A Beginning Chemist How to Succeed

You are a beginning chemist. This may be your first chemistry course, but it is probably not your last. To succeed as a beginning chemist, keep the following ideas in mind. First, chemistry requires curiosity and imagination. If you are content knowing that the sky is blue, but don t care why it is blue, then you may have to rediscover your curiosity. 1 say rediscover because even children—or better said, especially children— have this kind of curiosity. To succeed as a chemist, you must have the curiosity and imagination of a child—you must want to know the why of things. 

Second, chemistry requires calculation. Throughout this course, you will be asked to calculate answers and quantify information. Quantification involves measurement as part of observation— it is one of the most important tools in science. Quantification allows you to go beyond merely sa5ung that this object is hot and that one is cold or that this one is large and tiiat one is small. It allows you to specify the difference precisely. For example, two samples of water may feel equally hot to your hand, but when you measure their temperatures, you may find that one is 40 °C and the other is 44 °C. Even small differences can be important in a calculation or experiment, so assigning numbers to observations and manipulating those numbers become very important in chemistry. 

Lastly, chemistry requires commitment. To succeed in this comse, you must commit yourself to learning chemistry. Roald Hoffman, wiimer of the 1981 Nobel Prize for chemistry, said, 

I like the idea that human beings can do anything they want to. They need to be trained sometimes. They need a teacher to awaken the intelligence within them. 

But to be a chemist requires no special talent, I m glad to say. Anyone can do it, with hard work. 

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