Chemical Principles,7th edition

Book Preface

Chemistry is a fascinating and important subject that is challenging to teach and even more challenging to learn. Making this complex subject accessible to students without distortion is the challenge of the chemical educator, especially at the introductory level. Chemical Principles, Seventh Edition, provides a rigorous but understandable introduction to chemistry. It emphasizes conceptual understanding, the importance of models, and thoughtful problem solving.

Chemical Principles is based on our experiences at the University of Illinois teaching an accelerated general chemistry course for chemical sciences majors and other students who require a rigorous introductory course. These students typically have excellent credentials and a genuine aptitude for chemistry but only limited understanding of the fundamental concepts of chemistry.

Although they may know how to solve stoichiometry and gas problems when they arrive in our courses, these students typically lack a thorough appreciation for the chemical principles that underlie these applications. This is not because they had inadequate preparation in high school; instead, we believe it results from the nature of chemistry itself—a subject that requires several passes before real mastery can take place.

Our mission in writing this text was to produce a book that does not assume that students already know how to think like chemists. These students will eventually do complicated and rigorous thinking, but they must be brought to that point gradually. Thus this book covers the advanced topics (in gases, atomic theory, thermodynamics, and so on) that one expects in a course for chemical sciences majors, but it starts with the fundamentals and then builds to the level required for more complete understanding. Chemistry is not the result of an inspired vision. It is the product of countless observations and many attempts, using logic and trial and error, to account for these observations. In this book we develop key chemical concepts in the same way—to show the observations first and then discuss the models that have been constructed to explain the observed behavior. We hope students will practice “thinking like a chemist” by carefully studying the observations to see if they can follow the thought process, rather than just jumping ahead to the equation or model that will follow.

In Chemical Principles, Seventh Edition, we take advantage of the excellent math skills that these students typically possess. As a result, there are fewer work-out examples than would be found in most mainstream books. The endof- chapter problems cover a wide range—from drill exercises to difficult problems, some of which would challenge the average senior chemistry major. Thus instructors can tailor the problem assignments to the level appropriate for their students.