Chemistry in the Earth System: free lessons and course outline

California's high school chemistry course is called Chemistry in the Earth System, and the second half of the name is doing real work. The state's three-course model puts chemistry in grade ten, between biology and physics, and folds Earth system content into it, so combustion is taught alongside what burning hydrocarbons does to the atmosphere, specific heat capacity is taught as the reason coasts have mild winters, and equilibrium is taught through the carbonate chemistry of the ocean. The eleven units follow a conventional chemistry sequence, because the arithmetic has to be built in order, but each one is carried out to the Earth system where the standards ask for it. The year opens with measurement and evidence, because chemistry is the first science most students meet where a wrong unit is a wrong answer. It then builds up: atoms and the periodic table, bonding, the mole, reactions, stoichiometry, energy, gases, solutions, kinetics and equilibrium, and finally acids and ocean chemistry. Every performance expectation in HS-PS1 and HS-PS3 is covered, along with the Earth system standards California includes in this course. Every lesson ends with ten questions, every unit with a ten-question review, and the year with six pieces of scientific writing that have full model responses.