We re all natural born chemists. Every time we cook, clean, take a shower, drive a car, use a solvent, such as fingernail polish remover, or perform any of the countless everyday activities that involve complex chemical reactions we re doing chemistry. You might even say that we re all participating in a grand chemistry experiment that started with the first human who mixed pigments to do a cave painting. Why do so many of us desperately resist learning chemistry when we re young? Maybe it has something to do with the way it s taught in school.

Now there s a fun, easy way to learn basic chemistry. Whether you re studying chemistry in school and you re looking for a little help making sense of what s being taught in class, or you re just into learning new things for their own sake, Chemistry For Dummies gets you rolling with all the basics of matter and energy, atoms and molecules, acids and bases, and much more. In no time you ll:

• Understand atomic structure and function



• Use the Periodic Table of elements



• Know what happens when matter changes from one state to another



• Explore ionic and covalent bonding



• Get a handle on chemical reactions



• Perform simple chemistry calculations



• Understand acids, bases, pHs, antacids, and gases



• Make sense Boyle s Law, Avrogadro s Law and other key laws in chemistry

Packed with examples of chemistry in action in everyday life, Chemistry For Dummies is a fascinating exploration of broad range of topics in chemistry, including:

• States of matter, from the macroscopic to the microscopic



• Understanding how the elements are arranged in the Periodic Table



• Nuclear chemistry, radioactivity and radioactive decay



• Positive and negative ions and ionic compounds



• Covalent bonding in covalent compounds



• Chemical reactions, chemical equilibrium, and electrochemistry



• The mole and how it s used to calculate chemical reactions



• Great serendipitous discoveries in chemistry



• Environmental chemistry

Written in plain English and requiring only basic math, Chemistry For Dummies puts you on the fast track to mastering the basics of chemistry.