Читать книгу U Can: Chemistry I For Dummies - Hren Chris - Страница 3

In many cases, when students think back to their time in high school or college chemistry, they don’t think of the class fondly (unless perhaps they’re science majors). A lot of people think chemistry is too abstract, too mathematical, too removed from their real lives.

One of the biggest challenges you encounter with chemistry is that you’re forced to work with numbers that have meaning behind them, maybe for the first time. You’re no longer simply doing a math problem with abstract values. Instead, these numbers represent physical quantities, so they’re associated with things like units, measurements, and chemical formulas.

Chemistry is an essential part of life. You encounter it every single day and in some cases may actually enjoy it. Remember making that baking soda and vinegar volcano as a child? That’s chemistry. Do you cook or clean or use nail polish remover? All of that is chemistry. So relax, though you may be struggling a bit here or there in your class; you already have a ton of chemistry experience, because you’ve gotten this far in life. Besides, this book breaks down the very large and complex subject of chemistry into basic ideas that can help with anything you need.

Chemistry is sometimes called the central science (mostly by chemists), because in order to have a good understanding of biology or geology or even physics, you must have a good understanding of chemistry. Ours is a chemical world, and we hope that as you begin to understand chemistry better, you’ll look at the world a bit differently and appreciate the chemical nature of everything. Perhaps, though a crazy notion, you’ll even look back on your chemistry class as one of your favorite experiences in school. A lot of our students do.

About This Book

When you’re fixed in the thickets of a monstrous stoichiometry packet of work or bogged down by buffered solutions, you’ve got little use for someone waxing poetic about the grandeur of chemistry. What you want is help. Simple, easy-to-understand help. Thankfully, you’ll find it here.

This book isn’t structured as you’d expect a normal chemistry text to be set up. There aren’t unnecessary sections explaining concepts that your teacher will gloss over and never mention. Everything in here is something you’d encounter in a general high school chemistry class or a first-semester college course. We help you make sense of chemistry concepts and solve those frustrating chemistry problems.

The focus is on how to solve the problems on your homework and quizzes and tests. Now, the best way to succeed at chemistry is to practice, practice more, and then practice even more. The biggest thing students struggle with in chemistry is simply looking at an example or watching their teacher and thinking they now understand everything. If only things were that easy! To get good at solving problems, you have to try them yourself. Have a blank piece of paper in front of you and try to work out all the practice problems you see in this book as you go. This one piece of advice can help more than any other single thing you do in terms of succeeding in chemistry.

This book 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. The best part is that for every practice problem you encounter and try to solve (and you will try to solve them if you want to succeed), we offer a fully worked out and explained solution.

Foolish Assumptions

The basic assumption of this book is that you’re taking a general high school or college level chemistry class and would like a bit of help getting through it. We assume you have a basic level of mathematical ability – things like solving simple algebra problems and performing basic operations like multiplying and dividing are not explained explicitly in this book. We also assume you have a scientific calculator, a graphing calculator, or perhaps a smartphone for the math portions. (Hint: If you turn the calculator app sideways on your smartphone, you’ll likely get a really nice scientific calculator.) That’s pretty much it! Beyond that, you should be totally fine with this book.

Beyond the Book

In addition to the material in the print or e-book you’re reading right now, this product comes with some access-anywhere goodies on the web. Check out these features:

✔ Cheat Sheet (www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/ucanchemistry1): This online cheat sheet will provide you with a quick reference point for many of the important concepts you’ll encounter regularly in chemistry, such as naming formulas, performing mole conversions, drawing Lewis structures, and looking at pressure/temperature/volume relationships. This page is a great place to check if you’re stumped on something and are looking for a quick fix.

✔ Dummies.com articles (www.dummies.com/extras/ucanchemistry1): Each part in this book is supplemented by an online article that provides additional tips and techniques related to the subject of that part. Read helpful articles that reveal more on naming organic compounds, osmotic pressure, and the inner workings of a nuclear power plant.

✔ Online practice and study aids: The online practice that comes free with this book offers 1,001 questions and answers that allow you to gain more practice with chemistry concepts. The beauty of the online questions is that you can customize your online practice to focus on the topics that give you the most trouble. So if you need help with moles or balancing reactions, just select those question types online and start practicing. Or if you’re short on time but want to get a mixed bag of a limited number of questions, you can specify the number of questions you want to practice. Whether you practice a few hundred questions in one sitting or a couple dozen, and whether you focus on a few types of questions or practice every type, the online program keeps track of the questions you get right and wrong so you can monitor your progress and spend time studying exactly what you need.

To gain access to the online practice, all you have to do is register. Just follow these simple steps:

1. Find your access code.

● Print-book users: If you purchased a hard copy of this book, turn to the inside of the front cover to find your access code.

● E-book users: If you purchased this book as an e-book, you can get your access code by registering your e-book at www.dummies.com/go/getaccess. Simply select your book from the drop-down menu, fill in your personal information, and then answer the security question to verify your purchase. You’ll then receive an e-mail with your access code.

2. Go to http://learn.dummies.com and click Already have an Access Code?

3. Enter your access code and click Next.

4. Follow the instructions to create an account and set up your personal login.

Now you’re ready to go! You can come back to the online program as often as you want – simply sign in with the username and password you created during your initial registration. No need to enter the access code a second time.

Tip: If you have trouble with your access code or can’t find it, contact Wiley Product Technical Support at 877-762-2974 or go to http://wiley.custhelp.com.

Where to Go from Here

Where you go from here depends on your situation and your learning style:

✔ If you’re currently enrolled in a chemistry course, you may want to scan the table of contents to determine what material you’ve already covered in class and what you’re covering right now. Use this book to help you with the new stuff and review the old stuff.

✔ If you’re just beginning a chemistry course, you can follow along in this book, using the practice problems to supplement your homework or as a study tool for the test. Alternatively, you can use this book to preview material before you cover it in class. The book is designed to mirror your class about as well as it can, though every teacher has a preferred order for covering material. You may need to jump around a bit, but the book is designed for this.

✔ If you bought this book a week before your final exam and are just now trying to figure out what this whole “chemistry” thing is about, well, good luck. The best way to start in that case is to determine what exactly is going to be on your exam and to study only those parts of this book. Due to time constraints or the proclivities of individual teachers/professors, not everything is covered in every chemistry class, so make sure you know what to study!

No matter the reason you have this book in your hands now, there are three simple steps to remember:

1. Don’t just read it; do the practice problems on your own and without help.

2. Don’t panic.

3. Do more practice problems.

Anyone can do chemistry given enough desire, focus, and time. You aren’t going to be the exception to that rule. Just keep at it, and you’ll be fine.