LO 7.14 in 2020 AP Chemistry ‘exam’?

March 24, 2020
The College Board should have cancelled the AP chemistry exam in 2020. Period. I’m going to write a longer post on that particular subject later, but for now, the fact that they have not cancelled the AP chemistry exam is already creating some prickly problems for students and teachers alike.

The background to the 2020 ‘exam’ (I use the term loosely), is that the CB have announced that UNITS 1-7 of the CED will be examined, but that UNITS 8-9 will not. That immediately creates problems, and poses questions that may never be answered. We’ll see.

 

 

So what’s the issue? Well, LO 7.14 asks students to understand that ∆G° is dependent upon on enthlapy and entropy. Not a problem when the course is complete, but unfortunately for the College Board, entropy and Gibb’s Free Energy are both UNIT 9 topics! That’s an issue.

What’s the answer? Well, it should be that the AP chemistry czar comes out and makes an amendment to the original announcement and says it it will be UNITS 1-7 that are examined, MINUS 7.14, OR he says that the CB expect that the WHOLE course will have been taught by teachers, even though some of it is not going to be examined in 2020. See the mess that this is already becoming? Do you suppose that type of absolute clarity will be forthcoming? We will see, but based upon the College Board’s track record I doubt it.

7.14 is ONLY the beginning of these issues, more on other in future posts.

9 Comments

  1. Dave Eckstrom

    LO 7.13 is a lesser version of the same problem, as pH is not introduced until Unit 8.

    Reply
    • Adrian

      Absolutely. More to come.

      Reply
      • Arlene

        Also many teachers did not teach in the new order this year.

        Reply
  2. Renee Gallazzi

    My question exactly regarding 7.14.

    Reply
  3. Jason Cook

    I’m just surprised they didn’t;

    (a) put units 6 and 9 consecutively, OR

    (b) put them together into 1 unit.

    The concepts of H, S, and G are interconnected, and their formulas work the same so why interrupt them with units 7 and 8???

    Reply
    • Adrian

      Who knows? As you see from my organization, UNIT 6 is called Thermochemistry I, and UNIT 9 is called Thermochemistry II & Electrochemistry.

      UNIT 6, and half of 9, are the same TOPIC! I ignore almost every piece of ‘advice’ the CB ever gives. I only re-organized my stuff because I know many AP teachers wanted it that way.

      Reply
  4. Dan

    Not to mention us teachers who think for ourselves and didn’t follow the suggested order established by the CB. I already covered Unit 8 & was completing Unit 9 when this all happened. How unfair is that?

    Reply
  5. Beth Farrar

    Will titration curve questions be on the test? Seems like that is a Unit 8 question but I just want to see your opinion. Thank you

    Reply
    • Adrian

      In short, no. In reality, I believe that the 2020 ‘exam’ will become an ‘edubabble’ experiment, and it may be that the specifics of many L.O.’s become largely irrelevant.

      Reply

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