Thinkwell chemistry

[flyingiguana]

Has anyone used Thinkwell for chemistry? How did it go? Did you finish all the units, or just a select few? It looks like a year of college chem to me (or high school AP), so I'm not sure we're going to finish it all unless my daughter decides she wants to do the AP test.

[Michelle in AL]

I own it, but only use it as a supplement. I think it is wonderful, my dd, the one taking the class did not like not having a textbook, so we use thinkwell to supplement.

 

It is AP level, sorry I can't tell you what to leave out, I would definitely master balancing equations, different types of reactions, stochiometry. Basically anything involving math.

[Hilary in MI]

We also used Thinkwell Chemistry as a supplement. You are correct that it is college level. So, we chose lectures that supplemented our high school level text (Prentice Hall Chemistry with Oak Meadow--FYI we found Oak Meadow's workload too light for retention, so we supplemented a lot).

 

For ds2, we will probably use Conceptual Chemistry 3rd ed. and the online lectures. We'll continue to use TW as a supplement.

[Bev in B'ville]

along with a textbook (with assignments by me), and The Teaching Company Chemistry videos.

 

My dd's opinion is that Thinkwell was fun, good videos, and she learned more from Thinkwell than she did either the textbook or TTC videos.

[flyingiguana]

Thanks!

 

We're finding Gordon Yee to be a really great lecturer. We haven't needed a supplement with him. The other guy is somewhat more difficult to understand and we have to supplement the exercises for the ones he does (as well as the explanations). As a result, when Yee isn't lecturing, we find we go a lot slower.

 

This has been an experiment. I'm trying to decide if just doing select chapters out of Zumdahl is the better approach as I did with my first. I haven't quite decided.

[jlovebaker]

for my chem-crazy 8th grader. He did Teaching Company's lectures last year ... but Thinkwell is a different category - much more difficult and complete, IMO. We're using Raymond Chang's Gen Chem for more explanation when needed but Thinkwell is the main course. He really is liking the class (most of the time :) ) and he's doing ok with the exercises and tests - some chapters are much harder than others ... that being said - there is NO way we could do all 26 chapters (plus one on labs). Ouch! I am not trying to make a college class or even an AP class for him so I compared the chapters to the Calif standards for high school. I cut chapters mercilessly.

 

Here's what he's doing: Chapters 1-7 (I wanted him to do 8 but it was just too hard). Chapter 9. Chapters 13-16. And then he'll finish with the 3 chapters on Thermodynamics, Nuclear Fissions, and O Chem.

Edited January 22, 2011 by jlovebaker