<p>I'm taking AP Bio next year (soph.) and already got the course approved because I said I would self-study come Chem over summer. I'm vacillating between taking Chem H concurrently and being safe as opposed to proceeding with my own knowledge and taking another class. </p>
<p>Chemistry knowledge certainly helps. You don’t have to know in too much detail though. Know pH, acids and bases, intermolecular forces, polar vs nonpolar molecules, equilibrium, electrochemistry, thermodynamics, redox reactions. Knowing these helped me a lot but you could just learn them as they come (that’s what some kids do). I think I greatly benefited from taking AP chemistry before.</p>
<p>You don’t need chem knowledge for AP bio. Whether your school has chem as a prereq for AP Bio is another story.</p>
<p>Basically,</p>
<p>No.</p>
<p>Nope, I’m a sophomore taking AP Bio right now without any chem background and I’m doing fine. The first unit deals with some biochemistry, but it’s very simple. Taking honors chem with bio would be excessive; you really would not need chem information to supplement</p>
<p>you only need a little chem background like the basic types of bonds and stuff, but they’ll cover it at the beginning of the year anyway</p>
<p>Thanks all, but can someone compile a complete list of all the topics. @dextrous did it, but just please throw out all the topics you know.</p>
<p>Not really. I mean, people generally forget everything they learned in chemistry the day after it’s over, so there’s a lot of review. </p>
<p>Nope. I took the class with no knowledge of chemistry and did just fine.</p>