Recommended Reading
From the Barking Dog (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJOzQFXT54M), to glorious thermite (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SU8iRYbnAb0), explosions and labs filled with smoke have always been at the heart of most peoples' perception of the everyday chemist. But surely school chemists don't get their hands on anything as interesting that? Well, maybe not as far as 20 kg of thermite, but not far off either - bright colours, for one thing, dominate transition metal chemistry, and can change in the blink of an eye. Even physical chemistry is part of the show - studying the reactivity of free radicals will let you shine UV light on a mixture of chlorine and methane, giving an instantly explosive mixture (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz03fpullyo).
Then there's organic chemistry, which doesn't get too much of a mention at GCSE - and without the flames and bangs in the lab, you might think there's not much else to it than just combining a few molecules into one. But that isn't quite the case - a common A-level organic experiment is to make a fresh sample of aspirin; not the purest aspirin I'll admit, but not a million miles away; and the result? A glass vial full of shiny white crystals-not as flashy as thermite no, but then again, chemistry at this level has something to offer all tastes, be it giant smoke clouds filling the lab, bright, instant colour changes, or a few grams of homemade painkiller.
The equations may seem dry, but understanding how they work will let you predict and control lab chemicals to react as you please - few chemists are ever in it purely for theory; it's the exciting side of the subject that makes it worth doing, and at A-level, you'll get a lot more of that experience than you might have bargained for.
