Answers to Questions & Problems in Textbook - Chapter 1

1. Obviously, the answer to this question depends on your own experience. You might consider such things as how oven and drain cleaners work, why antifreeze keeps your car's radiator from freezing, why cuts and scrapes are often cleaned with hydrogen peroxide, how a "permanent wave" curls hair, etc.
2. in your text
3. There are obviously many such examples. Many new drugs and treatments have recently become available thanks to research in biochemistry and cell biology. New long-wearing, more comfortable contact lenses have been produced by research in polymer and plastics chemistry. Special plastics and metals were prepared for the production of compact discs to replace vinyl phonograph records.
4. in you text
5. This answer depends on your own experience.
6. in your text
7. in your text
8. in your text
9. The steps are: (1) recognizing the problem and stating it clearly; (2) proposing possible solutions to or explanations of the problem; and (3) performing experiments to test the solutions or explanations.
10.
a. in your text
b. qualitative - only a word description is given. It could be quantitative if you knew the wavelength of the blue light reflected by your blue eyes.
c. in your text
d. qualitative - only a word description is given. Again, it could be quantitiative if you were to give the wavelengths of light absorbed by chlorophyll and other pigments in leaves.
e. in your text
f. qualitative - a descriptive judgment is given. If you finished with "...because I got a 95% for a grade," it would become a quantitive statement.
g. in your text
11. A hypothesis is a possible explanation of a single observed phenomenon. A theory or model consists of a set of tested hypotheses which give an overall explanation of some part of nature.
12. in your text
13. First go back and reread the last paragraph in section 1.5 in the middle of page 14. Scientists are human, too. When a scientist formulates a hypothesis, he or she wants it to be proven correct. In academic research, for example, scientists want to be able to publish papers on their work to gain renown and acceptance from their colleagues. In industrial situations, the financial success of the individual and of the company as a whole may be at stake. Politically, scientists may be under pressure from the government to "beat the other guy."
14. in your text
15. Chemistry is not merely a list of observations, definitions, and properties. Chemistry is the study of very real interactions among different samples of matter, whether within a living cell, or in a chemical factory. When we study chemistry, at least in the beginning, we try to be as general and as nonspecific as possible, so that the basic principles learned can be applied to many situations. In a beginning chemistry course, we learn to interpret and solve a basic set of very simple problems, in the hopes that the method of solving these simple problems can be extended to more complex real life situations later on. The actual solution to a problem, at this point, is not as important as learning how to recognize and interpret the problem, and how to propose reasonable, experimentally testable hypotheses.
16. in your text