Chapter One: Essential Ideas in Chemistry

1.1 Introduction
 Chemistry is the scientific discipline involved with elements and compounds composed of
atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, properties, behavior and the changes
they undergo during a reaction with other substances.
 Chemical substances and processes are essential for our existence, providing sustenance,
keeping us clean and healthy, fabricating electronic devices, enabling transportation, and
much more.
 Most everything you do and encounter during your day involves chemistry.
 Making coffee, cooking eggs, and toasting bread involve chemistry.
 The products you use like soap and shampoo, the fabrics you wear, the electronics that keep
you connected to your world, the gasoline that propels your car all of these and more involve
chemical substances and processes.
 Whether you are aware or not, chemistry is part of your everyday world.
 In this chapter, you will learn many of the essential principles underlying the chemistry of
modern-day life.
1.2 Chemistry as the Central Science
 Chemistry is sometimes referred to as “the central science” due to its interconnectedness
with a vast array of other STEM disciplines
 Chemistry and the language of chemists play vital roles in biology, medicine, materials
science, forensics, environmental science, and many other fields
 Biology and chemistry converge in biochemistry, which is crucial to understanding the
many complex factors and processes that keep living organisms alive.
 Chemical engineering, materials science, and nanotechnology combine chemical
principles and empirical findings to produce useful substances, ranging from gasoline to
fabrics to electronics.
 Agriculture, food science, veterinary science, and brewing and wine making help provide
sustenance in the form of food and drink to the world’s population. Medicine,
pharmacology, biotechnology, and botany identify and produce substances that helpkeep
us healthy.

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  Environmental science, geology, oceanography, and atmospheric science incorporate
many chemical ideas to help us better understand and protect our physical world.
 Chemical ideas are used to help understand the universe in astronomy and cosmology.

Fig: Knowledge of chemistry is central to understanding a wide range of scientific

disciplines

This diagram shows just some of the interrelationships between chemistry and other
fields.
Digesting and assimilating food, synthesizing polymers that are used to make
clothing, containers, cookware, and credit cards, and refining crude oil into gasoline and
other products are just a few examples.
As you proceed through this course, you will discover many different examples of
changes in the composition and structure of matter, how to classify these changes, how
they occurred and the principles and laws involved. As you learn about these things, you
will be learning chemistry, the study of the composition, properties, and interactions of
matter.
The practice of chemistry is not limited to chemistry books or laboratories:
It happens whenever someone is involved in changes in matter or in conditions that may
lead to such changes.
1.3 The Scientific Method

 Chemistry is a science based on observation and experimentation.

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 Doing chemistry involves attempting to answer questions and explain observations in terms
of the laws and theories of chemistry, using procedures that are accepted by the scientific
community.
 There is no single route to answering a question or explaining an observation, but there is
an aspect common to every approach:
 Each uses knowledge based on experiments that can be reproduced to verify the results.
 Some routes involve a hypothesis, a tentative explanation of observations that acts as a
guide for gathering and checking information.
 A hypothesis is tested by experimentation, calculation, and/or comparison with the
experiments of others and then refined as needed.
 Some hypotheses are attempts to explain the behavior that is summarized in laws.
 The laws of science summarize a vast number of experimental observations, and describe
or predict some fact of the natural world.
 If such a hypothesis turns out to be capable of explaining a large body of experimental data,
it can reach the status of a theory.
 Scientific theories are well-substantiated, comprehensive, testable explanations of
particular aspects of nature.
 Theories are accepted because they provide satisfactory explanations, but they can be
modified if new data become available.
 The path of discovery that leads from question and observation to law or hypothesis
to theory, combined with experimental verification of the hypothesis and any
necessary modification of the theory, is called the scientific method (See the Fig. below).

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 1.4 Domains of Chemistry
 Chemists study and describe the behavior of matter and energy in three different
domains:
1. Macroscopic domain:
Is the realm of everyday things that are large enough to be sensed directly by human
sight or touch
It includes every day and laboratory chemistry, where we observe and measure
physical and chemical properties such as density, solubility, and flammability.
2. Microscopic domain
Often visited in the imagination.
 Some aspects of the microscopic domain are visible through standard optical
microscopes, for example many biological cells.

