This page contains an miscellaneous assortment of links that I have found useful or interesting. It isn't meant to be all-inclusive or in any way systematic and I will add to it from time to time as I come across new sites I like.
| Test yourself | A link to Dr Phil Brown's website where UK GCSE, AS and A level chemistry students will find a wide and growing range of multiple choice, short answer and structured questions. |
| An examiner's view | A link to Rod Beavon's chemistry pages. Rod Beavon is chief examiner for A level chemistry for Edexcel, one of the UK exam boards. A close look at what he has to offer is a must for Edexcel students, but there is a lot of good stuff whatever exam system you are working in. |
| chemistry-degree.co.uk | A small site written by a chemistry undergraduate in the UK, offering advice to students preparing for university entrance to read chemistry. I have no idea how much of this would apply outside the UK, but it is well written, and certainly worth a look. |
| Webelements | Use the Periodic Table to search for all kinds of information about elements and their inorganic compounds. This is one of the key chemistry sites on the web, but is unfortunately getting cluttered with advertising. |
| Ptable | Try this Periodic Table if you can't stand WebElements advertising. |
| Editable Periodic Table | This gives you a printable Periodic Table which is full of information. It is available in colour or black and white, and is also available as an Excel file which you can adapt for your particular needs. The site warns you that to print it in its standard form, you will need a laser printer because of the very small fonts needed to fit in all the information, but in fact it printed OK on my inkjet printer. |
| Macrogalleria | A fantastic source of information about polymers from the University of Southern Mississippi. Everything from uses up to detailed chemistry. |
| ChemWiki | From UC Davis (University of California). This is a rapidly growing online source of material for university chemistry students, but parts of it may well be useful for 16 - 18 year olds as well. |
| NIST Chemistry WebBook | A high powered chemistry database of chemical information including spectra. Probably more useful for teachers than for students. |
| Tom Lehrer - The Elements | Every chemistry student should be familiar with this classic song. |
| Matt Hegarty's Periodic Table Song | This song should help in the unlikely event that you ever want to learn the entire Periodic Table. But even if you don't want to waste your time doing that, go and spend 3 minutes listening to this anyway. I think it is a brilliant piece of work and deserves recognition. |
| Animations | A large collection of links to pages of mainly biology and biochemistry animations, but with some chemistry. Some are fairly trivial; some are absolutely excellent. |
| More animations | Good stuff from the University of Colorado. Probably more likely to be used by teachers with a class than by students on their own, because you would need some guidance as to how to get the best from them. The site also has lots of physics simulations and some biology, maths and earth science. |
| Chalkbored | A fantastic resource of worksheets, handouts, and PowerPoint presentations by an American high school teacher and author, and aimed at eleventh and twelfth-grade chemistry. Explore "chemistry11" and "chemistry12". Can be used by students, but is likely to be more useful to teachers. |
| Environmental Protection Agency | The EPA is the best place to start if you are looking for information on any environmental topic. |
| ICECAP | This is an important site which provides some much-needed balance to the so-called "consensus" about man-made climate change. It consists of articles from scientists and others from all over the world providing an alternative point of view and grows on a daily basis. Keep an eye on this for a few weeks and see what you think. |
| Molecule of the Month | From Bristol University. Often quirky information about molecules, some common, some not-so-common - a new one every month. |
| MyChemistryTutor.com | You could try this if you need help with homework or other chemistry problems. It is run by US chemistry teachers and is aimed at their High School and College system, but chemistry is chemistry wherever you live. |
| chemicalforums.com | Another American chemistry forum which is worth looking at. Make sure that you select the right level, otherwise you are just going to irritate them. Look at the sort of questions which are being asked already in a forum to find which matches yours. |
| Periodic Table of Videos | A full periodic table from which you can access short, quirky videos about any element. From the University of Nottingham. Wonderful! |
| Khan Academy | A huge resource of shortish (10 minutes or so) video lectures on all sorts of educational topics (including chemistry, biology, physics and maths) organised by subjects. |
| BetterExplained.com | A well written, easy to follow, site which looks in depth at some maths (and other) topics in order to generate high levels of understanding. If you are doing maths at A level (or its equivalents) or above, it would be worth a look. |
| Transition metals | Links to information about various transition metals, including some obscure inner transition elements. The links are variable - some have more information than you could possibly want; others are more restricted. I can't guarantee the accuracy of what you might find from following these links. Life is too short to explore all of them fully! |
| The Tutor Website | This takes you to a page of links to what the site describes as the "Top 20 UK Science Resources and Blogs". These are aimed at GCSE and A level (or their equivalents).You might find something useful here that you didn't know about. But more importantly, this relatively new site (as of March 2012) has a whole lot of useful information for UK tutors, or parents or students seeking tutors. Explore the menu bar at the top of each page if this is relevant to you. |
| Adhesives, glues and sealants | A specialist site written by a European adhesive engineer. If you ever have to do a project involving adhesives, or are just interested, this is a good place to start. |