Hey Jake!
I've left my studying to last minute and have a chem test tomorrow on half the prelim course (Chemical Earth and Metals) and was wondering what would be the best way to smash through some last-minute revision? After seeing your other post i know I won't leave things last minute again in the future, thank gosh this is only preliminary haha!
Hey Chemystery:
Yeah its certainly not a very good idea to be doing last minute revisions. But like you said luckily its preliminaries and this perhaps is a lesson that can be learnt for year 12. In year 12 its definitely not a good idea to study the night before. Even studying the week before would still be a little short. Personally I recommend to start revising bit by bit a month beforehand and more work during the 2 weeks before the exam. This way you wont feel too pressurised the days before your exam.
But I would give you some ideas of what you should probably focus on studying right now:
Chemical Earth:
- Trends in periodic tables
- Bohr's atomic model
- Valence Electrons and energy shells
- Lewis Dot Diagram for ionic and covalent bonds as well as for individual atoms
- Ionic Bonds and Covalent Bonds
- Atomic radius and Effective charge
- Physical and electrical properties of ionic compounds
- Physical, electrical and heat properties of metals
- Properties of Covalent network (e.g. diamond) substance
- Properties of Covalent molecular substances
- The multiple spheres of Earth (e.g. atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere etc.) and the dominate molecules and elements that exist within each sphere
- What is a physical change? List some physical properties of a substance
- What is a chemical Change? List some chemical properties of a substance
- How do you know when a chemical change occurs?
- Distinguish between compound, solution, mixture and solute
- Boiling points and melting points
- All the separation techniques and their industrial/home uses
Metals:
- The historical development of metals
- The smelting of iron from Haematite / copper from Chalcopyrite
- Metals discovered throughout the centuries
- What are alloys?
- Provide some examples of alloys, and state their industrial/home uses
- Balancing chemical equations
- Reaction of metal + water
- Displacement reaction
- Reaction of metal + oxygen
- Reaction of metal with dilute acid
- Activity series of metals
- Full ionic, net ionic equations and half ionic equations (oxidation equation and reduction equation)
- Redox reactions
- Be familiar with how to calculate moles using molar mass and mass and how to calculate mass using molar mass and moles
- Avogadro and Gay Lussac's law memorised
- Calculate Volume using moles and molar volume, calculate moles using volume and molar volume
- Empirical formula and molecular formula, and how to find the molecular formula when the question provides you with molar mass and the empirical formula
- Gravimetric analysis
- Electronegativity
- Ionisation energy (1st, second and third)
- Electrical conductivity of substances
Thats pretty much all you will have to study for, and it will be an immense amount of content if you only have one day. Just try to skim through textbook content for every dotpoint above and you would at least have some knowledge of what should be going on. Anyways, good luck for tomorrow!
Best Regards
Happy Physics Land