Chemistry is killing me!

[InCreator]

Alright, chemistry. Most horrible thing Man ever invented.
For me, atleast.

If I want to finish (finally) highschool, I have to learn chemistry.
And learn, as get to know with the subject from its very start. Even though theoretically, I should have been studied chemistry from 7th or 8th grade, which should make 4 or 5 years of friendship with this terrible subject.

Well, it's not really like this.

Basic (or middle) school in Estonia covers grades 1 to 9. Then it's 3 grades of highschool. But basic school I went to, was something similar to those movies where teacher is sent into hell on earth. I live in city part that pretty much equals to a ghetto in western cities. And the school was equal also. As were most of the people in my class.

In 8th grade (If I remember correctly), when puberty kicked in and people in my class turned into complete idiots/ultraviolent hormone bombs, my introduction to chemistry was something I regret till today.

The teacher happened to be total failure, and she didn't even try to teach anything or maintain order in class: the huge cardboard periodic table of elements was set to fire once, fights/bullying during lesson happened on daily basis, one desk was covered in magnesium and sat on fire, that wet rag that's used for cleaning the blackboard hit teacher more times that I could count, chairs and backpacks were thrown out of window to irritate teacher (3rd floor!), the list is endless.

In this earthly teenage hell, beloved miss teacher often simply shat up and just stood there till the end of the lesson.
Well, and failed everyone.

I can't blame her for this, but that didn't help the ones who wanted to study. Every crazed male (and some females) in this class were testing the boundaries of behavior and this teacher didn't set any at all. So, I recall only 2 or 3 more or less "normal" lessons during last  2 years of basic school. But I never reached chemistry, and passed school with lowest possible grade to pass it at all. Leading teacher of the class literally pushed me to graduate, I really didn't pick much up in this hell. Which caused alot of downfall and failed tries to resurface later, but that's a longer story.
Needless to say, there was NO lab work or actual experiments in this class. Even if teacher wanted to bring kids into chemistry, there was no equipment or resources for this.

Short story is this: chemistry is still something that sounds like chinese to me.

As an artist with strong visual memory, I can fairly quickly learn anything that I can SEE or what is drawable. Or, if it has very STRICT set system and behavior, so at average level, I can also handle maths(calculus,geometry,etc) and physics. Or languages. Works also for things I can imagine, draw a mental picture in my head -- history is my favourite subject.

This is where chemistry fails, being totally theoretical, with actually almost zero things to see or remember. I see a desk and keyboard infront of me. If I try really hard, okay, I can imagine and believe atoms and molecules buzzing around instead of this black keyboard my eyes witness. But 11th grade chemistry is a bit tougher than simple belief. Alicyclic compounds, hydrocarbons, carbonyl compounds, levels of polymerization, polar single bounds or whatever they were called, etc. And of course, formulas. In Estonia, educational system expects you to become a writer, historian, biologist, mathematician, rocket scientist and what else after graduating, so there's no voluntary subjects and everything is taken through VERY deeply.

Trying to read a chemistry books does nothing but confuses and makes me sleep quite quickly. Main problem is of course that I don't have any base to learn. You cannot simply jump into something and start learning it if you don't know any basics. It even isn't that hard to study. I can mechanically remember all this chinese and write on paper next day. This is how I made into 11th grade. But as soon as I walk out of classroom, the "chinese" in my head is gone. It almost feels like my brain rejects chemistry. Rejects really aggressively.

I have time until May. In May, I have to know chemistry like I had been learning it for last 5 years. And I'm so clueless on what to do.

Is there something in this world that could help me?
Maybe a webpage that goes from "what is atom" to "how to build an atom bomb" with loads of pictures and other stuff to make it be less chinese? Or maybe a strong drug to study? Educational computer game? Good tips? A visit to a shrink? Something?

[OneDollar]

Looking for a personal tutor would probably be the best idea. Learning one on one with someone who knows and can teach their stuff. I'm not sure how you'd go about finding one, but maybe asking your teachers? Other than that there's quite a few websites that will explain stuff to you, (howstuffworks.com for instance) but you generally need to search for something specific. Get some revision guides that cover your course, and perhaps stuff lower down - when I went through GCSEs I more or less never went back to my own notes but learned everything from the guides. Is your teacher the sort of person you can approach after class to go over things with? If they're understanding you can explain your situation to them and they might be able to bring you up to speed on the background of what they just taught. Don't use Wikipedia - it tends to cover PHD and beyond stuff and I'll probably be far too detailed information. As a last resort I guess you could ask questions here and hope some people know what they're talking about.

