Welcome to AP Chemistry

Welcome to AP Chemistry!

AP Chemistry is designed to be equivalent to a first-year college chemistry course. At the end of this year-long course, students have the opportunity to take a national exam administered by The College Board, with the potential to earn college credit. AP is a trademark of the College Board. All courses using this label are required to participate in the AP Course Audit, a process through which AP teachers' syllabi are reviewed by college faculty. The College Board recommends students should have successfully completed a general high school chemistry course and Algebra II before taking AP Chemistry.

Big Ideas

The College Board has AP Chemistry standards focusing on a model of instruction that promotes enduring, conceptual understandings and the content that supports them. This approach enables students to spend less time on factual recall and more time on inquiry-based learning of essential concepts and helps them develop the reasoning skills necessary to engage in the science practices used throughout their study of AP Chemistry. The standards are centered on four "big ideas".

A detailed description of these big ideas and the complete list of learning objectives can be found here:

AP Chemistry Course and Exam Descriptions Links to an external site.

The AP Chemistry Exam

In order to register for the AP Exam given in May, you will need an AP Classroom join code for ‘test only’ from your home school College Board coordinator. If you are a homeschool student, you can find more information on this website.

You are highly encouraged but not required to join the AP Chemistry College Board Classroom for GaVS students.  Check the resources link on the home page of this course or ask your instructor for more information.

AP Classroom is an online platform designed to support students throughout their AP experience. The platform provides a variety of resources and tools to provide yearlong support to enable students to receive meaningful feedback on progress.

Nothing found at AP Classroom is required to complete your GaVS course, but this information can supplement both your understanding and practice. You will find exceedingly helpful daily videos & practice questions in AP Classroom.

College Board AP Chemistry Task Verbs

You may be alone at your computer taking this course, but you are actually a member of a greater learning community, possibly with students from all over the state of Georgia.  In order for your classmates to get to know you better, you will be asked to share a few things about yourself in a discussion and at the same time, practice with some AP Chemistry concepts.

Task verbs are present in each Free Response Question (FRQ) on the AP Chemistry Exam. By practicing with the task verbs, you can improve your FRQ writing quality to increase your points earned.

The following task verbs are commonly used in the free-response questions:

• Calculate: Perform mathematical steps to arrive at a final answer, including algebraic expressions, properly substituted numbers, and correct labeling of units and significant figures.
• Describe: Provide the relevant characteristics of a specified topic.
• Determine: Make a decision or arrive at a conclusion after reasoning, observation, or applying mathematical routines (calculations).
• Estimate: Roughly calculate numerical quantities, values (greater than, equal to, less than), or signs (negative, positive) of quantities based on experimental evidence or provided data.
• Explain: Provide information about how or why a relationship, process, pattern, position, situation, or outcome occurs, using evidence and/or reasoning to support or qualify a claim. Explain “how” typically requires analyzing the relationship, process, pattern, position, situation, or outcome; whereas, explain “why” typically requires analysis of motivations or reasons for the relationship, process, pattern, position, situation, or outcome.  Also phrased as “give one reason.”
• Identify/Indicate/Circle: Indicate or provide information about a specified topic in words or by circling given information. Also phrased as “What is?" or “Which?” or other interrogatory words.
• Justify: Provide evidence to support, qualify, or defend a claim and/or provide reasoning to explain how that evidence supports or qualifies the claim.
• Make a claim: Make an assertion that is based on evidence or knowledge.
• Predict/Make a prediction: Predict the causes or effects of a change in, or disruption to, one or more components in a relationship, pattern, process, or system.

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