One of those subjects that you either love or hate is chemistry. If you want to be a doctor, an engineer, or a scientist, you must have a deep love for chemistry.
Most people find chemistry to be a difficult topic, however this does not have to be the case. If you don’t approach it correctly, you’ll have a hard time with chemistry.
Many teachers and students who prepared for and excelled in the IIT-JEE examination have stated time and again that Chemistry is important for improving your overall rank.
Today we will explore proven strategies and techniques that will, if applied, will improve your love on the subject and there by your score.
This article is not about how to crack IIT-JEE in 30 days or how to prepare for IIT-JEE after the board exams. This article will be useful for students who have recently completed class X and have begun their preparation for the IIT-JEE.
Chemistry has six parts not three
The Syllabus of Chemistry in IIT-JEE should be divided into six parts
- General Chemistry– Stoichiometry (Some Basic Concepts of Chemistry or Mole Concept), Structure of Atom, Periodic Table and Chemical Bonding
- Physical Chemistry-States of Matter, Thermodynamics, Equilibrium, Redox Reactions, Solid State, Solutions, Electrochemistry and Chemical Kinetics
- Inorganic Chemistry-Hydrogen, s-block elements, p-block elements, d&f-block elements, co-ordination compounds, Salt Analysis
- Organic Chemistry– General Organic Chemistry (GOC: Nomenclature, Isomerism, Organic Reaction Mechanism), Hydrocarbons (Alkanes, Alkenes, Alkynes, Aromatic Compounds), Halogen containing compounds, Alcohols, Phenols and ethers, Carbonyl & Carboxyl compounds and Amines
- Practical Chemistry-Salt Analysis (Qualitative and Quantitative analysis of Inorganic Compounds), Qualitative and Quantitative analysis of organic compounds.
- Everyday Chemistry- Environmental Chemistry, Surface Chemistry, Biomolecules, Polymers and Chemistry in Everyday life
General Chemistry
The chapters in this group comprise the fundamental or foundation of Chemistry. Every chapter in this group is critical, and students must devote significant time to mastering them.
Mole Concept (Stoichiometry or Some Basic Concepts of Chemistry)
This chapter serves as the foundation for the Physical or Numerical part of Chemistry. Some of the mathematical tools used throughout the chapter are fractions, percentages, the unitary method, and logarithms. Students must practise more and more numerical questions in order to grasp the concepts.
Many teachers, particularly in so-called Kota Classes, emphasise shortcuts for answering numerical questions quickly. These shortcuts make the subject more interesting and assist students in developing a love and interest in the chapter.
Atomic Structure and Periodic Table
The essence of these chapters is learning atomic numbers and using them to identify valency, valence electrons, orbital nature, and shape. The Period Table has evolved into the skeleton of Inorganic Chemistry, particularly the group (s,p,d&f block) elements. This chapter also aids in many organic chemistry reasoning questions. Definitions such as electronegativity, bond energy, bond strength, and ionisation energy are critical and are used throughout the chemistry journey.
Chemical Bonding (The James Bond)
This is the hero chapter of Chemistry, specifically organic chemistry. The essence of the chapter is the structure, shapes, angles, and bond structure of compounds. Students must master this chapter in order to grasp the entire chemistry. Concepts such as hybridisation, VSEPR theory, and MOT are sure-fire questions in any exam format.
Drawing lewis structures with correct geometries becomes the first step in drawing organic mechanisms.
Following this chapter, students can begin preparing for both physical and organic chemistry at the same time. Initially, set aside 4 days per week for Physical Chemistry and 2 days for Organic Chemistry.
Physical Chemistry
Thermodynamics and Equilibrium are important chapters because the topics in these chapters can be used to frame multi-topic/HOTS (higher order thinking) questions.
In Organic Chemistry, a thorough understanding of Acid Base (both Arrhenius and Lewis) concepts is more important in drawing mechanisms.
Balancing reactions in Redox reactions helps in writing inorganic reactions without memorising them.
Chapters like Solutions, Electrochemistry and Chemical Kinetics are easy and scoring.
Inorganic Chemistry
This section of chemistry is notorious, and most students despise it. Yes, there are some memory-based sections, but over 80% of the concepts may be logically linked to other concepts/chapters.
It’s critical to finish learning salt analysis before moving on to block chemistry (s,p,d, and f-block) chapters (Qualitative and quantitative analysis of inorganic compounds).
Stick to NCERT text book for these portions, you can refer J.D Lee book on and off.
Organic Chemistry
Students, please note the following: Organic Chemistry is contagious, and many students have claimed that once they sit down to study it, they lose track of time and wind up studying for long periods of time while neglecting other subjects.
Organic chemistry is the most simple and highest-scoring branch of chemistry. In mathematics, it is comparable to trigonometry. A trigonometric equation can be proved in a variety of ways, an organic compound can be created in a variety of methods.
Before moving on to named reactions, learn and practise organic reaction mechanisms. You can avoid memorising reactions if you master the art of writing mechanisms.
Teacher’s compulsorily cover named reactions and their applications while preparing question papers. Maintain separate notes for reagents and named reactions.
The book Reactions, Rearrangements, and Reagents by SN Sanyal is useful for revising the named reactions. Practise the named reactions included in the syllabus only.
Practical Chemistry
This is the most overlooked section by faculty and covers the most important aspect of JEE-Advanced. Matrix matching and paragraph based questions are framed from this section. There is a lot of good content available online on various platforms.
Everyday Chemistry
These are memory-based chapters that are quite scoring if thoroughly practised. These chapters’ audiobooks will be useful for repeated revision.
All the best!
Share your thoughts on the above subject below. Have any other questions, fill the below form to reach us.