The Basic Course

The work on the third edition of Nuffield Advanced Chemistry led to significant, but not drastic, changes in the content and presentation of the course from the revised edition. An important change was to start the revised course at the level of knowledge and understanding of chemistry that could be expected from students who had studied Double Award Science in the National Curriculum, and not a full chemistry course. With this in mind, two new introductory topics were created to start the course.

The first topic was completely new. It was designed to revisit and reinforce essential chemical ideas from the National Curriculum through the study of some reactions of iron compounds. In the second introductory topic the reactions of alcohols were used to introduce basic ideas about organic compounds.

To build on the work done on scientific investigation (as required for GCSE by the Sc1 attainment target in the National Curriculum) there was a greater emphasis on investigative practical work in this edition of the course.