Chapter 1: Introduction 1

What you take away from an experience depends on how you approach it and what

you hope to get out of it.

If you’re a hobbyist, no problem. Simply read the book from start to finish and do the

labs in the order they’re presented. You’ll have a lot of fun and learn a lot about chemistry

along the way.

If you’re a home school student or a public school student who wants a laboratory

chemistry course to supplement and enhance a lecture-based high school chemistry course,

you’ll need to do a bit more planning. The lab sessions in this book cover at least two years’

worth of high school chemistry lab work, including a full set of labs appropriate for a first-

year chemistry lab course and a second group of labs appropriate for a second-year or AP

(Advanced Placement) chemistry lab course.

The laboratory sessions in this book are organized topically by chapter, but their order

may not correspond to the order in which topics are covered in your chemistry text book.

That’s not really a problem, because you can do these labs in whatever order matches that

of your chemistry text. Choosing which labs to do is another matter.

1

Introduction

Look TUpI

Because this book focuses on chemistry lab work rather than chemistry theory, if you

aren’t using this book in conjunction with a chemistry textbook there may be times when you

come across a term that’s unfamiliar to you. Usually, the term will be clear from context. If it

isn’t clear, don’t guess. Look it up, either on-line or in a good general chemistry textbook.

One good general chemistry textbook is Chemistry, The Central Science (Brown,

et al., Prentice Hall, 2002), but there are many others available. Chemistry textbooks are

often available very inexpensively in used bookstores, and even a copy that’s several editions

out of date is fine. Chemistry textbooks are frequently updated with very minor changes, but

even a copy that’s 10 or more years old covers all the fundamentals. General chemistry just

doesn’t change much over the years.