Background
The focus of our course in Chemistry will be the California Content Standards. Our state has a well-balanced and well-written set of standards (goals or expectations) for science courses. The purpose of this online text is to provide access to concise information about the course and standards, as well as providing support materials and questions to assess your understanding of the standards.
The "Preknowledge" reading selections used in this text are the summaries of the standards, directly from the California Framework for Chemistry. They are acknowledged as coming from the Framework throughout the text - I want to make it clear that I did not write them. I consider them excellent summaries of what students are expected to know.
There are several very important things to understand from the beginning:
- You will always have access to the same periodic table that is used on the Content Standards Test. It is available to you on every benchmark and test taken in the course. It has a periodic table on the front, and important equations and constants on the back. You may also download and print a copy of the table.
- You will never be allowed the use of a calculator on a benchmark or unit test. The use of calculators is reserved for quantitative assessment of laboratory work. I have invested a considerable amount of time and effort writing calculation-based questions that can be done without a calculator using basic mathematic skills such as cancellation, simplification of fractions, and movement of a decimal when multiplying or dividing by powers of 10.