It sounds like you've got a lot of work ahead, good luck!

[CodeJunkie]

I studied chemistry up to about the same level you're looking for, and really textbooks are going to be the fastest and most thorough way of studying.  If you can't stand your textbook look around the library, bookshop or online and get a better one, it'll certainly be worth your while.  My personal preference is that nice size between A4 and A5, paperback (so you can hold it easily), nice white pages and fairly large print without pages of continuous text.  I have some core textbooks that are pretty much doorstops they're so boring to read.

Try and dig out some other chemistry sources like online quizzes even if they aren't amazingly helpful (preferably made for your syllabus, but things like this should share some common ground: http://www.mp-docker.demon.co.uk/as_a2/index_salters.html), the odd wiki pages about things you find interesting in the text, and anything else.  Learning from lots of sources should help keep your attention longer.  Just be careful about revision games, they're very often boring and the learning content is piss poor.

Find out how long you have left and how long your textbook is.  Ideally you'll want to read it cover to cover, or read most of it and more boring topics from better sources.  How many pages per day or week do you have to average?  If you read constantly you'll get bored very quickly; find something that interests you that you can stop and start easily.  My strategy tends to be study from between 10 minutes to when you get really bored and you're daydreaming, then do something fun, but before you take a break plan when to stop (ie when your track or song you're playing stops, when the counterstrike map changes).  Then study again.  This may not work for you, finding something that does is important.

Try some easy and ideally all the hard questions in the textbook (or another textbook if it doesn't have any) depending on the grade you're after to break up the reading too.  The odd switch between book and pen and paper can be refreshing.  If you can, dig out past papers for your syllabus.  Once you finish a topic or chapter in the textbook pick out the questions you can do in the papers while they're still fresh in your mind.  Picking out trends in questions you're confident in can be quite relieving.  If you have an abundance of papers save a few for revision just before the exam.

[auriond]

I sucked at chemistry in secondary school, too. (I sucked at Chinese too, but that's a different story.) But then I didn't have the internet.

I agree that if you can't get a private tutor, use the internet to educate yourself. If you know the syllabus, just read up the individual topics. For practice, I don't know if Estonia has what we call the "ten-year series", where there's a compilation of really old GCSE papers you can practice with.

Textbooks are fine too, if you can get your hands on several versions of them. One is usually not enough.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

In Estonia, educational system expects you to become a writer, historian, biologist, mathematician, rocket scientist and what else after graduating, so there's no voluntary subjects and everything is taken through VERY deeply.

Sounds like my kind of place!


As for advice, I make it a point not to offer any I wouldn't/haven't taken myself, and the best advice I can give on learning something in school is to start by reading the books cover to cover.  This worked for me on many occasions since I would have information prior to a lesson and the class would reinforce it.  I'm not going to say a lot of subjects aren't boring; I fell asleep quite regularly reading my economics book like a novel, but in the long run it kept me way ahead of the rest of the class.

[InCreator]

Thanks for tips so far. Problem is, there isn't that ONE textbook I have to go through. Chemistry simply is like this: I probably have to go through all textbooks from grade 8 to 11 to stand a chance. There's no programmers who don't know how to copy a file.

In Estonia, educational system expects you to become a writer, historian, biologist, mathematician, rocket scientist and what else after graduating, so there's no voluntary subjects and everything is taken through VERY deeply.

Sounds like my kind of place!

You misunderstood.
While detail in subjects is extremely high, the time allotted and pace is same as everywhere. My ex went to high school in U.S. and from her descriptions, American kids are learning in 12th grade what Estonians do in 8th.

Yes, nice to learn more and harder.
But it's 5 days a week, 8 months a year, 12 years of school like everywhere else.
Grading is as strict, and chances to failure therefore alot higher. Also, getting into such heavy detail isn't really interesting. Not all of us like chemistry. Or history. Or physics. There's very large cover of things, heavy material to go through in relatively short time, and some of it is insanely difficult. Education here won't take individual interests nor capabilities into account. It often feels like school is forming a bunch superhumans.

For me, it would have been still okay if I was 17, teenager and mold-able. But my life has been a bit different and I'm 24 now. Like, old. Adult. So, it's a whole different music here.

