AP Chemistry is a year-long seminar-style course that teaches students the fundamental ideas and tools of modern chemistry and covers college-level introductory chemistry topics. Students become fluent in the language, symbols, laboratory skills, and concepts of chemistry. They learn to describe chemical names, the periodic table, types of reactions, chemical reactivity, structure, bonding, thermodynamics, kinetics, electrochemistry and nuclear chemistry. Throughout the course they are exposed to applications of chemistry in organic chemistry, materials science, environmental chemistry and biochemistry. This course stresses problem solving in chemistry using verbal descriptions and mathematical relationships to describe chemical ideas and processes. AP Chemistry gives students hands-on laboratory experience by requiring students to perform experiments at home using lab equipment and reagents purchased from a chemical supplier or household chemicals. This course prepares students for the AP Chemistry exam.

Related course: Students also have the option of doing additional laboratory work during the summer at Stanford (see OCL10 – Chemistry Lab)