Best textbooks?

[Bspro21]

I have chemistry, physics, 3u math and am looking for textbooks to use for each. Does anyone know any textbooks that are really challenging, more than the regular school ones. In maths, the textbooks are extremely repetitive, to help us learn, but don't contain those higher order questions that you see on the last page of an exam. Especially when it comes to math, there are so many textbook options but essentially they’re all pretty similar, giving you simple repetitive questions. Does anyone know some really good/difficult/challenging textbooks to use? Thank you

[ian3150]

Try the chapter reviews for the methods and spesh Cambridge textbooks, found those to be rather tricky. Otherwise, heaps of companies make practice exams for these subjects. For maths, I recommend Kilbaha/Neap, while for chem, insight is pretty good and lisachem is imo far too difficult, but can be helpful for a deeper conceptual understanding of chem. Not too sure about physics though, since I didn't take it. Hope this helps:)

[louisaaa01]

I have chemistry, physics, 3u math and am looking for textbooks to use for each. Does anyone know any textbooks that are really challenging, more than the regular school ones. In maths, the textbooks are extremely repetitive, to help us learn, but don't contain those higher order questions that you see on the last page of an exam. Especially when it comes to math, there are so many textbook options but essentially they’re all pretty similar, giving you simple repetitive questions. Does anyone know some really good/difficult/challenging textbooks to use? Thank you

Hey ian3150,

I only ever used the Maths in Focus range for 3U Mathematics (a reasonable textbook, but no questions were particularly challenging). I used the Terry Lee textbook for Extension 2 Mathematics and I found that he had significantly harder questions. For 3 Unit, you could potentially look into purchasing the Terry Lee textbook - I believe it's called Fundamental Mathematics. Keep in mind though that, while the questions are indeed challenging, some are unrealistic (and excessively time consuming) compared to what would be an exam.

For Chemistry and Physics, I used the in Focus range (recommended by my school) - questions were mostly on the easy side but there were a couple difficult ones. One particular point of frustration though was that these textbooks (like many others) only include numerical answers. I didn't end up relying on any other textbooks as such for questions, however, I did find the ATAR Notes Topic Tests incredibly useful for more challenging, HSC-style questions. Solutions are also comprehensive (as far as I'm aware though, there isn't one for MX1 yet).

Aside from this, past/practice papers are really your best bet when familiarising yourself with the calibre of questions in the HSC. THSC is a good site that compiles papers (that haven't been copyrighted of course) - keep in mind that anything before 2019 for Physics and Chem is from the Old Syllabus, and anything you find for MX1 is also Old Syllabus. Books such as Cambridge Checkpoints, Excel Success One, and the STRIVE range are also great if you don't want to sort through the last 20+ years worth of HSC papers - they compile questions from a range of HSC papers relevant to the New Syllabus and also include sample questions.

Hope this helps you out. Resources are certainly tricky with these new syllabuses!