Chapter 1: Problem 15
Why is the ability to solve problems important in the study of chemistry? Why is it that the method used to attack a problem is as important as the answer to the problem itself?
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Chapter 1: Problem 15
Why is the ability to solve problems important in the study of chemistry? Why is it that the method used to attack a problem is as important as the answer to the problem itself?
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Being a scientist is very much like being a detective Detectives such as Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple perform a very systematic analysis of a crime to solve it much like a scientist does when addressing a scientific investigation. What are the steps that scientists (or \(\mathrm{de}-\) tectives) use to solve problems?
The first paragraphs in this chapter ask you if you have ever wondered how and why various things in our everyday lives happen the way they do. For your next class meeting, make a list of five similar chemistry related things for discussion with your instructor and the other students in your class.
This textbook provides a specific definition of chemistry: the study of the materials of which the universe is made and the transformations that these materials undergo. Obviously, such a general definition has to be very broad and nonspecific. From your point of view at this time, how would you define chemistry? In your mind, what are "chemicals"? What do "chemists" do?
We use chemical reactions in our everyday lives, too, not just in the science laboratory. Give at least five examples of chemical transformations that you use in your daily activities. Indicate what the "chemical" is in each of your examples and how you recognize that a chemical change has taken place.
Although science should lead to solutions to problems that are completely independent of outside forces, very often in history scientific investigations have been influenced by prejudice, profit motives, fads, wars, religious beliefs, and other forces. Your textbook mentions the case of Galileo having to change his theories about astronomy based on intervention by religious authorities. Can you give three additional examples of how scientific investigations have been similarly influenced by nonscientific forces?
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