If it happens that one or more of the subjects are totally against your person or capabilities (I described this before), you're pretty much f-ed -- like myself. A low grade on your sheet won't let you into university, and job market is instantly limited for you... if not closed at all. It's modern bureaucratic thinking: bosses do not know what they need. All they believe is a piece of paper. I consider myself to know computers and a bit of design, but I will never, ever have a chance at job interview to sit down and demonstrate what I can do. I will be buried before employer even sees me, because they always ask to send CV first.

Mozart himself would get kicked out of opera hall if he doesn't have a paper to prove his skill to compose.

Anyway, it's quite hard to use internet for chemistry: English terminology is absolutely bizarre and different for things I have to find. And there's absolutely nothing in Estonian language that would help. Google also gives too much PhD crap or just mess... If someone happens to know good links (organic chemistry), I would be very thankful.

I won't lose hope, but with my work schedule as it is, I probably won't raise my nose from the book until spring...
Ouch. Being a working man for last 6 years, it's kind of difficult to work hard on something I personally don't like or need and not get paid.

[Fizzii]

I'm not sure what kind of level of chemistry you have to study, but I found that chemistry at uni here in Australia is a lot of memory work anyway (well, with organic chemistry, the reaction mechanisms could be worked out, but it was simply easier to remember what how the reaction than to spend time working it out from scratch on the exam).

Textbooks are useful if you read through them slowly and write down key points to help you understand what is going on.

If you don't understand the basics, you should try and understand those fully because then you can reason out things that happen from there (ie. why the electrons transfer a certain way thus causing molecules to break or form)

http://www.organic-chemistry.org/ is good as a reference to organic reactions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_chemistry Wiki has an overview, and lots of links at the bottom that are quite helpful too.

[Cino]

One of my high school best friends was from Lasnamäe as well and also had trouble with chemistry, but we helped him through it, explaining everything in simple terms. I remember explaining him some stuff with beer bottles representing atoms and such and it worked. He's a teacher in a university now (not a chemistry teacher though). So personal tutors would be the best help I suppose, try asking your classmates.

[Da_Elf]

i just failed it and never looked back since it was never anything i might need in the future.

[space boy]

it was never anything i might need in the future.

Just like most stuff you learn in high school. That's true for me at least. The skills I use the most now(basically everything required for making a game) are selftaught . I somehow get through the day without remembering the formula for gravitational potential energy.(yep, i looked those words up on wikipedia) All I need to know is that stuff just falls.

[Nikolas]

i just failed it and never looked back since it was never anything i might need in the future.

On the contrary I seem to stumble (on my own purpose of course) continuously on topics that I could use some rereading...

History, seems rather essential to me, in most discussions.
Math, I do use to my compositions (PhD), and they always come handy, especially with those queer ideas I have.
Chemistry, ok, I've never used that.
Physics it is nice to know some things behind electricity, or various other stuff. Useful for kids toys!
Religion: That's all bullshit, I never needed that! Should be banned from school 

But, of course, anything to a higher extend (say what you learn above the age of 16, which usually is for preperation to the university, if you decide to go there), is pretty useless in real life, unless you are McGyver or you actually end up studying on of those subjects (how useless IS chemistry to a chemist I wonder? Or higher maths to a quandum mechanique or however they're called).

See? I could really use some spelling lessons in English as well. :p

[Gord10]

Estonian education system sounds like the one in Turkey. We had to 'learn' (actually memorize, to forget all after one or two years) many things that we would never use (or we could easily look up an encyclopedia).

Only thing I can suggest is trying to learn everything from the basics by yourself. The basics of the chemistry are not so hard, you should be able to understand a book that teaches in 6th-8th grades easily.

Another thing;
Due to mental problems, my school success dramatically decreased during the highschool. I could hardly graduate and I was unable to attend a good university. I attended courses after my graduation. It was so hard for me to study again, I know what you meant by "my brain rejected to learn". I had to force myself to learn; I became more successful than I was in highschool (but still not so much. I could fix myself when I began to university, my marks are quite good now.

Maybe you can do the same thing; get hardly graduated from the highschool but learn everything in a better environment?   


Chemistry is not really so hard. Maybe the last units (including organical chemistry) are tough, but the basics are really not harder than maths or physics.

[radiowaves]

Wow, you an artist, Inc? What kind of? Do you paint? Do illustrations?

[InCreator]

Artist as an amateur, not professional artist.
What kind? Every kind. Digital, mostly. Like 2D and also a bit of 3D, but I consider myself quite good with either realistic or caricature "mode" with pencil and paper also. During school, there was way more drawings in my notepads than actual school material.

