chemistry 100

"What Should You Know?"

Part I (9/16/01)

Background material

I'm assuming you've seen most of this, in one form or another, in a General Science, Bioogy or Chemistry Course taken before you arrived at College. Much of this is covered or used during the first two weeks of our course, although we haven't called it review.

If you have not taken any chemistry courses previously, you will need to spend some additional time on these lists in addition to what's in the textbook. If much time has elapsed since your previous course, you should also focus harder on this material. I'm not suggesting this list is simple, obvious. easily remembered or easy. It is the background you'll need to know before you approach the first exam in Chem 100.

Elements and Symbols

We will use about 25 elements and their symbols so often that you really need to know them on sight. You should recognize the name (be able to spell it) and know the symbol. You should also be able to come up with the same if the symbol is given. You should also know a few key facts about each of these.

Metals:

(being a metal is perhaps the most important fact about these elements)

Gases

Other Elements

Try Quiz #1 -- symbols for the elements

Try Quiz #2 -- names, given the symbols

Try Quiz #3 -- properties of some elements

Naming Simple Compounds

Historical Names that don't follow any special rules

Some species, like water, have names that are almost universally used. Chemists generally don't try to name these species by chemical rules-- we just accept the common names. You need to know these names, their chemical formulas, and a few key facts about each.

Try this-- Quiz on names of these species

The Chemist's Way of Naming Simple Compounds

There are, of course, a large number of compounds and the names can become very complex. Fortulately, a large number of simple compounds have smple names.

Binary Compounds -- formed from two elements

The name takes the form [element #1] + [root of element #2] + ide

How do you know which element gets named first?

(There is a formal rule but some simplfied rules work well enough for our purposes.)

Common Ions with Two Elements

A very common occurance is for two elements to combine to forms a stable ion. We then find chemical compounds from such an ion and the ion of a simple element.

Let's list seven important ions
Notice the elements, the number of atoms of each and the overall charge of the ion.

You will need to know these 7 ions by name and formula

Now, let's name some of these compounds
The Metric System of Measurements

The entire world, exept for the US, uses the metric system of measurement. The scientific community in the US also uses the Metric System exclusively. Yoiu will need to knw the basics of the metric system.

We can, of course, convert measuremetns form one system to another. In this course we will seldom do such conversions. Instead, we will try to think in the metric system and provide approximate English units where that helds you get a better feel for amounts.

The beauty of the Metric System is that it is based on multiples of 10.

The basic metric units are

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