Revision, revision and more revision!

So the past couple of days have been spent at the dining room table revising Chemistry for my next AS-level exams. (Is it nerdy to say that I've actually rather enjoyed it?) My main area of focus has been on atoms and ions and intermolecular bonds. These two topics - particularly sub-shells/orbitals and instantaneous dipole-induced dipole bonds - are probably my favourite aspects of the 'Elements from the Sea' module. I am a visual learner and so I enjoy drawing diagrams, using vast amounts of colour and explaining things in tremendous detail:

A little snippet from my laborious revision!

It's funny how chemical concepts at GCSE are so simplified but at the time you can't imagine them becoming any more complex than they are - but boy do they! For example, it's shocking to think that at GCSE we are taught that the electrons in atoms exist in shells - the first holding a maximum of two electrons and all the rest eight. But in fact, each electron shell consists of sub-shells (s, p, d and f) and each of these are split into atomic orbitals (of course to make it even harder, each sub-shell has a different number of orbitals!) each of which can hold a maximum of two electrons. This means that actually each atom can hold two electrons in the first shell, eight in the second, eighteen in the third and thirty-two in the fourth! So a simple magnesium atom's electronic configuration at GCSE: 2.8.2 becomes a nasty looking: 1s²2s²2p⁶3s². However, once I got to grips with this new chemical language it became so much fun and it's now my favourite topic!