chemistry a level textbook suggestions

Understanding Chemistry
CHEMISTRY TEXTBOOK SUGGESTIONS You can get all the books on this page quickly and easily from Amazon.co.uk. You can, of course, also buy the books from normal bookshops. However, these days few bookshops keep much beyond the standard revision guides, and so you will probably have to order what you want. I have split the page into recommendations and suggestions. It is impossible to recommend a book unless you are familiar with it, and the only one I am really familiar with is my chemistry calculations book. That should be useful whatever syllabus you are doing. For the suggestions, I am giving you links into Amazon.co.uk for books for each of the main UK syllabuses, but I don't claim to be familiar with the majority of the books listed. You should compare the reviews of the books by following the links to the Amazon site. Recommendations Click on the title or the picture to take you to the Amazon.co.uk site for more information including all the reviews.
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You will find more details about my calculations book on its own page on this site with a further link to Amazon if you are interested. Prior to September 2008, I also recommended Advanced Level Practical Work for Chemistry by Andrew Hunt, which would be really useful to anyone struggling with chemistry practical at AS or A level - especially for practical assessment or practical exams. I have also described that in detail on another page. Unfortunately this is now out of print, but if you can find a second-hand copy, you should buy it. Suggestions These suggestions cover UK-based Chemistry courses for 16-18 year olds, including A level, IB and Scottish Highers. If you want to make life as easy as possible for yourself, I think there is a lot to be said for using books designed especially to cover your particular syllabus. The content is then exactly what you need - and no more. The alternative is to use a short revision guide for all the facts, and to get your explanations in detail from a website like Chemguide. I'm not going to give you details for general revision guides - you need to look at these in a bookshop so that you can see how easy they are to follow. They are very variable - some are much more confusing than others. Books for specific syllabuses UK A level syllabuses Important: UK A level syllabuses are changing starting in September 2008 If you are taking your final A level exam in 2009, you will be working to the old syllabuses. Most of the textbooks currently available (April 2008) are written for these old syllabuses. If you are doing AS in 2009 and your final A level exam in 2010, you will be working to the new syllabuses. Textbooks written for the old syllabuses won't necessarily cover everything you need for the new ones. When you are looking for a book, *look carefully at the publication date.* Anything published before late 2007 is likely to be out-of-date for the new syllabuses. Each of the following displays is a simplified window onto the Amazon.co.uk site, and in each case, I have used a search term mostly in the form *(exam group) level chemistry*. This should pick up all the relevant AS and A level texts for that particular syllabus. Clicking on any of the books will take you to a normal Amazon page where you can read the reviews. In case you notice it, the "Get Widget" button at the bottom of each window leads you to a page where you can set up a similar window for your own website. There doesn't seem to be any way of getting rid of that, so just ignore it! Click on the link below to take you to the right window for your syllabus.
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AQA Edexcel OCR Salters Nuffield WJEC and CCEA Other A level-equivalent syllabuses The statement in red above doesn't apply to any of these syllabuses. Cambridge International (CIE) A level Chemistry International Baccalaureate (IB) Scottish Highers AQA Edexcel OCR (Care! Don't get confused with the Salters syllabus also produced by OCR. That is also known as OCR Chemistry B. The list below excludes books designed for Salters.) Salters IB Make sure that you only look at editions published from 2007 onwards to allow for syllabus changes. Scottish Highers You will find lots of references below, but some are quite old. Treat this with some care, and take advice from your teachers and other people who are following the same course. Nuffield The Nuffield syllabus is being merged with the standard Excel syllabus starting in September 2008. The last Nuffield A level exam will be in 2009. I haven't included any links for the current Nuffield A level syllabus, because, frankly, there aren't any books for this syllabus which have got good reviews on Amazon. If you want to check for yourself, use one of the Amazon windows above, and substitute the search term nuffield level chemistry. WJEC and CCEA Neither of these syllabuses make any textbook recommendations, and an Amazon search for books written for WJEC or CCEA chemistry produces no result. (Or at least, it didn't when I wrote this. You could try yourself by using one of the Amazon windows above, and substituting the search terms wjec level chemistry or ccea level chemistry. If you find anything, could you let me know using the address on the about this site page.) Cambridge International (CIE) A level Chemistry I don't feel I can make any suggestions for this syllabus. The CIE syllabus recommends two books and a support booklet for the Applications of Chemistry section. The first edition of the booklet is dreadful - badly written and full of mistakes. If you are already using it, make sure you follow this link for all the mistakes I have spotted so far. The two books that CIE recommends both include one of the authors of the booklet in its list of authors, and so that doesn't inspire confidence. Despite being published for several years, neither has been reviewed on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com. If you come across a book which you like and which matches the latest CIE syllabus, please let me know using the address on the about this site page. Apologies if the page doesn't work in your browser! Few things irritate me more than pages which don't work properly in the browser of my choice. Anyone who has used, say, Safari on an Apple Mac in the past will know the feeling when you are told that you are using an "illegal browser". (That actually happened to me!) And now I am falling into the same trap myself! In order to get reliably up-to-date lists of books without me having to trawl through Amazon every few weeks, I decided this time to make use of code provided by Amazon to open windows into their site. It simply makes life a great deal easier for me, and provides a better service to most of my audience. Obviously, Amazon will provide code which works on the majority of current browsers - but that's not much consolation if you use a less common one, and so I apologise. There is also a way around it, although in not such an elegant way . . . Copy and paste the following search phrases into the keywords box: for AQA: aqa level chemistry for Edexcel: edexcel level chemistry for OCR: ocr -salters -B level chemistry for Salters: salters level chemistry for IB: ib diploma chemistry for Scottish Highers: scottish higher chemistry
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