Free High School Chemistry Study Materials — Unit 1: Matter, Measurement & Density

Please read this first

I am a dad, not a chemistry teacher. I built these to help my daughter study for one unit of her tenth-grade chemistry class, and I am putting them online because her friends found them useful too.

There is no guarantee that any of it is correct. I checked the work carefully and had every number independently re-verified, and errors were found and fixed both times that happened — which tells you something about how easily they creep in. Some almost certainly remain.

Your class is the authority, not this site. Teachers differ on real things — how to treat trailing zeros, whether the 5% rule is even covered, how much working to show. Where this material disagrees with your teacher, your teacher is right. Check anything before you rely on it for a grade.

This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any school, school district, textbook publisher, or curriculum organization.

License — there isn't one

Everything here is released into the public domain under CC0 1.0 Universal. To the fullest extent permitted by law, I waive all copyright and related rights in these materials, worldwide.

You may do anything you like with them. Print them, copy them, put your own name on them, change the numbers, translate them, hand them out in your classroom, post them somewhere else, sell them. No permission needed, no attribution required, no conditions at all. Forever.

If it's useful to you, it's yours.

Where to start a suggested order

Take the Baseline Check cold, before studying anything. A low score is the point — it tells you where the time should go.
Read the Concept Packet, or walk through the Deck with a parent or a friend.
Work the Practice Workbook sections that match whatever the baseline exposed.
Sit the Practice Exam under real conditions.
Hand-copy the Note Card the night before. Copying it out is itself the studying.

Learn the ideas start here

Explanations built around diagrams rather than prose. Nothing here gives away the answers to any real assignment.

Concept Packet — Mass, Volume & Density student

Twelve ideas, one at a time, with particle diagrams and worked analogies. Covers the particle model, mass vs. volume, density as "crowding", mass-volume graphs, sink and float, cubes and cm³ = mL, and water displacement. Ends with a cheat sheet and four self-check problems with answers.

PDF · 6 pages

Walkthrough Deck — 20 slides present together

The whole unit in exam order, one idea per slide. Every slide carries speaker notes written for the adult presenting it — what to ask, what to reveal, which trap to spring — and an "unlocks" tag naming the practice questions it prepares you for.

PowerPoint · 20 slides · editable, all diagrams are native shapes

Question Types and Key Concepts both

The nine question types that show up again and again on a first-unit assessment: what each is really testing, how to answer it for full credit, and the concept underneath. Written to work with whoever's worksheet is in front of you.

PDF · 5 pages

Find out what you don't know measure first

Take the baseline before studying. The scoring key maps every question to a learning target, so the "after" is comparable.

Baseline Check student

Seventeen questions, 64 points, about 45 minutes. No hints, no difficulty labels, no scaffolding. Calculator yes, notes no. Deliberately covers more ground than a typical class review sheet, including significant figures and instrument precision.

PDF · 6 pages

Baseline Check — Scoring Key parent / tutor

Answers with point values and rubric splits, plus a grid mapping all 64 points across ten learning targets. Includes a before/after progress tracker and notes on what each common error actually means.

PDF · 4 pages · hold this one back until the test is done

Practice the bulk of it

Roughly 150 problems. Every answer key names the governing rule on each item rather than just giving the number.

Practice Workbook student

Twelve sections, about 110 items. Units and what they mean, reading real instruments, significant figures in addition and multiplication, the awkward case where the answer comes out to exactly 10 or 100, mass-volume graphs, conservation of mass in open vs. closed systems, histograms, identifying metals by density, thickness problems in 2-D and 3-D, and four multi-step challenges.

PDF · 12 pages · each section stands alone

Practice Workbook — Answer Key parent / tutor

Worked solutions with the rule named on every item, why each limiting measurement limits it, and the common error called out. Includes notes on which sections to re-run if more than two are missed.

PDF · 8 pages

Practice Exam — three difficulty levels student

Thirteen question types, each posed three ways: a warm-up to check the idea, an exam-level version, and a stretch version. Useful for finding the exact point where understanding runs out.

PDF · 7 pages

Practice Exam — Answer Key parent / tutor

Full worked solutions with significant-figure decisions called out in bold, physical sanity checks ("real foil is about 0.002 cm thick, so this is right"), and the errors students most often make on each type.

PDF · 5 pages

The night before one page

Note Card Template — actual size student

Two 5″ × 3″ boxes, front and back, printed at real size and packed with the rules and the density table. Copy it out by hand — writing it yourself is half the studying, and handwriting fits far more than printing does. Check whether your teacher allows a card at all.

PDF · 1 page

Found a mistake?

Please tell me — corrections make this better for the next person, and I would rather know. Everything here was generated from code, so fixing something and re-publishing takes minutes rather than hours.

Email: adhawan@shiplets.com