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  More sophisticated instruments are capable of imaging even smaller entities such as
molecules and atoms
 However, most of the subjects in the microscopic domain of chemistry are too small to be
seen even with themost advanced microscopes and may only be pictured in the
mind.
 Other components of the microscopic domain include ions and electrons, protons and
neutrons, and chemical bonds, each of which is far too small to see.
3. Symbolic domain
 Contains the specialized language used to represent components of the macroscopic and
microscopic domains.
 Chemical symbols (such as those used in the periodic table), chemical formulas, and
chemical equations are part of the symbolic domain, as are graphs, drawings, and
calculations.
 These symbols play an important role in chemistry because they help interpret the
behavior of the macroscopic domain in terms of the components of the microscopic
domain.
1.5 State of Matter
Matter is anything that occupies space and has mass, and it is all around us.
Solids, liquids, and gases are the three states of matter commonly found on earth
A solid is rigid and possesses a definite shape.
A liquid flows and takes the shape of its container, except that it forms a flat or slightly
curved upper surface when acted upon by gravity
Both liquid and solid samples have volumes that are very nearly independent of pressure.
A gas takes both the shape and volume of its container.
 A fourth state of matter, plasma occurs naturally in the interiors of stars.
 Plasma is a gaseous state of matter that contains appreciable numbers of electrically
charged particles
1.6 Classification of Matter
Two broad categories of matter are mixtures and pure substances.
A pure substance has a constant composition.

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 All specimens of a pure substance have exactly the same makeup and properties. Any
sample of sucrose (table sugar) consists of 42.1% carbon, 6.5% hydrogen, and 51.4%
oxygen by mass.
Any sample of sucrose also has the same physical properties, such as melting point,
color, and sweetness, regardless of the source from which it is isolated.
Pure substances may be divided into two classes: elements and compounds.
Pure substances that cannot be broken down into simpler substances by chemical changes
are called elements. Iron, silver, gold, aluminum, sulfur, oxygen, and copper are familiar
examples of the more than 100 known elements, of which about 90 occur naturally on the
earth, and two dozen or so have been created in laboratories.
Pure substances that can be broken down by chemical changes are called compounds.
This breakdown may produce either elements or other compounds, or both.
Mercury (II) oxide, an orange, crystalline solid, can be broken down by heat into the
elements mercury and oxygen.
When heated in the absence of air, the compound sucrose is broken down into the
element carbon and the compound water.
 A mixture is composed of two or more types of matter that can be present in varying
amounts and can be separated by physical changes, such as evaporation.
 A mixture with a composition that varies from point to point is called a heterogeneous
mixture
A homogeneous mixture, also called a solution, exhibits a uniform composition and
appears visually the same throughout.
An example of a solution is a sports drink, consisting of water, sugar, coloring, flavoring,
and electrolytes mixed together uniformly

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 Fig. Classification of matter

1.7 Physical and Chemical Properties

 The characteristics that distinguish one substance from another are called properties.
 A physical property is a characteristicof matter that is not associated with a change
in its chemical composition.
 Familiar examples of physical properties include density, color, hardness, melting and
boiling points, and electrical conductivity.
 Only be observed as matter undergoes a physical change.
 A physical change is a change in the state or properties of matter without any
accompanying change in the chemical identities of the substances contained in the
matter.
 Examples of physical changes: wax melts, sugar dissolves in coffee, and steam condenses
into liquid water, magnetizing and demagnetizing metals and grinding solids into
powders.
A Chemical Property: The change of one type of matter into another type (or the
inability to change).
Examples of chemical properties include flammability, toxicity, acidity, and many
other types of reactivity.
A chemical change always produces one or more types of matter that differ from the
matter present before the change.

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 The formation of rust is a chemical change because rust is a different kind of matter than
the iron, oxygen, and water present before the rust formed.
The explosion of nitroglycerin is a chemical change because the gases produced are very
different kinds of matter from the original substance.
1.8 Extensive and Intensive Property
A) Extensive property: The property depends on the amount/quantity/ of matter present
Example: length, intensity/absorbance/, mass, volume, area
B) Intensive property: The property of a sample of matter does not depend on the amount of
matter present
Example: melting point, boiling point, density, conductivity, viscosity, hardness, malleability and
ductility

1.9 Measurements and Units

Measurements provide much of the information that informs the hypotheses, theories, and
laws describing the behavior of matter and energy in both the macroscopic and microscopic
domains of chemistry.
Every measurement provides three kinds of information: the size or magnitude of the
measurement (a number); a standard of comparison for the measurement (a unit); and an
indication of the uncertainty of the measurement.
While the number and unit are explicitly represented when a quantity is written, the
uncertainty is an aspect of the measurement result that is more implicitly represented
The number in the measurement can be represented in different ways, including decimal
form and scientific notation.
Scientific notation is also known as exponential notation (1234= 1.234 *103)
The measurement units for seven fundamental properties (“base units”) are length (m),
mass (Kg), temperature (K), amount of substance (mol), time (s), luminous intensity (cd) and
electric current (A).
Derived SI Units: We can derive many units from the seven SI base units. Example; volume,
density

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