Anyway, back to chemistry. For me, it goes like this,

First I open a textbook with paragraph I have to know. Since I don't have basics, it looks to me like this:

Saturated hydrocarbons (chinese1) are the most simple of the hydrocarbon species and are composed entirely of chinese2 bonds and are chinese3 with hydrogen; they are the basis of petroleum fuels and are either found as chinese4 or chinese5 species of unlimited number. The general formula for saturated hydrocarbons is CnH2n + 2 (assuming chinese6).

So, I don't even understand most of words in this paragraph. So I have to sort out "chinese" terms first...
I open another textbook:

Alkanes (chinese1), also known as paraffins, are chemical compounds that consist only of the elements carbon (C) and hydrogen (H) (i.e., hydrocarbons), wherein these atoms are linked together exclusively by single bonds (i.e., they are saturated compounds) without any cyclic structure (i.e., loops). Alkanes belong to a homologous series of organic compounds in which the members differ by a constant relative atomic mass of 14.

Well, I didn't replace chinese in this paragraph, but I don't understand 3-4 further terms!
Homologus series? single bonds? saturated compounds? This takes another, and another paragraph. With long circle, I finally figure out what Alkanes are. But I had to learn what hydrocarbons were! And there's more of "chinese" in hydrocarbon paragraph, so it AGAIN takes branches and branches, leading to more and more new chinese in paragraphs to figure them out.

So, I have to open ANOTHER textbook to sort THOSE out.

In the end, when I find them all, I have still failed, because all this new information, it all just becomes a big mess in my head. And that's what's killing me in chemistry. Even besides theoretical part, which ends still up learnable, the formulas and equations, finding ion charges and level of oxydation and all this logic-free mathematical mess of joining elements will still fail me in the test.

If there only was some video material to learn it. Visualize! Be it either 3D models or 2D animations, but something!

C4H9Li + H2O → C4H10 + LiOH

Won't make me understand what just happened. But heavy CGI of the process, I think, would.

[Gord10]

As I have stated before, you need to study it from the basics. Hydrocarbons and alkanes are included in a further unit of chemistry, you can't understand this unit properly if you don't know what compounds are.

And about C4H9Li + H2O → C4H10 + LiOH, let me try to tell it in a basic way:

There is a compound consisting of 4 carbon, 9 hydrogen and 1 lithium atoms and we leak water on it. Water melts (or whatever; any chemical reaction happens) this compound and we have two compounds; a compound of 4 carbon, 10 hydrogen atoms and another one with one lithium, one oxygen, one hydrogen atoms.

Just think it as a mathematical process: The amount of all the atoms are remained. H2O gives a hydrogen atom to that compound and takes the Li atom for giving it.

Sorry if this sounds too complex, but it is the easier I can tell the chemical reactions. You also need to know the chemical bonds, this is one of the basic topics of chemistry.

Don't try to learn organical chemistry before learning this basic topics, or you won't understand anything.

[Fizzii]

You'll probably need to start from very basics - What an element is, what atoms are made of (protons, neutrons, electrons), how the periodic table is structured. Chemistry is all about movement of electrons as it is the movement of electrons that causes reactions to occur. The reason why electrons are transferred, or are shared between atoms is because the atoms want to achieve stability with a full outer shell of electrons. So you'll need to read a book that goes through the fundamentals of chemistry and how electrons form bonds. And as Gord said, atoms of each element are conserved in chemical reactions, so reaction equations must contain the same number of each element on each side of the arrow.

From there, organic chemistry is about compounds that mainly contain carbon and hydrogen atoms. A lot of the terms you labelled as 'chinese' are simply words assigned to describe the compounds and bonding. The bonding you'll come across in organic chemistry is 'covalent bonding' (that is, when electrons are shared between atoms), so you'll have to read up on covalent bonding to understand what single bonds, double bonds, and triple bonds are about (again, any basic chemistry book should cover this).

What might help is doing a flowchart to map out everything in a bit more order to sort everything out in your head. It probably feels very circular and confusing at the moment, but once you get the basics learnt you won't have so much trouble.

There should be lots of videos on the net, just that the tricky part is finding them. There should be a number of basic chemistry books with pictures though, to help you understand some of the things they are getting at.

[Radiant]

Start by learning this source text...

