Chemistry A Second Course

Excerpt from Second Year College Chemistry The trend of our present-day research in both pure and applied Chemistry implies that principles are more important than facts and methods; and this trend, it would seem, should be reflected in our teaching. It is conceded, however, that general principles cannot be profitably taught without first building a background of facts, and for this reason the first year course must be largely given over to descriptive matter. It is true that the student has many principles and laws thrust upon him during the first year; but, due to his lack of perspective and his crudeness as a manipulator, he gets these only in a vague, qualitative form. They do not become a part of his stock-in-trade; and so, after a summers vacation, they have for the most part passed into oblivion. Now, if we grant that these general principles are the framework of our science we should not allow them to be thus forgotten; we should revive them, and expand them, and work them over, until they become familiar, usable tools. With this in mind, therefore, the selection of courses immediately following General Chemistry is seen to be a matter of great importance. The traditional course in Qualitative Analysis, with its endless round of reactions and "unknowns," offers very little in the development and fixing of principles, although it has a distinct value in the first-year course as a means of systematizing a multitude of facts. Even the modernized course based on the Ionic Theory and the Laws of Chemical Equilibrium makes too small a contribution in proportion to the time consumed. The fact is that too little impression is made on a student by a multiplication of qualitative statements or the use of qualitative problems and laboratory exercises. What a student needs is an accurate restatement of principles and the opportunity to verify and use these in a quantitative way. The course covered by this text and the accompanying manual is an attempt to put into operation the plan implied in the above discussion. It, therefore, assumes that the student knows very little about general principles but that he has a fair knowledge of facts. With this slight assumption, the text takes up the principles touched upon during the first year, and restates them without apology. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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