Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #293234 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Synopsis
These highly successful revision guides have been brought right up-to-date for the new A Level specifications introduced in September 2000. "Oxford Revision Guides" are highly effective for both individual revision and classroom summary work. The unique visual format makes the key concepts and processes, and the links between them, easier to memorize. Students will save valuable revision time by using these notes instead of condensing their own. In fact, many students are choosing to buy their own copies so that they can colour code or highlight them as they might do with their own revision notes.

Customer Reviews

NOT for the New Specs
Despite saying clearly on the front for 'AS & A-level', this book doesn't appear to have undergone much editing for the new specifications from the old pre2000 A-levels. Some parts of the book were useful, but the language is dated and difficult to understand. In the case of the biology version of the same book, some of the words it uses for things are archaic, which can't be very good... I give it three stars because it does have some good content, for example it manages to explain very effectively through diagrams the reaction mechanisms of organic chemistry -- but the language and vocab is a let down.

Not as good as it could be
This book has a fairly decent layout and is generally easy to understand and work with. If you feel you need diagrams to communicate ideas to you, then it's worth a go, but be aware, there are two main problems with the book:

Minor niggle: Some A level chemistry really does not lend itself to diagrams. The book becomes increasingly text-based as you progress through it. However, this should reflect your increasing maturity and the withdrawal of your reliance on pictures, so may well match the way you develop during your studies.

Major niggle: There's a mistake on nearly every page. Some shout at you, like saying standard conditions are 289K, when it should be 298K. Some are more subtle, like a wrong label on the mass spectrometer diagram and a wrong number on the oxidation states page. I'm an A level chemistry teacher and, of course, a chemistry graduate, and I'm sure I haven't found them all yet.

I don't think this is a good record for a second edition of a book, somebody should have proof-read it properly.

Diagrams?
If by diagrams you mean putting words into boxes, then yes this book does it brilliantly