Overall Summary: Fundamentals of Chemistry

Greetings,

This post is a summary of all posts published to this blog since August, 2012.  Thank you for reading and there will be much more coming.  A new "chapter" will be started soon: Lessons on General #Chemistry will continue at a more advanced level, which will help College Chemistry students, as well as any other interested parties!  Hey, when it comes to learning chemistry, in my humble opinion, it's all good!

The Science of Matter

Chemistry is the study of matter; Its identity and properties, its structure on the sub-microscopic scale (and how those structures influence properties of matter!), and changes it can undergo (both chemical and physical).  For every change in matter, there is an associated energy change, so chemistry is involved there also.  The type of energy change, just mentioned, is thermal (heat) energy, but chemistry is also a study of #electromagnetic energy and its interaction with matter (actually, a very common occurrence!).

Identity of Matter

The word, "identity", is connected to the question: "What is something?".  Of course, the "something" we're talking about is matter, and matter is identified and described by its properties.  So, #properties are identifying characteristics of matter.  Properties are either qualitative (non-numeric) or quantitative (numeric).  The following graphic provides a summary of #Identity of Matter.

Structure of Matter

As we zoom in closer to a sample of matter, interesting #geometric shapes begin to appear.  These shapes are directly related to properties of matter.  As we zoom in even closer we begin to see the inside of the atom.  The atom itself has a structure and particular arrangement of three subatomic particles.

The nature of chemical bonding is tied in with atomic structure and the nature of intermolecular forces is related to molecular geometry.The combined effect of atomic structure and molecular structure determine the properties of matter.

Changes in Matter

A physical change may or may not result in a change of composition.  If there is no change in composition, then we have a change of state of a pure substance.  If composition does change, then we have a change of relative amounts of a mixture or formation of a mixture from pure components.

A chemical change always results in a change of chemical composition and is more commonly known as a chemical reaction.  The main characteristics of a chemical reaction are likelihood of occurrence and rate, which are mutually exclusive.  The likelihood of a reaction is based on thermodynamic properties; namely #free energy, #enthalpy, and #entropy.  Free energy is the maximum amount of heat "available" upon completion of a reaction.  These energy concepts will be discussed in detail in the College Chemistry chapter of this blog.  #Rate of reaction is based on concepts of chemical #kinetics.  A special application of kinetics is the concept of chemical equilibrium.

That's all for this page of the blog.  The next post will begin the new page, College Chemistry!

Thank you for Reading!

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