[cyen]

Sorry to hear that you're having difficulties with chemistry.  Like other said, you should focus on and understand the basic concepts first.  Maybe you're just freaking out because of all the terms and definitions.  Unfortunately, intro chem does require quite a bit of memorization, but it's like any subject--you need to learn the terms and definitions first before you can start learning about the hows and whys.  I find that science is poorly taught because people think that learning equals to rout memorization.  They fail to understand the significance and the concepts behind the subject.  Definitely find a tutor and ask lots of questions either during class or after class.  A good teacher should be able to explain concepts in different ways so everyone in the class can understand.  Also, maybe you can ask for examples of chemistry in real life application or some sort of demo. 

I too am a visual person.  When I started freshman chemistry, I was a bit confused about the new concepts, but I found that I ended up learning a lot more when I was in the chemistry lab actually working with my heads.  By the time I got into organic chem, the concepts became easier to understand, and lab classes really helped solidifying the concepts I learned in lecture.  It was quite cool when we had to make dilantin, an anti-seizure drug.  I also still remember the day when organic chemistry and biochemistry finally met when we learned about DNA.  It's quite neat that in orgo class I learned one way of sequencing DNA and in biochem class I learned another way of sequencing DNA.

alkanes, alkenes, alkynes, single bond, double bond, triple bond, saturated bonds, poly-unsaturated, bonds mono-saturated bonds, etc. These are all very basic organic chemistry terms that's found in the first month of college level organic chem class.  You do need to memorize these terms because this is very basic stuff.  If you're able to give a definition in your own words without looking back at your book, then you'll know these terms. I can tell you that alkanes are saturated hydrocarbons because they do not contain any bonds that's not single bond.  Hydrocarbons are simply compounds consisted of hydrogens and carbons.  I have not studied organic chem in 12 years, yet I can still fill in all the "chinese" in your examples.  Actually, I think these chemistry terms look more Greek to me.  XD  Then again, I do know Chinese.  Hehe.

You said that you need more visual examples to understand organic chem. Good news is that you can get 3-D models and you can physically build each of these compounds to understand what these various bonds/compounds are.  You'll see on the model that the ball for carbon has four slots while ball for hydrogen only has one slot and so on.  From this, you can tell that hydrogen can only make one bond because it only has one electron, but carbon has many possibilities because it has four available electrons in its outer electron shell for bonding.

C4H9Li + H2O → C4H10 + LiOH

That's a stoichiometry equation.  You just need to balance all the equation so both sides have equal numbers of each element.

Anyway, good luck with chemistry!! Don't give up on it and do find some help.

[Meowster]

Estonian education system sounds like the one in Turkey. We had to 'learn' (actually memorize, to forget all after one or two years) many things that we would never use (or we could easily look up an encyclopedia).

That really annoys me about most education systems. In Ireland, your entire Art result for your leaving cert exam depends on how well you can paint a picture from start to finish in two hours, on a subject matter that you cannot choose freely, and how well you can answer random art history questions. Ridiculous. I usually got A's for art, but one the day of the exam I spilled paint onto my canvas (as the student next to me had nudged me!) and had to start over, 40 minutes into the exam! What a ridiculous way of examining art students!

Subjects like English and History rely almost entirely on how well you can answer sets of questions in an exam, instead of encouraging students to research and write essays etc (the history exam does this a little, but I believe only 20% of your marks are awarded to your research topic, which is utterly stupid. As if you're ever going to be expected to write a history essay based entirely on facts recalled from your own memory, at any point in your career in the future!).

Exams in Ireland really only stress the importance of being able to remember facts you have been told for long enough to write them down in your exam, instead of focusing on students learning how to use and appreciate knowledge that they have gained.

I remember once failing a test in English because I had argued that Sylvia Plath was an overrated poet. I researched my answer, I gave supporting evidence, I structured it well and the opinions were entirely my own (as opposed to every other student who had changed the wording of the 'sample answer' the teacher had given them the week before). When I asked why I'd been failed, the teacher responded that while she had thought the work was essentially good, she didn't think that my answer was what the examiners wanted to hear, and they wouldn't appreciate the opinion of a young schoolgirl on work that was widely regarded as being excellent. Ridiculous! Actually encouraging students not to think for themselves!

Also Sylvia Plath is fucking terrible... does anybody disagree? The only thing I like about her is her husband, but only because he created the Iron Giant...

Anyway sorry for that rant ¬¬ er do go on...