Chemistry

Chemistry: Imagination and Implication focuses on the importance and impact of chemistry on daily living. This book discusses the essential concepts of chemistry and its application. Organized into 16 chapters, this book starts with an overview of the experimental facts, principles, and methods of chemistry as an aid in exercising intelligent and informed judgment in instances where controversy surrounds the interaction of chemistry with society or the individual. This text then explores the practical arts of metallurgy, which achieved a considerable degree of sophistication long before they were scientifically understood. The reader is then introduced to the atomic concept, the conservation of mass, as well as to the substances that constitute the living things. Other chapters consider the polymerization of amino acids into peptides and proteins. The final chapter examines the various applications of radioactive isotopes produced in particle accelerators. This book is intended for students and teachers who are involved in a chemistry course.

Preface

1. Introduction and Apologia

For Thought and Action

Suggested Readings

2. The Matter Matter

Some Attic Ideas about Everything

The Craft of the Ancient and Artful Chemical Engineer

Making Gold for Fun and Profit

What's Burning?

A Revolution Built on Air

Lavoisier and the "New Chemistry"

Elements, Compounds, and Mixtures

For Thought and Action

Suggested Readings

3. Atomism: The Evidence of Things Not Seen

The Inferred Atoms of the Ancients

The Matter of Mass and the Mass of Matter

Dalton's Billiard Balls

Atoms A.D. (After Dalton)

Weighing the Unweighable

Counting the Uncountable

For Thought and Action

Suggested Readings

4. The Chemical Code

The Elementary Alphabet

Formulas: A Chemical Spelling Lesson

Equations and Chemical Syntax

Weighty Sentences

For Thought and Action

Suggested Readings

5. Ordering The Elements: Properties and Periodicity

About Order

The Overactive Elements

The New, Lazy, Hidden Strangers

The Siberian and His System

Tabular Trends

For Thought and Action

Suggested Readings

6. Messages from Inner Space

Let There Be Light

A Video View of the Electron

of Serendipity and Searching

The α, β, γ of Radioactivity

Alchemy Revisited

For Thought and Action

Suggested Readings

7. The Architecture of an Atom

of Atoms and a Particles

of Nuclei and Numerology

Protons, Neutrons, and Other Peculiar Particles

The Case of the Curious Quantum

The Equation of an Atom

For Thought and Action

Suggested Readings

8. The Mathematics of Matter

When is a Particle Not a Particle?

The Abstract Atom

Building up the Elements

Ignorance, Uncertainty, and Electrons

For Thought and Action

Suggested Readings

9. Chemical Bonding and Molecular Structure

Ionic Compounds: Please Pass an Electron

Covalent Compounds: Togetherness through Sharing

Some Covalent Compounds of Carbon

For Thought and Action

Suggested Readings

10. Force and Form: Properties of Gases, Liquids, and Solids

of Breezes, Brooks, and Boulders: A Brief Beginning

Hot Air and High Pressure

A Useful Utopia: An Ideal Equation for a Perfect Gas

Molecules in Motion

Liquid Assets

More, about Molecules

Anomalous Water: aqua vera or aqua ficta?

Solids of Various Sorts

For Thought and Action

Suggested Readings

11. Solution, Pollution, and the Pollution Solution

Solutions, Solvents, and Solutes

Molarity, Molality, and More

Like Likes Like

of Antifreeze and Osmosis

An Optional aside on Acidity

Clean Air Smells Funny

"Water, Water, Every Where, Nor Any Drop to Drink"

For Thought and Action

Suggested Readings

12. Energy, Enthalpy, and the First Law of Thermodynamics

The Hard Law of Hard Work

The Canon of Caloric Meets the Cannon of the Count

∆E = Q-W

Enter: Enthalpy

More Energy Spent on Enthalpy (and Vice Versa)

Envoi on Energy

For Thought and Action

Suggested Readings

13. Entropy, Free Energy, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Changes: Real and Reversible

Introducing Entropy: ∆S = Qrev/T

Entropy, Energy, Efficiency, Ecology

Order and Odds

Thermodynamic Craps: The House Always Wins

∆G = ∆H - T∆S: It's Free!

For Thought and Action

Suggested Readings

14. The Constants of Chemical Change

Which Way are You Going?

Why are You Going?

How Far are You Going?

Some Like it Hot—Some Don't

How Fast are You Going?

For Thought and Action

Suggested Readings

15. The Chemistry of Life

The Many Molecules of Organic Chemistry

Amino Acids (and Alice)

of Proteins and Peptide Bonds

Information about Conformation

Sweetness and Light

The Bases of Heredity

"Better Living through Chemistry"

For Thought and Action

Suggested Readings

16. Swords and Plowshares: The Challenge of Nuclear Energy

A Glimpse of the New World

New Nuclei: Structure and Stability

Fragments and Fission

"I Am Become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds"

Stealing the Sun

Peaceful Atoms

Epilogue

For Thought and Action

Suggested Readings

Appendix 1. Playing the Numbers

The Power of Exponents

Clearing the Logjam

The Significance of Figures

Appendix 2. Measure for Measure

The Metric System: From Micro to Mega

There'll Be Some Changes Made

How Hot is Hot?

Conversion Factors

Constants

Appendix 3. What's in a Name?

Inorganic Compounds

Organic Compounds

Appendix 4. For Thought and Action: Answers to Problems

Index