Chemistry Bridging Text

Chemistry students, check out this free E text written for students entering uni without having taken the subject at school and also highly recommended for senior high school students as a backup to their texts. We are thrilled to announce the publication of my and colleague Adrian’s book called Bridging Chemistry. This embodies our experience teaching first year students chemistry for a combined total of 100 years. There are many students who, each year, enrol in a first year university course that requires chemistry but who have not studied the subject in senior high school. To help such students, most Universities conduct Bridging Courses held before first semester starts. Adrian and I organised and presented such a course at the University of Sydney for 25 years and were ground breakers in this field.  Each year we issued course notes which included 13 Topics, one per lecture in the 7 day course, plus tutorial questions to follow up the lecture and wrap a up quiz for each Topic. Incorporating feed back from each year’s course, each year we revised and enhanced the notes.

We now offer the final version as an Ebook which is freely available on Lulupress.com. Go to bookstore and enter Bridging Chemistry and you are there. We also have at the same site, two hard copy books, one in colour and another in black and white. While most students want the free Ebook, some may want a permanent version. When ordering the E version, the Lulu site goes through the usual steps but the payment is $0 at the end. The colour version costs $99 including postage and the black and white is $50. We are taking no royalties to keep the cost down and Lulu Press is structured to do likewise. We envisage this publication will benefit not just students entering uni, but more widely, particularly high school students in year 11 and 12 and as a resource for teachers. The text does not cover the full HSC curriculum - it is intended to cover the essential topics for uni entry, especially difficult topics such as stoichiometry, acid base and redox as well as atomic structure.  An additional 7 Topics have been added for this book so that areas such as equilibrium and ionic equilibrium are treated in the same way as the original Topics. The book has been received with acclaim every year by the course students and also has been popular with the few high school students who have had access to it.

Adrian and I want all chemistry students to really enjoy their courses rather than dread the subject which is often the case and this book we found does that with great success. With the kind permission of the School of Chemistry, the University of Sydney, videos of live lectures by Adrian are linked to the contents table for most topics. These lecture videos will greatly help student's understanding of those Topics.