Chemistry Workbook For Dummies with Online Practice 3rd Edition

Book Preface

“The first essential in chemistry is that you should perform practical work and conduct experiments, for he who performs not practical work nor makes experiments will never attain the least degree of mastery.”
—JĀBIR IBN HAYYĀN, 8TH CENTURY
“One of the wonders of this world is that objects so small can have such consequences: Any visible lump of matter — even the merest speck — contains more atoms than there are stars in our galaxy.”

—PETER W. ATKINS, 20TH CENTURY

Chemistry is at once practical and wondrous, humble and majestic. And for someone studying it for the first time, chemistry can be tricky.
That’s why we wrote this book. Chemistry is wondrous. Workbooks are practical. Practice makes perfect. This chemistry workbook will help you practice many types of chemistry problems with the solutions nicely laid out.

About This Book

When you’re fixed in the thickets of stoichiometry or bogged down by buffered solutions, you’ve got little use for rapturous poetry about the atomic splendor of the universe. What you need is a little practical assistance. Subject by subject, problem by problem, this book extends a helping hand to pull you out of the thickets and bogs.

The topics covered in this book are the topics most often covered in a first-year chemistry course in high school or college. The focus is on problems — problems like the ones you may encounter in homework or on exams. We give you just enough theory to grasp the principles at work in the problems. Then we tackle example problems. Then you tackle practice problems. The best way to succeed at chemistry is to practice. Practice more. And then practice even more. Watching your teacher do the problems or reading about them isn’t enough. Michael Jordan didn’t develop a jump shot by watching other people shoot a basketball. He practiced. A lot. Using this workbook, you can, too (but chemistry, not basketball).

This workbook is modular. You can pick and choose those chapters and types of problems that challenge you the most; you don’t have to read this book cover to cover if you don’t want to. If certain topics require you to know other topics in advance, we tell you so and point you in the right direction. Most importantly, we provide a worked-out solution and explanation for every problem.

Foolish Assumptions

We assume you have a basic facility with algebra and arithmetic. You should know how to solve simple equations for an unknown variable. You should know how to work with exponents and logarithms. That’s about it for the math. At no point do we ask you to, say, consider the contradictions between the Schrödinger equation and stochastic wavefunction collapse.

We assume you’re a high school or college student and have access to a secondary school-level (or higher) textbook in chemistry or some other basic primer, such as Chemistry For Dummies, 2nd Edition (written by John T. Moore, EdD, and published by Wiley). We present enough theory in this workbook for you to tackle the problems, but you’ll benefit from a broader description of basic chemical concepts. That way, you’ll more clearly understand how the various pieces of chemistry operate within a larger whole — you’ll see the compound for the elements, so to speak.

We assume you don’t like to waste time. Neither do we. Chemists in general aren’t too fond of time-wasting, so if you’re impatient for progress, you’re already part-chemist at heart.