Blog 5 :Just another 🩺NEET Aspirant👨🏽‍⚕️ How To Master Chemistry ?!?!🗿🧪

 Welcome back to the next blog on “Just Another NEET Aspirant”. If you are still reading these blogs, thank you for your support. I hope you can extend my blogs to your friends, families, and other future NEET Aspirants it will make a difference in their NEET preparation Journey.

After discussing about Physics in the 4th blog, now onto my favourite subject, Chemistry. It is always a Mystery. Personally, I have always found Chemistry a very elastic & versatile subject as it has different core areas and branches like

1. Inorganic Chemistry

•  you get to learn about the interesting characteristic features of each group from the 1st to 18th group of the periodic table, the boiling points, melting points, Ionisation enthalpy, Electron gain enthalpies, and the chemistry behind the anomalies.

2. Organic Chemistry 

• Here you get an introduction to the unlimited, never-ending world of carbon compounds, famous named reactions, their reaction mechanisms step-by-step, Isomerism and Nomenclature, and many more 

3. Physical Chemistry 

•  The calculation-based area you get introduced into the calculations behind the PH scale, buffers, balancing redox reactions, zero order, 1st order, and 2nd order kinetics, and much more 

If you have read my previous blog on physics, then you would know the first step, which is getting to know the syllabus and the weightage.

Link to syllabus sheet:

https://images.shiksha.com/mediadata/pdf/1696746507phpYaqwIG.pdf 

After knowing the topics that are included in the chemistry section of the NEET exam, you need to categorize those topics under 3 different sub-headings 

1. Physical Chemistry

2. Organic Chemistry 

3. Inorganic Chemistry 

Why do you need to categorize chemistry into 3 different sub-headings? 

• This is because the approach is unique for each branch of the tree called chemistry. 

1. Physical chemistry 

• 1st important step is perfecting the formulas and having them in the fingertips. As an extra mile, it is best to learn how to derive the formulas. This is extremely important for those 12th topics like chemical kinetics, deriving the zero-order and 1st-order rate laws, and half-life equations. It can be a savior during the exam if you forget the actual formula and at the same time, it is useful in preparing for the 12th CBSE board exams.

• Out of the 45 questions in chemistry, you can expect around 15-16 questions from physical chemistry, among these 15-16 questions, all of them need not be calculation based. Out of the 15 questions, 4 or 5 will be calculation based meanwhile the rest of them often revolve around the laws, definitions, and core concepts in those chapters. So you need to not only be good with formulas and the application of those formulas, but you need to be strong conceptual in those topics.

• Numbers change but models do not. NEET and before that AIPMT have been going on since 1988, for the past 36 years. We need more models of questions that we can practice. We have reached the point that more models can never be created. In every NEET exam, the same pattern is repeatedly being tested but only the numerical or the values that we see are being changed. So we need to expose ourselves to new models every day to avoid missing out on any new questions. This is the golden rule for each subject. By the time you take your NEET exam, you need to be able to feel that you have seen all those 180 questions or similar models before. You need to feel comfortable taking the final NEET exam and not panic looking at new models. 

1. Organic Chemistry 

• This is the branch of chemistry that has no borders and often seems to be overlapping, what we learn as the preparation of alkene would be covered as the properties of alkanes. We get exposed to the world of alkanes, alkenes, alcohols and ethers, carboxylic acids and esters, and a new world of aromatic hydrocarbons and benzene. The repeatedly asking models for organic Chemistry in NEET are

1. Conversions

2. Distinguishing Tests, Reagents & Conditions 

1. Conversions

• What are conversions? These are nothing but the conversion of compound A to compound B. We need to be able to identify the compounds A & B, the functional groups present in A & B and finally, we need to be aware of which set of reagents are used to convert which set of substrates to which products. This often requires one to master the basic preparations. 

For example, if we need to prepare carboxylic acid, one should be aware that carboxylic acids can be prepared from 

1. Primary Alcohols & Aldehydes by complete oxidation 

2. From Alkylbenzene by oxidation 

3. From nitriles & Amides

4. By using Griganrd Reagent (R-MgX + dry ether) 

5. By acyl halides and Anhydrides 

6. By using Esters 

It’s a fact of memory of the different preparation methods & accuracy of remembering the reagents & conditions as it might affect the end product from mono-substituted to poly-substituted. 

The method that I followed are mindmaps:

Mindmaps are an easy way for us to visualize the big picture in our minds and have been proven as the most effective method among various students. 

2. Distinguishing tests, Reagents & Conditions 

• The 2nd frequently asked models are the distinguishing tests. These are the tests that distinguish a particular group of compounds from one another. For example, we all know the common distinguishing tests like 

1. Tollens test (silver mirror test) - that distinguishes the aldehydes from the ketones 

2. Benedict’s test - that distinguishes aliphatic aldehydes from aromatic aldehydes

These tests can be mastered over numerous amounts of practice. 

3. Inorganic Chemistry 

• The type of Chemistry that most abhor. You get to learn about the history of the periodic table & its classification, its merits & demerits. It is the same subject where you get exposed to every group from group 1: alkali metals to group 18: noble gases. The tough part is that we are expected to know the basic trends in each group

1. Atomic radius 

2. Ionic radius

3. Ionisation enthalpy

4. Electron affinity 

5. Boiling Point 

6. Melting point

7. Density

So we need to know the trends for 56 trends in total( 8 groups X 7), and we need to know the exceptions too. We are also introduced to the d-block elements, lanthanoids, and actinoids. 

The only way to excel in this field is just memorizing day after day. You need to practice writing the trends every day so that it does not slip out of the memory. 

This is how you should approach your chemistry journey for the next 2 years to make the best out of your 11th and 12th standard journey.