The Basic Course

The editors of the Fourth Edition of Nuffield Advanced Chemistry consulted widely and revised the topics in the light of detailed comments and advice from teachers. The team also had to take into account the subject criteria from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) when planning the number and sequence of topics and the approach to assessing practical work. The QCA criteria at the time specified core content for the two parts of the course, AS and A2. As a result, some chemical ideas which used to appear in the first year of the course had been moved to Year Two, including the Born-Haber cycle, the chemistry of benzene and the quantitative study of rates of reaction.

In the Fourth Edition some material was included qualitatively in Year One before being approached quantitatively in Year Two, for example rates of reaction and dynamic equilibrium. The study of the alkaline earth elements, which featured in the second edition, but not in the third edition, reappeared.

The topic 1 that had been introduced in the Third Edition was rewritten for the Fourth Edition to reduce the emphasis on iron and to smooth the transition from double-award science courses. An alternative version of topic 1 was provided as a photocopiable resource in the Teachers’ Guide to give extra support for students with very limited experience of formulae, equations and quantitative chemistry.