The Quantitative Side of Science

A solid element does not conduct electricity. Is it a metal or a nonmetal  

Which of the following elements have symbols not based on their modern names (a) Lead (b) Carbon (c) Oxygen (d) Potassium 

Several times in the preceding sections we used the numerical results of measurements of the boiling points, masses, or densities of pure substances. These and hundreds of other kinds of measurements are fundamental to chemistry and every other science. The result of a measurement is what we refer to as quantitative information—it uses numbers. Weighing yourself is a quantitative experiment. By contrast, there is qualitative information that does not deal with numbers. For example, sticking your hand into a tub of water and determining it to be hot is a qualitative observation. 

The result of a measurement is recorded as a number plus a unit. A boiling point of 52 doesn t mean anything without the unit. Was the temperature measured in Fahrenheit degrees, as is done by the usual household thermometer in the United States, or in Celsius degrees, as would be done in the rest of the world  

The establishment of scientific facts and laws is obviously dependent on accurate observations and measurements. Although measurements can be reported as precisely in one system of measurement as another, there has been an effort since the time of the French Revolution in the late l700s to have all scientists embrace the same simple system. The hope was and is to facilitate communication in science. The metric system, which was born of this effort, has two advantages. First, it is easy to convert from one unit to another, since smaller and larger units for the same physical quantity differ only by multiples of ten. Consequently, to change millimeters to meters, the decimal point need only be moved three places to the left 

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Chapters 2 and 3 introduce students to the fundamental properties of the atom, the electromagnetic spectrum, chemical compounds, heterogeneous and homogeneous mixtures, the quantitative side of science, and the symbolism and importance of the periodic table and periodic trends. Content and... 

What does quantification of visual information mean The main fact lies in the difference between the art and the science. The purpose of the science is to find the quantitative relations between the input and the output, from the analyzed entity. Art does not need any relations. When we are talking about artistic images or paintings, we have binary relation to them, whether we like them or not. Most of us once in a lifetime said I don t know what art is but I like it (or not). The only objective measure of quality of artistic images is time, or better to say, beauty and innocence have the only one enemy — time. The dark side of the technical disciplines and research is that they always must create quantitative measures about all the entities that they analyze in real time and in the shortest possible period of time, even if we are talking about some complex set of visual information as the artistic painting. 

Models and theories have been developed by scientists that allow a good description of the double layers at each side of the surface either at equilibrium, under steady-state conditions, or under transition conditions. Only the surface has remained out of reach of the science developed, which cannot provide a quantitative model that describes the surface and surface variations during electrochemical reactions. For this reason electrochemistry, in the form of heterogeneous catalysis or heterogeneous catalysis has remained an empirical part of physical chemistry. However, advances in experimental methods during the past decade, which allow the observation... 

The alchemists accumulated the chemical knowledge that formed the basis for quantitative analysis as we know it today. Robert Boyle coined the term analyst in his 1661 book. The Sceptical Chymist. Antoine Lavoisier has been considered the father of analytical chemistry because of the careful quantitative experiments he performed on conservation of maSs (using the analytical balance). (Lavoisier was actually a tax collector and dabbled in science on the side. He was guillotined on May 8,1793, during the French Revolution because of his activities as a tax collector.)... 

In this particular case, the reaction is supposed to proceed from the left-hand side to the right-hand side, and the species on the left-hand side (A and B in this case) are called reactants and those on the right-hand side are products. The stoichiometric relationship implies only the overall (relative) quantitative relationship among the chemical species involved and would not imply how the reaction takes place. The latter issue is called reaction mechanism. That is, the chemical reaction equation such as shown above does not necessarily imply the reaction mechanism. The reaction mechanism is a very difficult issue, and its delineation involves a lot of detailed studies on the reaction, and currently is one of the most interestingly studied in the chemical/biological science. 

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