Stop Faking It! Chemistry Basics



National Science Teachers Association | ISBN 978-0-87355-239-4 | 2007 | English | PDF | Pages:127 | Size: 2.71 MB

About This Book
What you have before you is a book intended to help you understand many of the concepts basic to the study of chemistry. This is not a chemistry textbook, and it takes an approach that differs from that of most of the books on chemistry youll find. For starters, this is a view of chemistry from someone (me) who has primarily a physics background. This means that I will take a figround upfl approach to the subject, beginning with what atoms look like and why we believe that atoms look that way. This does not follow the historical development of modern chemistry, but its the approach that makes the most sense to me. I also will steer away from memorization whenever possible. I see no sense in memorizing the properties of various materials based on their position in the Periodic Table when you can rather get a clear picture of why materials do what they do based on an understanding of the mechanisms that underlie the patterns in the Periodic Table.

There will be a second book on chemistry in the Stop Faking It! series, so dont fret that there are a number of traditional concepts missing from this book. People might argue about what concepts are fibasicfl and therefore should be in this first book, but I just have to chalk that up to a difference of opinion.

I do make a few assumptions about what you already know before you pick up this book. For example, I assume you know that there are three states of mattersolids, liquids, and gasesand that you have a rough idea of the properties of each state of matter. I also assume you know that when you combine atoms together, the result is called a molecule. Other than that, I pretty much start from scratch.

All that said, here are the major ideas I hope you can grasp by the time you finish this book:

1.What an element is, both historically and presently
2.Our current view of what is inside an atom, and what electrons are or arent doing inside an atom
3.How energy is involved when physical systems, including atoms, are by themselves and how energy is involved when those systems get together
4.The different ways, and different reasons, atoms bond with one another
5.What we mean by a chemical equation, how to balance a chemical equation, and how we can get valuable information from a chemical equation. This includes why in the world someone would want to balance a chemical equation, other than to do another textbook chemistry problem.
6.What we mean by organic chemistry, why it is a special branch of chemistry, and how it affects our lives

Warning. This book is intended as a resource book for teachers and parents, and not necessarily a book of activities designed for the classroom. The use of certain chemicals in the classroom is highly regulated in many areas, and I do not recommend doing the activities in this book with students without checking on the regulations in your particular area.

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