General Chemistry/Introduction

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The modern human experience places a large emphasis upon the material world. From the day of our birth to the day we die, we are frequently preoccupied with the world around us. Whether struggling to feed ourselves, occupying ourselves with modern inventions, interacting with other people or animals, or simply meditating on the air we breathe, our attention is focused on different aspects of the material world. In fact only a handful of disciplines, certain subsets of religion, philosophy, and abstract math, can be considered to be completely unrelated to the material world. Everything else is somehow related to chemistry, the scientific discipline which studies the properties, composition, and transformation of matter.

Chemistry itself has a number of branches:

• Analytical chemistry - the study of the composition of substances.
• Biochemistry - the study of chemicals found in living things (such as DNA and proteins).
• Inorganic Chemistry - the study of substances that do not contain carbon.
• Organic chemistry - the study of carbon-based substances. Carbon, as described in more detail in this book, has unique properties that allow it to make complex chemicals, including those of living organisms. An entire field of chemistry is devoted to substances with this element.
• Physical chemistry - the study of physical properties of chemicals, which are characteristics that can be measured without changing the composition of the substance.

Chemistry as a discipline is based on a number of other fields. Because it is a measurement-based science, math plays an important role its study and usage. A proficiency in high-school level algebra should be all that is needed in this text, and can be obtained from a number of sources. Chemistry itself is determined by the rules and principles of physics. Basic principles from physics may be introduced in this text when necessary.

There are many reasons to study chemistry. It is one pillar of the natural sciences necessary for detailed studies in the physical sciences or engineering. The principles of biology and psychology are rooted in the biochemistry of the animal world, in ways that are only now beginning to be understood. Modern medicine is firmly rooted in the chemical nature of the human body. Even students without long term aspirations in science find beauty in the infinite possibilities that originate from the small set of rules found in chemistry.

A preliminary introduction to the chemical world is set forth in this text as follows. The first unit introduces the fundamental physical principle that underlies all of modern chemistry: the atomic structure of matter. While technically the domain of physics, the nature of the subatomic particles that make up atoms determines the behavior of the atoms, and is a necessary starting point for any discussion of chemistry.

In the second unit, chemical bonding is introduced, which explains how less than one hundred and fifty known elements can combine to form all the different compounds that fill our world.

The third unit introduces the making and breaking of bonds through chemical reactions.

Thermodynamics, the flow of heat energy is quite important to the study of chemistry, as covered by unit four.

The nature of reactions reaching a “stopping point”, or equilibrium is the focus for unit five.

Units six and seven are detailed studies of two important types of reactions: acid/base reactions and oxidation/reduction reactions.

Finally, unit eight is an overview of important chemistry of the various elements.