u/ComprehensivePick188

I have personally gone through the official specification line byline and cross checked it twice. According to the official Pearson Edexcel guidelines, Paper 1 only assesses core content. Any topic or practical bolded with a letter "C" is strictly for Paper 2. It will NOT show up on your Paper 1 exam.

1. Principles of Chemistry (WHAT TO SKIP)
   ⚛️ Solubility Details:
   -The definition of solubility in terms of grams of solute per 100 g of solvent.
   -Plotting and interpreting solubility curves.
   -The core practical: investigating the solubility of a solid in water at different temperatures.
   ⚛️Advanced Mole Calculations:
   -Calculating gas volumes using molar volume24dm3 or 24000cm3 at room temperature and pressure).
   -Calculating and utilizing concentrations of solutions in mol/dm3.

⚛️Metallic Bonding:
• Representing a metallic lattice using a 2D diagram (positive ions surrounded by a sea of delocalised electrons).
• Explaining the physical properties of metals (malleability and electrical conductivity) using metallic bonding theory.
⚛️Electrolysis (Completely Skip):
• Understanding how electrical energy decomposes electrolytes.
• Identifying products at the anode (+) and cathode (-) during the electrolysis of molten salts (like lead(II) bromide).
• Predicting products during the electrolysis of aqueous solutions (like sodium chloride, copper(II) sulfate, and dilute sulfuric acid).
• Writing ionic half-equations for reactions occurring at the electrodes.
• The core practical: investigating the electrolysis of aqueous solutions.

2. Inorganic Chemistry (What to SKIP)
   ⚛️Extraction and Uses of Metals:
   • Knowing the positions of native metals (like gold) and how extraction methods relate to a metal's position in the reactivity series (reduction with carbon vs. electrolysis).
   • The industrial extraction of iron (Blast Furnace) and aluminium (electrolysis of alumina in molten cryolite).
   • Explaining the specific uses of aluminium, copper, iron, and low/high-carbon steels based on their properties.
   • Explaining why alloys are harder than pure metals due to disrupted layer structures.
   ⚛️Titration Practicals:
   • The experimental steps to carry out an acid-base titration using indicators like phenolphthalein or methyl orange. (Note: You still need to know basic neutralization theory, just not the experimental titration steps)

3. Physical Chemistry (What to SKIP)
   ⚛️Advanced Energetics & Enthalpy:
   • Drawing and labeling energy level diagrams to show exothermic and endothermic reactions.
   • Using molar bond energies to calculate the overall enthalpy change for a reaction (Bond Breaking - Bond Making).
   ⚛️Reaction Profiles:
   • Drawing reaction profile diagrams that explicitly show the activation energy (Ea) and enthalpy change (\bm{\Delta H}) for a reaction.
   ⚛️Reversible Reactions & Equilibrium:
   • The concept of a reversible reaction reaching a state of dynamic equilibrium in a sealed container.
   • Knowing that the characteristics of dynamic equilibrium are that the rates of the forward and reverse reactions are equal, and concentrations remain constant.
   • Predicting how a change in temperature or pressure shifts the position of equilibrium (Le Chatelier's Principle).

4. Organic Chemistry (What to SKIP)
   ⚛️Alcohols:
   • The functional group (—OH) and drawing/naming structural formulas for methanol, ethanol, propan-1-ol, and butan-1-ol.
   • Methods of manufacturing ethanol: the fermentation of glucose (using yeast) vs. the catalytic hydration of ethene with steam.
   • Knowing the specific industrial conditions for both ethanol production methods and comparing their advantages/disadvantages.
   • The oxidation of ethanol (combustion, microbial oxidation, and heating with potassium dichromate(VI) in sulfuric acid to form ethanoic acid).
   ⚛️Carboxylic Acids:
   •The functional group (—COOH) and drawing/naming structural formulas for methanoic acid, ethanoic acid, propanoic acid, and butanoic acid.
   • The chemical reactions of aqueous carboxylic acids with metals and metal carbonates (forming ethanoate salts).
   • Understanding vinegar as an aqueous solution containing ethanoic acid.
   ⚛️Esters:
   • The ester functional group
   (—COO—) and naming/drawing the structure of ethyl ethanoate.
   • Knowing how esters are formed by reacting a carboxylic acid with an alcohol in the presence of an acid catalyst.
   • The practical: preparing a sample of an ester such as ethyl ethanoate.
   • Knowing the physical properties of esters (volatile, distinctive sweet smells) and their uses as flavorings and perfumes.
   ⚛️Condensation Polymers:
   • Understanding how condensation polymerization forms a polymer and a small molecule (like water).
   • How a polyester forms when a dicarboxylic acid reacts with a diol.
   • Drawing the repeat unit of a polyester.
   • Understanding that biopolyesters are biodegradable.

Anyone have an idea of the Best way to revise chemistry?

Omfg, I revised so much on transformations,shaded regions, rotations, vectors and all that, and they didn’t even come up. Even arithmetic sequences and circle theorems that I practiced never appeared. Bro, Edexcel must be joking this year. Wtf was that last question with the triangular prism and rectangular-based prism mixed together? Not only that, there was a ratio inside it which made the question 1000% harder than it already was. I’m actually cooked for the last 5 questions I messed them up so badly, except for the one about finding the accurate bound value. I think I definitely lost about 15 marks on that paper hope i do good on paper 2. How did you guys do?

Doing 4MA1H tomorrow. I already understand the basics of both but I want to go deeper and practise harder theexam style questions like I did with other topics.

The problem is I don’t think I’ll have enough time to fully revise both properly before moving on to vectors and non-linear simultaneous equations.

If I had to prioritise one, which would you say is more worth focusing on right now?

Also, if anyone knows, is one of these topics less likely to come up in tomorrow’s exam?

Any advice would help and t

A bit nervous for Bio paper 1