Mutiat

Higher Level

Naas Community College

All the waiting for Chemistry, finally ARGON...

 I finished off the Leaving Cert with Chemistry today. 

 As expected we were given lots of choices. The first three questions were the experiments and in my opinion they were very doable. I was happy when I saw the questions because the strategy plan I had created included these experiments and questions.   

Question four also gave us internal choices within the questions and some in section B. They were fair and accessible. 

Overall it was a nice paper and I’m quite happy on how it went. So that's a goodbye to the Leaving cert 2021 for me as Chemistry was my last paper, but I wish everyone who still have exams in the next few days, the very best of luck. 

I have to say the first two weeks flew by!

Maeve

Higher Level

Oaklands Community College

Chemistry ended up being one of my best exams yet! The two years of the course have been a bit of a roller coaster when I found the course really tough (and often felt the information was useless). However, the large workload led to me feeling very prepared for the exam.

The exam started at 2pm and lasted three hours, much to my surprise. The time flew by during that exam. I couldn’t believe it when I only had half an hour left! The changes to the paper were very helpful. We could do any six questions from the paper and could avoid the experiments if we so wished. My two least favourite experiments came up, along with my favourite, the soap preparation. It always seems very applicable to the real world. I did the second question (the soap question), which always has the experiments for organic chemistry at higher level.

I actually did the rest of the long questions. I had extra time, so I used it to do extra questions (eight in total). I enjoyed most of them, to be honest. I did, however, find the way in which some of the questions to be very odd. Many of them relied on logic being applied to concepts that we were familiar with. I did all of the organic chemistry questions, the atomic structure question and the question on acids and bases. I also did the final two questions, with multiple parts and more options. I did the molecular shapes and rates of reactions parts of question 10 and the ethene preparation and electronic structure part of question 11.

Overall, I actually enjoyed this exam. The changes did help to reduce the pressure of this exam and I felt that I could feel relaxed and not rush questions. I’m really looking forward to finishing up with Physics tomorrow!

Eiman

Higher Level

Scoil Mhuire Community School

With the new changes to Chemistry, we could answer any 6 questions, there was plenty of time to complete the paper. I managed to attempt 7 fully. 

The titrations question was a standard question. I avoided Organic chemistry on the course so I didn’t answer the second question. The 3rd question was about the Flame Test experiments, but I found the questions quite tricky so I moved on. 

I was able to answer 8 parts of q.4 which focuses on short answer questions from all parts of the course. Question 5 and 6 are usually The Periodic Table, Atomic Structure And Thermochemistry, three of my strongest chapters.

The rest of the paper wasn’t too bad. I thought the questions were generally quite challenging and asking things that never came up before. However, I was able to make a good go at all the questions and overall I’m quite happy with the paper. I have one more exam left, Economics on Friday and then I’m done!