, This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without
attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee.
Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
2
, Preface
In this new millenium, as the world faces new and extreme challenges, the importance of acquiring a solid foundation
in chemical principles has become increasingly important to understand the challenges that lie ahead. Moreover, as
the world becomes more integrated and interdependent, so too do the scientific disciplines. The divisions between
fields such as chemistry, physics, biology, environmental sciences, geology, and materials science, among others, have
become less clearly defined. The goal of this text is to address the increasing close relationship among various
disciplines and to show the relevance of chemistry to contemporary issues in a pedagogically approachable manner.
Because of the enthusiasm of the majority of first-year chemistry students for biologically and medically relevant
topics, this text uses an integrated approach that includes explicit discussions of biological and environmental
applications of chemistry. Topics relevant to materials science are also introduced to meet the more specific needs of
engineering students. To facilitate integration of such material, simple organic structures, nomenclature, and
reactions are introduced very early in the text, and both organic and inorganic examples are used wherever possible.
This approach emphasizes the distinctions between ionic and covalent bonding, thus enhancing the students’ chance
of success in the organic chemistry course that traditionally follows general chemistry.
The overall goal is to produce a text that introduces the students to the relevance and excitement of chemistry.
Although much of first-year chemistry is taught as a service course, there is no reason that the intrinsic excitement
and potential of chemistry cannot be the focal point of the text and the course. We emphasize the positive aspects of
chemistry and its relationship to students’ lives, which requires bringing in applications early and often.
Unfortunately, one cannot assume that students in such courses today are highly motivated to study chemistry for its
own sake. The explicit discussion of biological, environmental, and materials issues from a chemical perspective is
intended to motivate the students and help them appreciate the relevance of chemistry to their lives. Material that has
traditionally been relegated to boxes, and thus perhaps perceived as peripheral by the students, has been incorporated
into the text to serve as a learning tool.
To begin the discussion of chemistry rapidly, the traditional first chapter introducing units, significant figures,
conversion factors, dimensional analysis, and so on, has been reorganized. The material has been placed in the
chapters where the relevant concepts are first introduced, thus providing three advantages: it eliminates the tedium of
the traditional approach, which introduces mathematical operations at the outset, and thus avoids the perception that
chemistry is a mathematics course; it avoids the early introduction of operations such as logarithms and exponents,
which are typically not encountered again for several chapters and may easily be forgotten when they are needed; and
Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
3
, third, it provides a review for those students who have already had relatively sophisticated high school chemistry and
math courses, although the sections are designed primarily for students unfamiliar with the topic.
Our specific objectives include the following:
1. To write the text at a level suitable for science majors, but using a less formal writing style that will appeal to modern
students.
2. To produce a truly integrated text that gives the student who takes only a single year of chemistry an overview of the
most important subdisciplines of chemistry, including organic, inorganic, biological, materials, environmental, and
nuclear chemistry, thus emphasizing unifying concepts.
3. To introduce fundamental concepts in the first two-thirds of the chapter, then applications relevant to the health
sciences or engineers. This provides a flexible text that can be tailored to the specific needs and interests of the
audience.
4. To ensure the accuracy of the material presented, which is enhanced by the author’s breadth of professional
experience and experience as active chemical researchers.
5. To produce a spare, clean, uncluttered text that is less distracting to the student, where each piece of art serves as a
pedagogical device.
6. To introduce the distinction between ionic and covalent bonding and reactions early in the text, and to continue to
build on this foundation in the subsequent discussion, while emphasizing the relationship between structure and
reactivity.
7. To utilize established pedagogical devices to maximize students’ ability to learn directly from the text. These include
copious worked examples in the text, problem-solving strategies, and similar unworked exercises with solutions. End-
of-chapter problems are designed to ensure that students have grasped major concepts in addition to testing their
ability to solve numerical, problems. Problems emphasizing applications are drawn from many disciplines.
8. To emphasize an intuitive and predictive approach to problem solving that relies on a thorough understanding of key
concepts and recognition of important patterns rather than on memorization. Many patterns are indicated
throughout the text as notes in the margin.
The text is organized by units that discuss introductory concepts, atomic and molecular structure, the states of matter,
kinetics and equilibria, and descriptive inorganic chemistry. The text breaks the traditional chapter on liquids and
solids into two to expand the coverage of important and topics such as semiconductors and superconductors,
polymers, and engineering materials.
Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
4
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without
attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee.
Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
2
, Preface
In this new millenium, as the world faces new and extreme challenges, the importance of acquiring a solid foundation
in chemical principles has become increasingly important to understand the challenges that lie ahead. Moreover, as
the world becomes more integrated and interdependent, so too do the scientific disciplines. The divisions between
fields such as chemistry, physics, biology, environmental sciences, geology, and materials science, among others, have
become less clearly defined. The goal of this text is to address the increasing close relationship among various
disciplines and to show the relevance of chemistry to contemporary issues in a pedagogically approachable manner.
Because of the enthusiasm of the majority of first-year chemistry students for biologically and medically relevant
topics, this text uses an integrated approach that includes explicit discussions of biological and environmental
applications of chemistry. Topics relevant to materials science are also introduced to meet the more specific needs of
engineering students. To facilitate integration of such material, simple organic structures, nomenclature, and
reactions are introduced very early in the text, and both organic and inorganic examples are used wherever possible.
This approach emphasizes the distinctions between ionic and covalent bonding, thus enhancing the students’ chance
of success in the organic chemistry course that traditionally follows general chemistry.
The overall goal is to produce a text that introduces the students to the relevance and excitement of chemistry.
Although much of first-year chemistry is taught as a service course, there is no reason that the intrinsic excitement
and potential of chemistry cannot be the focal point of the text and the course. We emphasize the positive aspects of
chemistry and its relationship to students’ lives, which requires bringing in applications early and often.
Unfortunately, one cannot assume that students in such courses today are highly motivated to study chemistry for its
own sake. The explicit discussion of biological, environmental, and materials issues from a chemical perspective is
intended to motivate the students and help them appreciate the relevance of chemistry to their lives. Material that has
traditionally been relegated to boxes, and thus perhaps perceived as peripheral by the students, has been incorporated
into the text to serve as a learning tool.
To begin the discussion of chemistry rapidly, the traditional first chapter introducing units, significant figures,
conversion factors, dimensional analysis, and so on, has been reorganized. The material has been placed in the
chapters where the relevant concepts are first introduced, thus providing three advantages: it eliminates the tedium of
the traditional approach, which introduces mathematical operations at the outset, and thus avoids the perception that
chemistry is a mathematics course; it avoids the early introduction of operations such as logarithms and exponents,
which are typically not encountered again for several chapters and may easily be forgotten when they are needed; and
Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
3
, third, it provides a review for those students who have already had relatively sophisticated high school chemistry and
math courses, although the sections are designed primarily for students unfamiliar with the topic.
Our specific objectives include the following:
1. To write the text at a level suitable for science majors, but using a less formal writing style that will appeal to modern
students.
2. To produce a truly integrated text that gives the student who takes only a single year of chemistry an overview of the
most important subdisciplines of chemistry, including organic, inorganic, biological, materials, environmental, and
nuclear chemistry, thus emphasizing unifying concepts.
3. To introduce fundamental concepts in the first two-thirds of the chapter, then applications relevant to the health
sciences or engineers. This provides a flexible text that can be tailored to the specific needs and interests of the
audience.
4. To ensure the accuracy of the material presented, which is enhanced by the author’s breadth of professional
experience and experience as active chemical researchers.
5. To produce a spare, clean, uncluttered text that is less distracting to the student, where each piece of art serves as a
pedagogical device.
6. To introduce the distinction between ionic and covalent bonding and reactions early in the text, and to continue to
build on this foundation in the subsequent discussion, while emphasizing the relationship between structure and
reactivity.
7. To utilize established pedagogical devices to maximize students’ ability to learn directly from the text. These include
copious worked examples in the text, problem-solving strategies, and similar unworked exercises with solutions. End-
of-chapter problems are designed to ensure that students have grasped major concepts in addition to testing their
ability to solve numerical, problems. Problems emphasizing applications are drawn from many disciplines.
8. To emphasize an intuitive and predictive approach to problem solving that relies on a thorough understanding of key
concepts and recognition of important patterns rather than on memorization. Many patterns are indicated
throughout the text as notes in the margin.
The text is organized by units that discuss introductory concepts, atomic and molecular structure, the states of matter,
kinetics and equilibria, and descriptive inorganic chemistry. The text breaks the traditional chapter on liquids and
solids into two to expand the coverage of important and topics such as semiconductors and superconductors,
polymers, and engineering materials.
Saylor URL: http://www.saylor.org/books Saylor.org
4
