Leaving cert text book

jenga-jen

In my wisdom :eek:, I've decided to have a go at the Higher Leaving Cert Chemistry paper in 2009 to satisfy entry requirements for college (having only previously sat Biology and Physics)

Problem is: what's a good (current) leaving cert text to use to study for it?

I plan on registering with my secondary school for the practical elements but obviously need to get stuck in to cover 2 years by June

Thanks!

O.P.H

Oh I saw this post an had to reply. I did the leaving in 2000 and repeated in 2001. I had 2 years of leaving cert chemistry under my belt first time round but I never did a tap, knew nothin about chemistry for 2000. When I repeated, I worked it externally. I studyied at home by myself for the year while working at the weekend so I didnt go crazy. I had to do chemistry in one year all by my self along with every other subject. The secret is.......exam papers and exam paper solution manuals. Now I'm pretty sure they changed the course in 2002 but I can guarentte you there is major repetitions in the papers. The wrong thing for you to do is get a big text book and start at page one. What you have to do is get a text book yes, any should do, the book store will tell you whats a reacent one is etc also get a revision book, but most importantly get past exam papers and when i did the leaving there was a company that sold solitions to all the years, like worked step by step solutions, this was like gold-dust to me. I could have just used the exam papers and exam solutions and still gotten an A. You see you need to be familiar with exam papers because there is rediculous repetition in them and they always look for the same info etc. Start studying with exam papers from day one. Take any year an try to answer papers using the book for help etc and the answer manual and get grinds too. Im tired now.

Stin

I found the less stress chemistry book to be quite useful, the text used in my school was Understanding Chemistry, cant remember the other, but its a pile of horse **** anyway. I hear Chemistry Live by Declan Kennedy is quite good, but apparently gives more information than is needed. But if you like chemistry, then that can only be a good thing!

mawk

its also worth noting that you do not have to sit every section the paper, so yuo in turn do not have to learn every section.

pick the easier sections like linear dynamics and study them..

something like 4 sections out of the six or whatever is probably fine.

pick the sections, do those questions for the last ten years of exam papers and bing.. ya passed. enjoy your c1.

for the purposes, you do not need to be able to do physics, just 4 questions.

which you could learn in a dedicated week really. physics is just hard looking, easy to do math.