Revised Nuffield Advanced Chemistry: Special Studies

Towards the end of the Revised Nuffield Advanced Chemistry course, students made a four week study of a science that was based on chemical principles. The principal purpose of this section of the course was to enable students to see something of the scope of a related subject, and to appreciate its dependence upon chemical principles.

In doing this, students automatically revised several of the basic concepts of chemistry, such as structure and its relation to physical and chemical properties; equilibria; rates; and energy changes. The studies therefore also provided a valuable means of recapitulation, not by going over the old ground again but by revising the ideas in a new context.

The studies were also designed to show something of the applications of the subjects, and of their social and economic effects. Like the rest of the course, the Special Studies were based on experimental work. There was one text for each study containing chapters on the necessary underlying ideas and knowledge, the details of the experimental work, and applications in industry, agriculture, and medicine. Each had its own teachers' guide.