"I don't like chemistry": the five real reasons students dislike it, which one is yours, and how to start liking chemistry in a month

"I don't like chemistry" is one of the most typed sentences about school science, and almost nobody who says it means the subject. They mean the way they met it: a list of formulas to learn, a periodic table to memorise, equations to balance for reasons nobody gave, and a lab they saw on a worksheet. Chemistry taught that way is boring; the same chemistry watched, done and explained in order is one of the most likeable subjects in school, which is why the students who dislike it in class like it on YouTube. This page is the five real reasons behind the dislike, a short way to tell which is yours, six moves that turn it around in a month, and the honest line between "I don't like it" and "I am behind".

The five real reasons, and how to tell which one is yours

1. It was taught as memorising. The valencies, the first twenty elements, the formulas of fifty compounds, the colours of the salts: all given as lists before any of it meant anything. Memorising without meaning is the most hated activity in school, and chemistry delivers more of it than any other subject in Class 8 to 10. This is yours if you can recite things about chemistry but cannot say why they are true, and the words "learn by heart" make you tired.

2. It happens at a scale you cannot see. Atoms, electrons, moles, bonds: the subject's main characters are invisible, and a child who is good at the visible world (plants, planets, machines) finds nothing to hold. Physics has the falling ball; biology has the heart; chemistry has a diagram of something no one has seen. This is yours if you like biology and physics and not chemistry, and the question "but what is actually happening?" never got answered.

3. The symbols came before the meaning. NaCl, 2H₂ + O₂ → 2H₂O, the mole, the valency: a language was introduced before there was anything to say in it. Students who hate chemistry often hated it from the week the symbols arrived. This is yours if chemistry was fine until Class 8 or 9 and then became "a different subject".

4. You have never done the experiments. Most schools in India, and many abroad, teach the lab from a textbook: the reaction of zinc with hydrochloric acid is a sentence, not a test tube. Chemistry is the most physical of the sciences, and taught without the physical part it is only the memorising. This is yours if you remember every experiment you ever actually did, and almost none you read about.

5. You are behind, and every class is a struggle. Chemistry is cumulative: the mole needs the formula, the formula needs the valency, the valency needs the electron arrangement. A gap from one term makes every later class a place where you understand nothing, and nobody likes a place like that. This is yours if the dislike started at a particular point (atomic structure, the mole, organic chemistry) and got worse rather than better.

Most students have two of the five. The first four are fixed by changing how you meet the subject; the fifth is fixed by closing the gap, and no amount of enthusiasm fixes it otherwise. The rest of this page is for the first four; the last section is for the fifth.

How to start liking chemistry: six moves, one month

1. Watch one reaction properly. Not a diagram. Sodium dropped into water (a video, never at home), magnesium ribbon burning, iron nails in blue copper sulphate turning brown while the solution goes green, the brown fumes from heating lead nitrate. Watch it twice, then read the equation. The equation is now a description of something you saw, which is what it always was.

2. Learn the twenty ions. This is the only memorising on the list, and it is the one that makes the rest unnecessary. Na⁺, K⁺, Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺, Al³⁺, Zn²⁺, Fe²⁺ and Fe³⁺, Cu²⁺, Ag⁺, NH₄⁺, H⁺; Cl⁻, Br⁻, I⁻, O²⁻, S²⁻, OH⁻, NO₃⁻, SO₄²⁻, CO₃²⁻, HCO₃⁻, PO₄³⁻. With those, every formula in school chemistry can be written, not recalled: calcium carbonate is Ca²⁺ and CO₃²⁻, so CaCO₃; aluminium sulphate is Al³⁺ and SO₄²⁻, so Al₂(SO₄)₃. Two evenings.

3. One kitchen experiment a week. Vinegar and baking soda in a bottle with a balloon on top (an acid and a carbonate, the gas is carbon dioxide); red cabbage water as an indicator with lemon juice, soap and washing soda (acids red, bases green and blue); a copper coin cleaned with vinegar and salt; a raw egg in vinegar until the shell dissolves; iron nails in water with and without salt to watch rusting. Four weeks, four experiments, each one a chapter made real.

4. Study it in the subject's order, not the exam's. Atoms and their electrons, then why atoms bond, then the formula that bonding gives, then the equation, then the mole. Taught in that order, each idea explains the next and there is almost nothing to memorise. Most students meet it in the reverse order, which is why it feels like a list. Our article on why chemistry is so hard has the order written out.

5. Connect it to one thing you already like. Food: why bread rises, why onions make you cry, why meat browns (all chemistry). Skin and hair: what a shampoo is, why soap works, why sunscreen has a number. Batteries and phones: what a lithium-ion cell actually does. Cars: what petrol is and why it burns. Medicine: what paracetamol does. Pick one, read about it for an hour, and the subject has a reason.

6. Find a teacher who shows the colour change. The single biggest predictor of liking chemistry is a teacher who does the reaction in front of you, or on a video on the whiteboard, and then asks "so what is the equation for that?" rather than the other way round. If the school teacher does not, a tutor can; that is most of what ours do for Class 9 and 10 students in their first month.

When "I don't like it" is "I am behind"

If the dislike started at a particular topic and got worse, the problem is a gap, and the six moves above will not close it; they will make the subject more interesting and still incomprehensible. The gap is almost always one of four: atomic structure and electron arrangement (Class 9), valency and formula writing (Class 9), the mole and reacting masses (Class 10 and 11), or the first organic chemistry (Class 10 and 11). Each is two to four weeks of 1-on-1 work to close, in the subject's order, with the reactions seen and the formulas written rather than recalled. Students who do that almost always report the same thing a month later: "I don't hate it any more", and a term later, a grade that has moved. The dislike was the feeling of being lost, and it went when the lost went.

If after an honest month you still dislike it and you do not need it for what you want to study, that is a real preference, and a fair reason to choose other subjects. If you do need it (medicine, engineering, pharmacy, most science degrees), the month is the cheapest investment in the whole school career, because the alternative is three more years of a subject you hate.

How we teach chemistry to students who say they hate it

The first class is a reaction on the whiteboard, not a definition: a video of the thing, then the question "what happened?", then the equation. Then the twenty ions, then the subject in its order, with the gap found and closed where there is one. Sixty-minute 1-on-1 classes on a shared whiteboard, in English, Hindi or Punjabi, for CBSE and ICSE Class 9 to 12, IGCSE, GCSE, A-level, IB and AP chemistry, by a team of 20+ women educators with master's degrees in chemistry and the sciences, teaching online since 2018. The first 30-minute class is free; details on the chemistry page. Related: is physics harder than chemistry and active recall for chemistry.

Questions parents ask

See how we teach this, 1-on-1 online →