NIOS Chemistry (313) — Class 12 Book Details, Index & Notes Download
Chemistry can feel like a maze when you're preparing for an open board exam without a regular classroom to guide you. The NIOS Senior Secondary Chemistry (313) course exists precisely for learners in that situation, and it does a better job of structuring self-study than most private guides ever will. This article breaks down what the book offers, how its index is organised, and where you can grab the notes directly from our website.
About the Book
Published by the National Institute of Open Schooling, the Chemistry 313 course is spread across three volumes — Book I and Book II cover the theory portion, while a separate Laboratory Manual handles practicals. The course code is 313, the ISBN for Book I is 978-93-85808-45-6, and the December 2025 reprint is the currently circulating edition (24,000 copies). The entire material is developed by a team of Chemistry experts from IGNOU, Delhi University, NCERT, and NIOS itself.
What sets this book apart from ordinary textbooks is its self-instructional design. Each lesson opens with an introduction that links new concepts to your prior knowledge, followed by clearly stated objectives, concept-wise sections, solved examples, activities you can perform at home, intext questions, and a "What Have You Learnt" recap. Model answers appear at the end of every lesson, so a learner working alone can verify their own responses without a tutor hovering nearby.
Key Features
Several features make this book genuinely useful for distance learners, rather than just a printed syllabus:
- Self-paced structure. Sections are thematically grouped, and intext questions after each section let you check understanding before moving on.
- Worked examples. Numerical problem-solving is treated as core training, not an afterthought, with solved examples throughout.
- Low-cost activities. Simple experiments using household materials help you grasp concepts by doing, which matters enormously when a lab isn't accessible.
- Clear assessment split. The TMA versus Public Examination bifurcation is spelled out explicitly, so you know exactly which lessons carry more exam weight.
- Supporting media. Audio programmes on FM Gyanvani and Mukta Vidya Vani, plus video CDs available from NIOS, cover difficult or abstract topics for learners who prefer listening or watching over reading.
- Exam-oriented closure. Terminal exercises — short, long, and numerical — mirror the public exam pattern, giving you a realistic sense of the question style.
A small but thoughtful touch: important terms appear in italics and bold throughout the text, signalling exactly what you must internalise. In a distance-learning setting where no teacher is pointing things out, that visual cue earns its keep.
Book Index (Complete)
The full course runs across 32 lessons in 8 modules. Here's the complete index, exactly as structured in the NIOS book, with page references from the original text.
| Module | Lesson | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Module I: Some Basic Concepts of Chemistry | ||
| I | 1. Atoms, Molecules and Chemical Arithmetic | 1 |
| Module II: Atomic Structure and Chemical Bonding | ||
| II | 2. Atomic Structure | 45 |
| II | 3. Periodic Table and Periodicity in Properties | 76 |
| II | 4. Chemical Bonding | 96 |
| Module III: States of Matter | ||
| III | 5. The Gaseous State and Liquid State | 135 |
| III | 6. The Solid State | 175 |
| III | 7. Solutions | 207 |
| III | 8. Colloids | 231 |
| Module IV: Chemical Energetics | ||
| IV | 9. Chemical Thermodynamics | 251 |
| IV | 10. Spontaneity of Chemical Reactions | 276 |
| Module V: Chemical Dynamics | ||
| V | 11. Chemical Equilibrium | 291 |
| V | 12. Ionic Equilibrium | 320 |
| V | 13. Electrochemistry | 353 |
| V | 14. Chemical Kinetics | 394 |
| V | 15. Adsorption and Catalysis | 417 |
| Module VI: Chemistry of Elements | ||
| VI | 16. Occurrence and Extraction of Metals | 1 (Bk II) |
| VI | 17. Hydrogen and s-Block Elements | 21 |
| VI | 18. General Characteristics of the p-Block Elements | 48 |
| VI | 19. p-Block Elements and their Compounds – I | 59 |
| VI | 20. p-Block Elements and their Compounds – II | 92 |
| VI | 21. d-Block and f-Block Elements | 123 |
| VI | 22. Coordination Compounds | 149 |
| Module VII: Chemistry of Organic Compounds | ||
| VII | 23. Nomenclature and General Principles | 175 |
| VII | 24. Hydrocarbons | 217 |
| VII | 25. Compounds of Carbon Containing Halogens (Haloalkanes & Haloarenes) | 249 |
| VII | 26. Alcohols, Phenols and Ethers | 274 |
| VII | 27. Aldehydes, Ketones and Carboxylic Acids | 306 |
| VII | 28. Compounds of Carbon Containing Nitrogen | 335 |
| VII | 29. Biomolecules | 359 |
| Module VIII: Chemistry in Everyday Life | ||
| VIII | 30. Drugs and Medicines | 387 |
| VIII | 31. Soaps, Detergents and Polymers | 403 |
| VIII | 32. Environmental Chemistry | 432 |
The first five modules sit in Book I, covering physical chemistry foundations — basic arithmetic of atoms, bonding, states of matter, thermodynamics, and dynamics. Book II picks up from Module VI onwards, moving into inorganic and organic chemistry territory that's heavier on memorisation and reaction mechanisms.
