Overcoming Chemistry Hate: Tips for Success in Physics and Math

[apples]

I hate chemistry.
I love Physics,
I love Math, and I'm good in Physics in Math too.
But I absolutely hate Chemistry.
I was good in Chemistry in high school, but in my freshman year as an undergrad it's not working.

What do I do?

 

[Mk]

Pass chemistry and never do it again?

 

[rootX]

I hate chemistry.
I love Physics,
I love Math, and I'm good in Physics in Math too.
But I absolutely hate Chemistry.
I was good in Chemistry in high school, but in my freshman year as an undergrad it's not working.

What do I do?

One of the reasons, I chose EE.

I am so happy that I don't see Chemistry anymore
(Biology is the another one)

 

[physics girl phd]

Freshman year chemistry (like most freshman courses) just isn't gong to be as interesting much of the time -- your math and physics classes are going to get more interesting later on too. My favorite chemistry courses were more advanced (like organic chemistry... where the labs were especially fun, making dyes and aspirin and the like; and advanced inorganic chemistry, where I got to make some pretty neat coordination compounds). Just get through the large lecture freshman class (which will repeat a lot of high school chemistry with a few extra topics), and hopefully if you continue you'll see the subject matter excite you again if you take more courses later (also talk to student who are further along in their studies than you are... so you know the "good but tough" faculty).

 

[fourier jr]

I hate chemistry.
I love Physics,
I love Math, and I'm good in Physics in Math too.
But I absolutely hate Chemistry.
I was good in Chemistry in high school, but in my freshman year as an undergrad it's not working.

What do I do?

read about nanotech & see that anyone doing that stuff would probably have to know at least a bit about chem

 

[Proton Soup]

my high school interest in chemistry was nourished by boyhood fascination with explosives. sadly, that may get you a visit from stern-looking men in black these days.

i dunno, maybe make some soap, assuming you can even find caustics now. i hear Red Devil Lye may be gone.

 

[Proton Soup]

and mathematical physics takes physics lunch money away

 

[undrcvrbro]

Why no love for Chemistry? The further I get into my degree, to more I realize that we Chemical Engineers are a rare breed.

 

[symbolipoint]

If no love for Chemistry, examine it from the physical viewpoint. You have heard of Chemical Physics, and Physical Chemistry? Would or would not Materials Science be a field overlapping Physics and Chemistry? Physics and Engineering contain topics of treatment to physical properties of materials and mixtures of materials, such properties as different kinds of viscosities, elasticity, melting or boiling or softening points, tackiness. The list of features is surely bigger than that.

 

[apples]

I tried looking at chemistry from a Physics perspective, but it didn't really work.
There's something specific to chemistry that ruins everything.
I did awful last quarter, got a B-.

We're doing thermodynamics this quarter, but this quarter isn't going well either.
My first midterm and got the average score.
I am however doing good in Physics. I didn't do so well (don't know my grade yet) in the calculus midterm, because I spent the whole time studying for chem.

My major is undeclared. I have no idea what to do. Don't have a lot more to do for fulfilling the pre-med requirements (just to have to take a year of organic CHEM!) and another quarter of freshman general chem.

I am 50% sure I'll major in electrical engineering and minor in writing and be a pre-med. i hate social sciences.

I should make another thread. You guys are ideal for helping me.

But I guess with chem I'll just have to pull myself along.

 

[redargon]

I thought organic chemistry was pretty easy, just some C's here and some H's there, the occasional and O or OH and something starts to smell like bubble gum. The inorganic stuff is harder to learn, but I enjoyed it more. The experiments and mixing stuff together and watching reactions. It is a heavy duty learning subject though (at first year level) whereas physics was more of a math based application subject. ie. learn a new theory with the help of some maths principles and then apply it to situations. Chemistry was more: what molecular forces are stronger, how big is an atom of Helium, what is the outcome (compounds formed, heat generated/required, solubility, bla bla bla) of the mixture of these chemicals.

 

[Gokul43201]

We're doing thermodynamics this quarter, but this quarter isn't going well either.
...
I am however doing good in Physics.

Thermodynamics in chem is essentially a physics subject. If you aren't doing too well in it, but are doing very well in all your physics courses, then you should consider the following possibilities:

#1. You have a preconception about chemistry that is biasing your performance in the subject,

#2. Your chemistry department has lousy teachers and your physics department has great ones.

If you think #2 is more likely than #1, then you should also consider the following:

#3. You have a preconception about chemistry that is biasing your evaluation of your chemistry teachers.

Thermodynamics is really just a branch of physics that is applied to chemistry. Maybe this knowledge will help you like it better. All the best.

 

[SticksandStones]

I don't understand why every discussion of different departments has to turn into a circle jerk over whose subject is better.