Subject
Chemistry
Course
A-Level Chemistry
Exam Board
AQA
For more information contact Head of Department:
Mrs R Mann
Brief introduction:
Chemistry at OLSC is a tried and tested course giving good outcomes for its students in a well-resourced department. Students benefit from experienced advice and excellent teaching maximising your potential in the examinations. Students who study Chemistry at OLSC will also benefit from studying in our new laboratory suits soon to be completed in 2020.
Course Requirements
A-level Chemistry lasts two years, with exams at the end of the second year. There is no coursework on this course. However, your performance during practicals will be assessed. There are three exams at the end of the two years for A-level, all of which are two hours long. At least 15% of the marks for A-level Chemistry are based on what you learned in your practicals. Chemistry, like all sciences, is a practical subject. Throughout the course you will carry out practical activities including:
- Making up a volumetric solution and carry out a simple acid-base titration
- Measurement of an enthalpy change
- Investigating how the rate of a reaction changes with temperature
- Carrying out simple test tube reactions to identify cations and anions
- Distillation of a product from a reaction
- Testing for alcohols, aldehydes, alkenes and carboxylic acids
These practicals will give you the skills and confidence needed to investigate how and why chemical reactions occur. It will also ensure that if you choose to study a Chemistry-based subject at university, you’ll have the practical skills needed to carry out successful experiments in your degree.
Assessment
Year 12
- Atomic structure
- Bonding
- Kinetics and Equilibria
- Periodicity
- Introduction to organic chemistry
- Organic analysis
Year 13
- Thermodynamics and Kinetics
- Acids and Bases
- Transition metals and their reactions
- Structure determination – organic synthesis and analysis
- Aromatic chemistry
Studying A-level Chemistry gives you all sorts of exciting career options, including:
- Doctor
- Analytical chemist
- Biotechnologist
- Pharmacologist
- Research scientist
- Forensic scientist
- Secondary school teacher
- Chemical engineer
- Dentist.
The top seven degree courses taken by students who have an A-level in Chemistry are:
- Dentistry
- Environmental sciences
- Biomedical sciences
- Medicine
- Optometry
- Chemical engineering
- Toxicology and Pharmacy Chemistry
