Apologia Chem vs Zumdahl Chem vs Chang Chem

[gyetvaimom]

I own Steven Zumdahl's 2nd edition "Chemistry" I kept from my college days. This text was my first introduction to chemistry. I am currently looking at different texts for my dd's hs course. I thought I could use my old text, since I already own it, but it is thick- a whopping 1091 pages, not counting the appendixes. We have used Apologia and I regret not using my old college Biology text. Not to say anything bad about Apologia, but my college bio text was more substantial in explaining concepts. My daughter was scolding me for that. ;) She liked my old college Biology text by Raven and Johnson. I have also looked a little bit at Chang's Chemistry, which looks great from what I have seen on the sample pages on Amazon, but if it is similar to Zumdahl, then I will stick with what I have. Does anyone have more experience with these texts that can help me discern a whole year of chem for my dd?

My other dilemma? Apologia is organized with labs and lessonplans are available. I stink at producing my own lessonplans. Can anyone help me with some suggestions with this too?

 

Thanks so much in advance for all your help!:001_smile:

[ChemMommy]

Chang is HARD core chemistry. I would not recommend it for a high school course taught at home.

 

Zumdahl does a great job (better than apologia) preparing kids for college chemistry and a good job for an AP exam. Chang could easily be overwhelming.

 

Yes, both texts are LONG. It will be a lot of work to get through them. Don't worry about the chapters toward the end with descriptive chemistry of the main and transition elements. You might consider getting a more recent version of Zumdahl and its answer key.

 

Good luck to you!!

[regentrude]

We are using Chang's shorter text (800+ pages): General Chemistry: The Essential Concepts. We are very happy with the text and consider it sufficient for a rigorous high school course (Chemadvantage used this text for their Honors Chemistry course which, sadly, is no longer offered).

I bought an older edition of the text used very inexpensively.

We use Labpaq for labs and align them with our textbook studies.

I do not use lesson plans; we simply work through the book and do a representative selection of end-of-chapter problems.

[gyetvaimom]

Do you use the textbook or do you use Labpaq as your spine? In other words, does your child do the experiments and then use the textbook to reinforce the concepts experienced? Oh! How do you assess your student? Do you just use the questions/problems at the end of the chapter to assess?

 

I apologize for all my questions. I am new to classical education and I am very eager to learn how to mentor my children with this approach. Thank you for your time in helping a newbie! :bigear:

[gyetvaimom]

[quote

 

Zumdahl does a great job (better than apologia) preparing kids for college chemistry and a good job for an AP exam. Chang could easily be overwhelming.

 

Yes, both texts are LONG. It will be a lot of work to get through them. Don't worry about the chapters toward the end with descriptive chemistry of the main and transition elements. You might consider getting a more recent version of Zumdahl and its answer key.

 

Good luck to you!!

 

 

Thank you so much! Do you have suggestions for labs? I have been researching Labpaq and I am overwhelmed with the choices. How many labs do you recommend for the year?

[regentrude]

Do you use the textbook or do you use Labpaq as your spine? In other words, does your child do the experiments and then use the textbook to reinforce the concepts experienced? Oh! How do you assess your student? Do you just use the questions/problems at the end of the chapter to assess?

 

We use the textbook as the primary resource. DD reads the chapter, takes notes, works the even numbered problems (for which we have solutions in the student workbook, so she can check her work).

 

We do labs from the kit throughout the semester (no regular schedule) and choose them so that they fit with material she has recently covered in her reading. She is required to write up a lab report for each completed lab.

ETA: I saw your other question about labs: we bought a kit with 21 labs for an intro college course. Of these, we will do 12-14. I am not concerned with quantity, more with quality of the work and the lab report. (We have DD type the lab reports in Latex, and there are lots of discussion questions posed in the lab manual that she has to asnwer; each report takes several hours, in addition to the two or so hours for the experiment.)

 

I assess her knowledge by giving unit tests over several chapters at once, two tests per semester. I design the tests using problems similar to the homework and to worked examples in her text. Her grade is based on the tests. Homework is not graded.

 

ETA: Secret shortcut to designing tests: Get a second chemistry text by a different author. Make a test using the worked out examples from the respective chapters in that text. (different author so they will differ from the examples in the text you use.) That way you have fully worked solution keys ;-)

Edited April 18, 2012 by regentrude

[Supertechmom]

Regentrude!

 

 

Thank you for that sugesstion. I have several texts for our subjects and never thought to do that.

 

OP we use Chang. I don't have a lesson plan. Read the book, define the words, memorize the formulas, postulates, and work the examples and exercises. do the next chapter. ;) I bought the lab kit from quality science labs for advanced chemistry and scheduled the labs that went with the topics in the book. I just used the lab manual they provided though next year's biology labs are going to follow regentrude's example.

 

 

And what is "type the reports in Latex"??

 

You guys are always so great for ideas.

[regentrude]

And what is "type the reports in Latex"??

.

 

Latex is a typesetting/ word processing system. At least in the field of theoretical physics, it is the one exclusively used by scientists for their publications (you can submit the Latex manuscript directly to the publisher).

