The Chemistry curriculum continues to develop student understanding and skills from across the three strands of the F-10 Australian Curriculum: Science. In the Science Understanding strand, the Chemistry curriculum draws on knowledge and understanding from across the four sub-strands of Biological, Physical, Chemical and Earth and Space Sciences.
In particular, the Chemistry curriculum continues to develop the key concepts introduced in the Chemical Sciences sub-strand, that is, that the chemical and physical properties of substances are determined by their structure at an atomic scale; and that substances change and new substances are produced by the rearrangement of atoms through atomic interactions and energy transfer.
The Chemistry curriculum requires students to use the mathematical skills they have developed through the F-10 Australian Curriculum: Mathematics, in addition to the numeracy skills they have developed through the Science Inquiry Skills strand of the Australian Curriculum: Science.
Within the Science Inquiry Skills strand, students are required to gather, represent and analyse numerical data to identify the evidence that forms the basis of their scientific arguments, claims or conclusions. In gathering and recording numerical data, students are required to make measurements with an appropriate degree of accuracy and to represent measurements using appropriate units.
Students may need to be taught when it is appropriate to join points on a graph and when it is appropriate to use a line of best fit. They may also need to be taught how to construct a straight line that will serve as the line of best fit for a set of data presented graphically.
Students may need to be taught to interpret logarithmic scales and to use a calculator to substitute a value to evaluate a logarithmic expression as they are required in pH calculations (Unit 3), but are not part of the Year 10 Australian Curriculum: Mathematics.
It is assumed that students will be able to competently: