|
Chemistry: A Project of the American Chemical
Society |
|
"Everything you
hear, see, smell, taste, and touch involves
chemistry and chemicals (matter). And hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting and touching all involve intricate series of
chemical reactions and interactions in your body. With such an enormous range
of topics, chemistry offers you fascinating opportunities to explore and to
study. At the same time, the sheer breadth of these possibilities may make
chemistry seen a daunting subject to study. Aware of both the fascination and
the challenge of studying chemistry, the American Chemical Society chose a
team of chemists to consider what concepts would help you open the doors to
opportunities and require a knowledge of chemistry without being overwhelming.
The team also took up the challenge to develop effective approaches to
learning and teaching chemistry. The result of the team's efforts is this
textbook, Chemistry, and its complementary materials, including
project-based laboratory experiments, your molecular model kit, the Web
Companion, and the Personal Tutor. Learning chemistry,
even with a limited range of concepts and content, requires a good deal of
effort from both you and your instructors. To facilitate your efforts, we
have written Chemistry in a conversational tone designed to be
accessible and engaging. But you cannot learn chemistry only by reading about
it, just as you cannot learn how to write a short story or how to find
fossils simply by reading how others do it. Learning how others do something
you want to do is important, but you must also practice doing it yourself.
Chemists and other scientists learn about the world through experimenting.
They then try, often in collaborative efforts, to develop models of the world
at the molecular level that explain their results and allow them to predict
the outcomes of other possible experiments. We have tried to incorporate this
same approach in this textbook. Throughout Chemistry,
we present activities and thought-provoking questions that are intended
to promote active small-group and whole-class participation." From the Introduction |
|
|