuck]
organisation for uni exams
using wunderlist.
I’m just gonna do a quick run through of the way I organised myself for my chemistry exam this year (works with p. much any science/maths based course):
when I log into my uni’s online portal and select my chem module, these are the header tabs that greet me, neatly split up into our learning sections (A to H.) If your module doesn’t work like this, I highly recommend breaking it down into smaller, manageable chunks. Start by separating physical and organic, then break them down to topics, e.g. thermo, kinetics, etc.)
now you want to open your list app and make a “folder” for each section; Wunderlist lets you create an overall folder (where you put the module code) and then make subsections in each.
alright! now you have a template to add your to do lists to.
in the subtasts section you can add in everyone you want to get done for the topic. As a basic requirement, I would put down rereading the textbook chapters and finalising & adding to your notes. For maths/science subjects I’d also highly recommend making a quizlet or flashcards. Obviously these tasks will be tailored to your subject and also the level of work you’ve already put in.
the great thing here is that breaking down topics into lots of mini sections helps you keep a clear idea of what needs to be done. You could even add rough estimates of how long each task will take. Wunderlist also lets you set due dates and make reminders. I often used the notes section to add in advice our lecturers had given about the exams.
also, it’s super nice to be able to strikethrough everything under a topic and look back in satisfaction.
(also btw wunderlist is free & i use it for everything.)
a few fun octopus facts:
their arms are similar to our tongues in that their muscle fibers are oriented in three different directions
octopuses are disconcertingly strong (anecdotal evidence says that a 15 inch wide octopus was as strong as the scientist handling it)
on that note that same scientist said that when her octopuses escaped she would have to run behind them, “like cats” (paraphrased from sy montgomery’s the soul of an octopus)
aquariums have “octopus enriching programs” so they don’t get bored and fuck shit up in their tanks
they are crazy smart like. really. really fucking smart
but we can’t compare their intelligence to ours because our evolution branched from the same common ancestor so long ago we cannot comprehend how they think
it’s believed that their intelligence evolved when they lost their shell, and had to adapt to predict how countless of different prey and predators would act, how to avoid them, distract them, lure them or trick them
they visualize how other creatures are going to act, which means they have have awareness that others are individuals which is a type of consciousness but i can’t remember what it’s called right now
like, they use tools
they have distinct personalities
aquarium octopuses are socialized from a very young age and even though in the wild they are solitary creatures they become extremely friendly with enough human exposure
sometimes they dislike people for no apparent reason and will shoot water at them
they have three hearts
each of their arms has a tiny brain that controls movement and sensory input on its own i shit you not
they are color blind and yet they can camouflage their color and nobody knows how
they can change the color and texture of their skin faster than human eyes can keep up with it
great pacific octopuses are white when they are peaceful, and red when they’re excited
aquarium octopus have escaped their tanks and slithered down pipes into the ocean
escaped their tanks to eat the fish in other tanks
escaped their tanks to go fight other octopuses cuz they were bored
octopus fight club
learned how to take photographs
cost thousands of dollars by flooding new floors
they can feel, taste, and smell with their suckers and all of their skin
they enjoy tasting their food by slowly moving it through their suckers instead of shoving it in their beaks
they can rewrite their rna. no, really
the only reason why they haven’t evolved to take over as the next dominant race is because they’re doing pretty well in the ocean so there’s no need for them to adapt further
there’s a ton more but i’m so overwhelmed by love i can’ think of any at the moment i’m going to cry
read the soul of an octopus by sy mongomery no she didn’t pay me i just love octopuses so much
math notes im struggling to understand ft. a handmade pencil pouch from sewingscientistjen on etsy!
24/4/16 // Back to my university library after two weeks at home! It’s so nice studying without being surrounded by screaming children. I’ve finished both of my coursework essays (8000 words… I am dead) so I’m now onto revision for my exams!! This module was taught SO badly so I’m basically teaching myself everything, yay…
The collision between the Milky Way Galaxy and the Andromeda Galaxy.
the grand showdown
Andromeda is a bit bigger than us. So when that happens, Andromeda’s black hole is gonna consume our black hole in a vicious act of galactic canabalism.
Which is an actual term used in astronomy apparently.
“Galactic Cannabalism” sounds like an electro/death metal fusion band.
Galactic cannibalism is one of my favourite astronomical terms, but it doesn’t beat the term used for the stretching out into a long thin tube that occurs when something falls into a black hole (spaghettification) or the term used for a rock thought to be a meteorite but which later turns out to be an ordinary terrestrial rock (meteowrong).
SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE
this is why i can’t talk to people who don’t think space is the shit
organisation for uni exams
using wunderlist.
I’m just gonna do a quick run through of the way I organised myself for my chemistry exam this year (works with p. much any science/maths based course):
when I log into my uni’s online portal and select my chem module, these are the header tabs that greet me, nearly split up into our learning sections (A to H.) If your module doesn’t work like this, I highly recommend breaking it down into smaller, manageable chunks. Start by separating physical and organic, then break them down to topics, e.g. thermo, kinetics, etc.)
now you want to open your list app and make a “folder” for each section; Wunderlist lets you create an overall folder (where you put the module code) and then make subsections in each.
alright! now you have a template to add your to do lists to.
in the subtasts section you can add in everyone you want to get done for the topic. As a basic requirement, I would put down rereading the textbook chapters and finalising & adding to your notes. For maths/science subjects I’d also highly recommend making a quizlet or flashcards. Obviously these tasks will be tailored to your subject and also the level of work you’ve already put in.
the great thing here is that breaking down topics into lots of mini sections helps you keep a clear idea of what needs to be done. You could even add rough estimates of how long each task will take. Wunderlist also lets you set due dates and make reminders. I often used the notes section to add in advice our lecturers had given about the exams.
also, it’s super nice to be able to strikethrough everything under a topic and look back in satisfaction.
(also btw wunderlist is free & i use it for everything.)
That’s why we have skin and immune system.