TMA vs Public Examination — At a Glance
Knowing which lessons fall under which assessment saves you from misdirected revision. Here's the official bifurcation:
| Assessment Type | Weight | Lessons Included |
|---|---|---|
| Tutor Marked Assignments (TMA) | 40% | Periodic Table & Atomic Properties, The Solid State, Spontaneity of Chemical Reactions, Chemical Equilibrium, Adsorption & Catalysis, plus remaining fundamental lessons (12 total) |
| Public Examination (PE) | 60% | Atoms Molecules & Chemical Arithmetic, Atomic Structure, Chemical Bonding, Gaseous & Liquid State, Solutions, Colloids, Chemical Thermodynamics, Ionic Equilibrium, Electrochemistry, Chemical Kinetics, and all of Modules VI–VIII (20 total) |
The five chapters explicitly marked for TMA — Periodic Table, Solid State, Spontaneity, Chemical Equilibrium, and Adsorption & Catalysis — are described in the book as fundamental but lighter on competitive-exam relevance. NIOS took a deliberate policy decision to reduce content load at the term-end examination by routing them through assignments instead.
Intended Audience
This course is built for Class 12 students enrolled in open board programmes — primarily NIOS, and equally relevant for RSOS (Rajasthan State Open School) learners following the same syllabus structure. If you're a private candidate, a working professional pursuing senior secondary alongside a job, someone who couldn't continue in a regular school, or a repeater aiming to clear Chemistry on a second attempt, this book is written with your reality in mind.
The self-instructional format assumes no classroom teacher is available. Every lesson is designed so you can sit with the book alone, work through examples, answer intext questions in the margins, and verify your answers using the model solutions provided. That's a different beast from a typical CBSE textbook, which presumes a teacher will fill the gaps.
Download the Notes
We've prepared complete chapter-wise notes for NIOS Chemistry 313, covering all 32 lessons across the eight modules. The notes are compiled directly from the official NIOS book structure shown above, so the numbering and sequence match what you'll see in your question paper. Use the button below to download them directly from our website.
A Few Words on Using This Book Well
Distance learning rewards discipline more than brilliance. The NIOS team's own advice to learners is to draw a daily schedule, earmark a well-lit and ventilated study corner, and make notes in the page margins as you read rather than passively highlighting. The side-margin note-taking habit sounds trivial, but it's one of the few things that consistently separates students who finish the syllabus from those who abandon it halfway through Module III.
One more thing worth doing early: attempt a couple of intext questions before reading the section fully. Getting them wrong tells you exactly what the section is about to teach you, and that slight cognitive friction makes the content stick far better than a clean first read ever does.
Chemistry at the senior secondary level is less about memorising reactions and more about seeing the logic behind them — why a bond forms, why a reaction is spontaneous, why a metal sits where it does in the reactivity series. This book, used patiently and in the order it's written, helps you arrive at that logic on your own. Which, for an open board student studying without a teacher in the room, is exactly the point.
Book details sourced from the official NIOS Chemistry (313) course material, Code 313, ISBN 978-93-85808-45-6 (Book I), reprinted December 2025.