(Hardly anybody uses Word for this stuff)

 

Of course you can have your student use whatever you want ;-)

 

We are just using the lab reports as the vehicle to get her to learn this program.

[Cosmos]

Latex is a typesetting/ word processing system. At least in the field of theoretical physics, it is the one exclusively used by scientists for their publications (you can submit the Latex manuscript directly to the publisher).

(Hardly anybody uses Word for this stuff)

 

In math too, or at least it was back in my day. I think I still have an old TeX manual somewhere.

 

Of course you can have your student use whatever you want ;-)

 

We are just using the lab reports as the vehicle to get her to learn this program.

What a good idea! My ds is young and still learning the ins and outs of a word processor, but I'm filing this idea away for later.

[snowbeltmom]

In math too, or at least it was back in my day. I think I still have an old TeX manual somewhere.

 

The AoPS instructors encourage the kids to submit their challenge sets using LaTEX. Instead of using a Word document where Xsquared would look like X^2, with LaTEX you are able to write it like it would look in a math book.

 

You can download LaTEX for free. The AoPS has a link on its webpage.

[Matryoshka]

The AoPS instructors encourage the kids to submit their challenge sets using LaTEX. Instead of using a Word document where Xsquared would look like X^2, with LaTEX you are able to write it like it would look in a math book.

 

You can download LaTEX for free. The AoPS has a link on its webpage.

 

I sometimes think my dd is having more fun writing things in LaTEX in her AoPS course than doing the math... :tongue_smilie:

[dkholland]

From my ds's perspective (he is 17):

 

He is currently taking a Chem class at an established accredited co-op and the class is taught by a community college professor. They use the apologia chem text and he thinks the class is too easy. He is also preparing to take the SAT Chemistry Subject test and is frustrated because his text is not nearly as deep into the subject as he needs. So, now we are teaching ourselves chemistry from the kaplan and college board prep books. He wanted to take a serious and academic chem class and that is just not what we got. I am not a chemistry teacher (or even student!) but I don't think apologia covers enough topics at the right depth, or even uses common scientific terminology. it is written to the student, so I think they had to drop certain terminology and depth so the student could pick it up on their own.

IMHO! It is a fine text if your student just needs to check the block and get it done, but my ds has wanted more. :001_smile:

[Candid]

You can also use Word to put symbols in. If you go to the Insert ribbon and then click on "equation" you can do that.

[gyetvaimom]

Woohoo! Thanks so much!

 

We are using the Chang book for PA Homeschoolers AP Chem. My only concern about using your book would be if the information is out of date. I know Biology has changed a lot, but I don't know about Chemistry. I find used textbooks at Amazon CHEAP... I get versions that are just a couple of years old. Now here is a cool site for Zumdahl. He has reviews, virtual labs, etc. I'm sure you could look at his schedule and piece one together:

 

http://www.sciencegeek.net/APchemistry/index.shtml

 

Another cool site with exams and such

 

http://www.kentchemistry.com/

 

Student lecture notes for national math and science initiative

http://apchemistrynmsi.wikispaces.com/AP+Chemistry+Class+Lecture+Notes+AND+instructional+videos

 

Videos that follow all of AP Chem

http://www.cosmolearning.com/courses/ap-chemistry-with-chemguy/

 

That should get you started. I just googled and found these. Too bad I HATE science...with a passion... It was my highest score on the ACT, but I couldn't stand it. Never had a good teacher. My honors chemistry teacher gave us a lecture one day and came in the next day and told us to erase it and gave us the correct one...:confused::confused: My granddad was a math/chem major and looked at what we were doing and didn't understand how she was explaining it at all. I got my only C in high school but a B for the semester. Only 1/3 of us were left by the end of the year. My Biology teacher was a joke and gave us the exact questions on the exam to memorize. So I never took any science after my 10th grade year even though all my aptitude tests told me to be a scientist. Instead, I stayed with music and English. I HATE SCIENCE. I can never, ever get labs to work. They are so frustrating. I farm out high school science..to my Biology major husband who hates English.:)

[gyetvaimom]

:iagree:

I found this same problem with the Apologia Bio text. But, I bought the 1st edition. I'm using Raven and Johnson's college bio text to supplement now. My dd felt she needed more, so I pulled it out from my shelf. So far, the info is not much different, I think, because I have the 1st edition of Apologia Bio and my college text is not much older.

 

From my ds's perspective (he is 17):

 

He is currently taking a Chem class at an established accredited co-op and the class is taught by a community college professor. They use the apologia chem text and he thinks the class is too easy. He is also preparing to take the SAT Chemistry Subject test and is frustrated because his text is not nearly as deep into the subject as he needs. So, now we are teaching ourselves chemistry from the kaplan and college board prep books. He wanted to take a serious and academic chem class and that is just not what we got. I am not a chemistry teacher (or even student!) but I don't think apologia covers enough topics at the right depth, or even uses common scientific terminology. it is written to the student, so I think they had to drop certain terminology and depth so the student could pick it up on their own.

IMHO! It is a fine text if your student just needs to check the block and get it done, but my ds has wanted more. :001_smile: