[gidireich]

Hi,

First, this essence of this post is me asking for your ideas, book recommendations, and any other comments, to guide me in the process of learning  basic chemistry on my own.

Who I am and what I am doing:
Few years ago I finished a BSc degree in Math and Computer Science. At high school I learned physics (high school level). I've never learned any chemistry. I am having now some free time, and thinking of using it for filling gaps and learning basic chemistry. I actually have a double purpose: one is for my very general education, chemistry is everywhere. The other, is my intention to continue my studies in the area of cognitive science and brain, which needs some chemistry and biology understanding.

I am an autodidact. I've done most of my degree by reading books and not coming to classes. Finished with excellence.

I have few accents as of what I am interested in:
-   The main principles of chemistry and the prominent phenomena. Generally not interested in details.
-   Interested in depth of understanding
-   Not interested in being really able to solve quantitative problems. Would like to learn solving few representative and fairly basic types of problems, to get the touch about the methods.
-   The scope of the science. Which questions do chemists ask
-   The method. How do chemists work, and how do they answer the questions that they ask
-   Emphasize and explanation of visible everyday phenomena
-   Reduction of chemistry to a physical basis
-   Historical perspective is desirable: beyond the modern formulations, how the ideas were developed? What are the original directly-observed phenomena about which question where asked?
-   Eventually, the idea would be to continue to some organic chemistry and then biology

So it's a bit challenging. I am generally looking for something like several BA courses. But I am interested in much less details, more depth and probably more mature attitude. Generally a different perspective.

So, having this plan in mind, I welcome *any* comments you wish to contribute. (Remember that right now I know virtually nothing about chemistry. )

I guess my main request is recommendations for books that fit my attitude. [ I read the awesome pinned post about books, but which of them (and maybe others) are particularly good for my purpose]

Again, feel free to contribute whatever thought that you have

Thank you

[Arkcon]

I would start with Pauling's Chemistry.  Linus Pauling and his brother wrote it in a very distinctive, almost conversational style.  It is a very good text for your learning style  -- almost conversational, with a good emphasis on the background, if you want to learn chemistry from basic principles, and work your way up.

I would also suggest any chemistry or physical chemistry non-fiction written by Issac Asimov.  I remember reading his books as he goes through pages and pages of explanation, so he has sufficient background for the point of the chapter.  Sounds annoying, but when he does it, it works very well.

You're going to be disappointed with contemporary undergraduate texts.  They start around working on problems, so students interact one on one with the instructor in exam testable problems.  Presumably, to weed out the ones who won't try to solve the problems (hey, they almost got rid of me.)  You may want to save those topics for later.

[juanrga]

My advice is that you learn some chemistry from some 16-18 year old level textbook or similar and then go to some general chemistry university level textbook as Chang, Brown, or similar. Then use the references in that textbook to go to more specialised textbooks; for instance, the chapters on atomic structure, rate of reactions, spectroscopy..., will cite introductory physical chemistry textbooks (physical chemistry is a branch of chemistry). Then repeat the procedure to go a more specialised literature; e.g. a textbook on quantum chemistry (a branch of physical chemistry)... and so on. After several years of study you would have a basic grasp of chemistry at the university level.

Now, let me some critical comments on your "accents":

- Chemistry is about details, because chemistry is about the study of inherently complex phenomena. You cannot learn chemistry without the details.

- Evidently, introductory literature cannot cover the topics in deep. Unfortunately, the advanced literature, covering topics in deep (as you require) assumes a background which you do not have.

- As said chemistry is complex, there are not "a few representative and fairly basic types of problems" whose solution is applicable everywhere. This is the reason for which mathematicians "tend to avoid the more interesting and difficult problems" [1]. The main rule in chemistry is to learn some method and next a set of exceptions.

- The scope of the science of chemistry is, in short, everything that is covered in the textbooks and more! The questions that chemists ask are those that you can find in the exercises.

- There is not a single method in chemistry but a collection of common methods (e.g., scientific methods, general mathematical methods) plus a set of specialised methods each one with its own scope.

- Unlike other disciplines, chemistry is eminently practical. Any textbook (even the more theoretically oriented) highlights the application of its content to everyday problems.

- I do not know what you mean by "Reduction of chemistry to a physical basis". Chemistry has always been one of the physical sciences. I think that you mean reduction of chemistry to physics. This is a common myth repeated since Newton era. Chemistry is an independent discipline, not reduced to physics; although chemistry uses tools and theories from physics, but also of engineering, math...

- Any general chemistry textbook that I know provides some historical perspective. The advice here is the same. From historical sketches found in the introductory section of some chapter or from the portraits of famous chemists in additional material as boxes of general textbooks you can go to specialised books on the history of chemistry.

I would finish with two comments. The first that chemistry is essentially an experimental science, where an basic understanding of chemical phenomena cannot be obtained only "by reading books". Chemical students pass most of their time in labs precisely doing chemistry!

As you say "chemistry is everywhere" and the second comment is in what country [2] chemistry was never taught to you?

============

[1] Mathematics as a Basis for Chemistry 1997: J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci., 37, 639-644; Milne, G. W. A.

[2] I am perplexed by your claim. In my country, as in other European countries, everyone learn chemistry as part of general education.

[fledarmus]

From scratch, then - chemistry is the study of matter. Any and all matter. Most especially, it is the study of matter on the atomic and molecular scale. This field has spent centuries evolving the understanding that almost any physical or chemical property of any material can be understood by understanding the atomic and molecular properties of that material. Will this material burn? Is that material a liquid, solid, or gas at room temperature? Will this material conduct electricity or heat? What color will that material be? Is this material hard or soft, brittle or tough, soluble or insoluble, biodegradable, photoactive, inert? Using this knowledge, we try to develop new materials, compounds, mixtures, and materials that have never been synthesized before, to exhibit properties which we intend. We identify the compositions and origins of materials, and trace their histories. We restore materials that have changed over time, or speed those processes up so that materials change faster over time. We predict the properties of materials in exotic or alien environments, or in our houses and swimming pools.

The problem is that almost none of this is taught in universities or appears in textbooks. Textbooks are toolboxes. They give us methods of solving problems that crop up in the work that we do. Learning to use a hammer doesn't teach you much about structural engineering, and learning to calculate a pH doesn't teach you much about wastewater processing, but if you can't use a hammer you're not going to be engineering many structures and if you can't calculate pH you aren't going to be engineering many wastewater systems. So our entire undergraduate and for the most part graduate curriculum is dedicated to teaching you how to solve problems that have already been solved, giving you the tools so that when you go off into your own field of research, identifying the problems that haven't been solved yet, you won't be hung up trying to reinvent the wheel.

So the question is, what do you want to learn about chemistry, and what do you plan on doing with that knowledge? If you ever plan on actually using your knowledge of chemistry for anything, you will have to learn and use the tools of chemistry, which means solving problems. Lots of problems. Over and over and over again. In this case, I would start by getting one of those practice books for standardized testing in chemistry, or the review books like Principles of General Chemistry that show up in the test study sections of bookstores. This will give you, in very few pages, a broad overview of what types of problems chemistry can be used to solve, and in most cases, step-by-step instructions in how to use the tools we've developed to solve them. From there, you can work your way through more voluminous textbooks on the specific sections that you need for the problems you are trying to solve.

If on the other hand, you have no intention of actually using the chemistry and are just interested in what the chemistry, or the chemist, can do, then it is much harder to find the books. What you are looking for are the popularizations of the science. Isaac Asimov was incredibly good at this, and his non-fiction works are fantastic at giving an appreciation of the science. Unfortunately he is seriously dated by now - the field of chemistry has gone far beyond even his science fiction in many cases. Other writers that do this are few and far between, and you have to take what you can get. I haven't found a Stephen Hawking in chemistry that can discuss quantum chemistry and its implications in, say, drug design the way Hawking discusses the physics of time. In many ways, for a broad overview of chemistry, wikipedia is as good a reference as any, and much more accessible, ..."Because although it has many omissions, contains much that is apocryphal - or at least wildly inaccurate - it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important ways: first, it is slightly cheaper, and second, it has the words ‘Don’t Panic’ inscribed in large, friendly letters on the cover..." (yeah, so I stole that from Mr. Adams - wikipedia really doesn't have 'Don't Panic' on the cover)

Beyond that, there is an entire field devoted to the history of chemistry, with its own journals and pedagogy. Here is one page where a small sample of this information is collected. http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/papers.html From some of your other "accents", I suspect this type of information is what you are interested in.

[juanrga]

From scratch, then - chemistry is the study of matter. Any and all matter. Most especially, it is the study of matter on the atomic and molecular scale.

I agree with most that you write in this beatiful post, but as Pauling writes in the section "Matter and Chemistry" of his textbook General Chemistry:

This definition of chemistry is both too narrow and too broad.

As Pauling correctly notices the study of matter is, virtually, the definition of science as a whole.

Moreover, I think that nuclear chemistry and supramolecular chemistry study matter at other scales. Supramolecular chemistry means, literally, chemistry beyond the molecule

I haven't found a Stephen Hawking in chemistry that can discuss quantum chemistry and its implications in, say, drug design the way Hawking discusses the physics of time.

Fortunately! Because what Hawking says in Brief history of Time and remakes is rather difficult to accept. Ilya Prigogine in his The End of certainty correctly criticizes Hawking approach as an outdated geometric approach. Prigogine gives a much more fascinating and up to date presentation of the physics of time and its arrow (irreversibility).

[gidireich]

Hi All,

And thank you very much for your thoughtful responses!
Special thanks, to you fledarmus, for your answer. I believe that the first paragraph fits Einsteins criteria, that when you truly understand your science, you are able to explain it to a child.

I read carefully all the responses, and already taken some notes.

I think I need to clarify more my intentions.
It's challenging, my wishes in this area are not standard and not trivial to describe precisely. Doing one more trial.

I don't intend to become a chemist. Don't intend to work in the industry as a chemist, and not in the chemical departments of universities.

On the positive side, I have three purposes:
1. I may continue to an academic career in cognitive science. This involves at least some, and sometimes much, work with the brain. I am willing to know enough chemistry to be able to understand and do this work.
2. As a personal interest, I am interested in the human body and health. This also needs some level of chemistry.
3. I am using all that I've learned in life, to understand the world. This applies to physics that I learned in high school, CS and math in the university, psychology at my free time.
Physics is actually a great example. High school mechanics alone, gave me so much understanding of the world that is hard to describe. And it's not that i am doing calculations - I doubt if I've done any mechanics calculations since finishing school. But! I am looking at the room that I am in, and everything has a meaning (in a scientific sense). I know that I am feeling the chair that I am seating on, because it applies to me exactly the same force that I apply to it. And this force is proportional to my weight. I know that it is more pleasant to sit on the chair than on the floor, because the heat runs from my body into the chair slowlier than into the floor. Also, the padding on the chair, prevents all my weight to press on few points with small area, thus creating strong pressure. And it is the very same reason why it's easier to cut an apple with a knife, than with my hand.

Now, for the first two items, I believe, and actually sure, that one does not have to be a chemist. Instead one needs to know "the basics" (in some sense of basics that I am still trying to figure out), and then get familiar with specifics that are relevant to the narrow topic that he is dealing with.

Now, I know that I can just grab some book giving the minimum chemistry necessary for biologists, and that will be it.
But I got a problem here. I always want to understand things.
And if I am investing time into learning basics of an important science that I have never touched, I want to do it in a meaningful way. I want insights, principles. I want to read something and figure out that this is important, and understand why. And the other one is much more local in context. I want to understand that this is actually derived from that, or maybe parallel to that other thing in a neighboring area.
As another example, I would not like to dive into organic chemistry, which sounds like my goal, without having a fair understanding of general chemistry.

As of details, I for example mean that at the first stage, I don't need to remember, or even cover once, the characteristics of many specific materials. Instead, I want to know which characteristics exist. How this characteristics being figured out / measured. How materials are classified. What are some implications of a certain characteristic. For each of those, which maybe we can call principles, I would like to see a few specific examples, but with the intention to understand the principle and not for the sake of this information itself. For example, I don't care at which temperature gold turns into liquid or even more common and basic pieces of information. But I do want to know, that the state depends on temperature, that there are critical temperatures for this transitions that change form material to material, and are also dependent on pressure (or so I think).   I would also like to understand, what happens on the micro level, atoms, molecules or whatever, that makes the differences between states.
This http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemistry#Basic_concepts looks to me like an excellent summary of Chemistry principles, and shows the difference between principles and details. (But of course, way way too short, only titles).

Hmm... I am thinking that maybe a high school book is a good place to begin.

All this is not trivial. I am looking at the way I was taught almost everything in life, and it was usually far from satisfactory. Exam oriented, rarely deep. Having a perspective of several topics that I learned, and having a significant teaching experience, I know that good and deep representation of material *is* possible. It is not common, but I do see those awesome textbooks from time to time, that truly understand a mater and truly know how to build it for freshmen from scratch.
I am going to learn something on my own this time, so I may have an opportunity to do it better. On the other hand I don't intend to invest the amount of time that people invest in a BA (or anything close), so, trying to be focused and peek the right materials.
And hoping to get here the help for making some right choices

[gidireich]

fledarmus, after writing your summary to what chemistry is about, you write "The problem is that almost none of this is taught in universities or appears in textbooks"

I did not understand why.

If all those questions about materials are indeed determinable by analysis of the atomic / molecule structure, I would expect exactly this analysis (which I guess is not only one thing, but many different "pieces of analysis") to be offered in textbooks

[AWK]

I would start with Pauling's Chemistry.  Linus Pauling and his brother wrote it in a very distinctive, almost conversational style.

Peter Pauling was a son of Linus Pauling.

[fledarmus]

fledarmus, after writing your summary to what chemistry is about, you write "The problem is that almost none of this is taught in universities or appears in textbooks"

I did not understand why.

If all those questions about materials are indeed determinable by analysis of the atomic / molecule structure, I would expect exactly this analysis (which I guess is not only one thing, but many different "pieces of analysis") to be offered in textbooks

Now you're getting into the philosophy of education 

You would certainly think that would be the case, but in my experience it is almost never found in textbooks and only rarely do you find a teacher that can get across the true power and use of the calculations. Usually, at the end of a chapter that has covered in minute detail a method of calculating a whole lot of numbers, there will be maybe one question about a real-world problem that can be solved by that calculation, with little context for why it would be a problem or why you would want to solve it. There is a problem of time and dependence - it is very difficult to understand the possibilities offered by your tools if you don't have a lot of practice using them, but it is possible to teach you how to use the tools without ever teaching you what can be done with them. And it is much easier to measure how well you use your tools than it is to measure how well you grasp the problems they can solve.

[juanrga]

I am using all that I've learned in life, to understand the world. This applies to physics that I learned in high school, CS and math in the university, psychology at my free time.
Physics is actually a great example. High school mechanics alone, gave me so much understanding of the world that is hard to describe. And it's not that i am doing calculations - I doubt if I've done any mechanics calculations since finishing school. But! I am looking at the room that I am in, and everything has a meaning (in a scientific sense). I know that I am feeling the chair that I am seating on, because it applies to me exactly the same force that I apply to it. And this force is proportional to my weight.

This highlights the kind of problem that I have tried to identify above. In the high school course you are only given an introduction to Newtonian mechanics, where gravity is a true force. However, when you take a University course in general relativity you are explained that gravitation cannot be described as a force. Why? The technical explanation goes beyond the scope of high school, but the fact is that general relativity is a metric theory and the viewpoint is radically different to the Newtonian one.

This problem is much more sharp regarding a more complex science as chemistry. For instance, the wikipedia page about chemistry that you link (and that looks to you "like an excellent summary") says that water consists of H₂0 molecules and even adds that the angle between hydrogen and oxygen atoms is of 104.5º. If you were to try to predict the properties of water from what Wikipedia affirms, you would obtain a sound fiasco. Why? Because water is not what the Wiki says.

Textbooks dealing with atomic and nuclear issues will explain you that the molecules are, in a strict sense, not of the same sort. Instead they are built up of different isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen in various combinations (e.g. water also contains molecules of D₂O), and such a difference is important to some chemical problems. A few chapters later, you will learn that the H₂O molecules are not inert, but dissociate into H₃O⁺ and OH^- ions, and that the concentration of all three components in water varies with temperature and pressure. The concentration of those ions governs the chemical properties of water. Another chapter that deals with electrical properties of the same pure water will say you that molecules are not isolated blocks but dynamically forming various entities through aggregation and disaggregation, governed by various forms of changing interactions, such as covalent bonding, hydrogen bonding, van der Waals interactions, or electrostatic and spin-spin interaction, depending on the level of molecular description. When you reach a quantum chemistry level, you learn that nuclei are not fixed in space but vibrating --according to quantum oscillator models-- and this affects the way that water absorbs and emits certain radiation; that some molecules have an angle of 104.5º whereas others do not; and that the spin of nucleus is radically different to the classical mechanics concept of spin. And when you want to compute the rate of several processes and reactions in water, you will need a still more complex theoretical level of detail, sophisticated numerical methods, and powerful computers... up to you will finally discover that some problems of chemical interest are so complex that they are outside the scope of the more powerful supercomputers.

Therefore I repeat my advice again:

Study some high school chemistry textbook and then go to some general chemistry university level textbook. Then use the references in that textbook to go to more specialised textbooks; and repeat the procedure to go to more specialised literature up to you get the enough level of detail for practical applications to your field of interest: cognitive science.

[gidireich]

Juangra,

Are you saying that the wiki page about chemistry, is not the whole science? And that a first year university text book has more to it that is not covered?

I certainly don't think that a Wikipedia page is a full description of chemistry (or physics). People study the basics of chemistry (or any other modern science) for 5 years - undergraduate and graduate studies, for a reason. And this is only the very beginning, I'm very much sure. And who knows what chemist 200 years from now will think of what we consider modern chemistry today.

But, science is about building models to describe and predict reality. Those models are always approximation, never full, complete, ideally exact descriptions.

The question is always how suitable is a certain model for your needs. Each model gives you a certain level of precision, and fullness of description.
Newtonian mechanics, are an excellent model for the vast majority of directly observed phenomena. Learning this model, gives you an excellent explanation of what you see and meet, including more professional contexts like industry.

So, I am not sure what your point is. Can you explain more?

[juanrga]

Juangra,

Are you saying that the wiki page about chemistry, is not the whole science? And that a first year university text book has more to it that is not covered?

I certainly don't think that a Wikipedia page is a full description of chemistry (or physics). People study the basics of chemistry (or any other modern science) for 5 years - undergraduate and graduate studies, for a reason. And this is only the very beginning, I'm very much sure. And who knows what chemist 200 years from now will think of what we consider modern chemistry today.

But, science is about building models to describe and predict reality. Those models are always approximation, never full, complete, ideally exact descriptions.

The question is always how suitable is a certain model for your needs. Each model gives you a certain level of precision, and fullness of description.
Newtonian mechanics, are an excellent model for the vast majority of directly observed phenomena. Learning this model, gives you an excellent explanation of what you see and meet, including more professional contexts like industry.

So, I am not sure what your point is. Can you explain more?

In your first post you emphasized that you are interested in "the main principles of chemistry", "Interested in depth of understanding"... You have repeated this in a recent post:

But I got a problem here. I always want to understand things. And if I am investing time into learning basics of an important science that I have never touched, I want to do it in a meaningful way. I want insights, principles. I want to read something and figure out that this is important, and understand why. And the other one is much more local in context. I want to understand that this is actually derived from that, or maybe parallel to that other thing in a neighboring area.

I have tried to explain you how you can satisfy your praiseworthy goal of understanding the world and why you must be prepared to work very hard even during decades! The world is very very complex.

If you only want a superficial understanding of chemistry, but enough for applications to cognitive science, then everything will be much more easy. However, you will be not explained "fundamental principles", nor "in depth" as is your desire; at contrary, you will receive a set of approximated principles, a set of rules (plus a set of exceptions), and lot of descriptive stuff.

I repeat my advice: start from the basic level and go to more depth levels up to you get satisfied and then stop.

Now let me reply the rest of your post. What I said about that Wikipedia page is that its content is debatable. I discussed a point of that page, but there are more. That Wikipedia page starts saying that Chemistry "is the science of matter", but Pauling, in his general chemistry textbook, explains why this is not a correct definition of chemistry. You can trust a famous Nobel Prize for chemistry as Pauling or you can trust a non-academic resource as the Wikipedia, it is your choice.

Of course, models are always based in approximations, but one must add that we made approximations to the models when those approximations are not noticeable in the lab. Indeed, part of the art of being a scientist consists on knowing when one can do certain approximations and when cannot.

As said above the concentration of H₃O⁺ and OH^- ions governs the chemical properties of water. Therefore, you cannot ignore them unless you want ignore almost all of its chemistry. A physicist as Feynman can say in his books that water is H₂O, because he never did any chemistry in his career, but chemists/biologists... do not have that freedom.

Said in another way, the introduction of the concept of dissociation of the molecules H₂O is not an exotic detail needed only in some advanced academic application, but a basic concept needed to understand the most elementary chemical phenomena in water.

You are right that Newtonian mechanics is an excellent model for many professional contexts like industry, but this is because relativistic corrections are too small to be observed in those ordinary contexts. This is not the case of the chemical example discussed above.

Moreover, although the geodesic equation of general relativity reduces to something as ma = Z, in the weak-field limit, the right hand side cannot be interpreted as a gravitational force, although Z is numerically indistinguishable from the F in Newtonian gravity (ma = F), both equations have a radically different physical meaning. Therefore it is not a question of precision as you believe but of viewpoint. Gravitation is never a force in general relativity. Your above claim about how you understand the physics behind chairs was open to this fundamental objection. You must take this as an additional advice.

P.S: I am waiting for the reply about my question about the country.

[gidireich]

I distinguish between depth and complexity/precision

Even when treating a single principle, that does not govern all the details of the picture, it can be presented in depth, or not.
By depth I mean, whether the question of "why" is treated or not. Whether generalizations and patterns are noticed. How well implications of the principle are outlined.
Largely, this quality depends on the skill (in the material, and educational skill) of the teacher/author. For a given scope,  very different levels of depth are possible. Skill, and attitude. And this is what I am looking to maximize, for whatever level of time investment I will decide on

It is very much true that some important levels of depth are impossible in a given scope.
Here one will always have to take a decision about the resources (time resources usually) he wants to put into a certain learning goal, at a given point of his life. At any chosen threshold, one will gain some level of understanding, and sacrifice some other potential levels.
Your advice:  start from the basic level and go to more depth levels up to you get satisfied and then stop, makes sense of course - that is what I would always do when learning a topic.

I hear you, that in chemistry, the collection of easily accessible and measured facts will be harder to explain than in other fields, and more frequently advanced explanations will be desired. Thanks, this is an important point to be aware of.

By the way, I am reading the reviews at Amazon for the text by Linus Pauling, and it seems like you guys even did not praised it enough. Taking it

--

Juangra, I am Israeli.

[juanrga]

I distinguish between depth and complexity/precision

Even when treating a single principle, that does not govern all the details of the picture, it can be presented in depth, or not.
By depth I mean, whether the question of "why" is treated or not. Whether generalizations and patterns are noticed. How well implications of the principle are outlined.
Largely, this quality depends on the skill (in the material, and educational skill) of the teacher/author. For a given scope,  very different levels of depth are possible. Skill, and attitude. And this is what I am looking to maximize, for whatever level of time investment I will decide on

It is very much true that some important levels of depth are impossible in a given scope.
Here one will always have to take a decision about the resources (time resources usually) he wants to put into a certain learning goal, at a given point of his life. At any chosen threshold, one will gain some level of understanding, and sacrifice some other potential levels.
Your advice:  start from the basic level and go to more depth levels up to you get satisfied and then stop, makes sense of course - that is what I would always do when learning a topic.

I hear you, that in chemistry, the collection of easily accessible and measured facts will be harder to explain than in other fields, and more frequently advanced explanations will be desired. Thanks, this is an important point to be aware of.

By the way, I am reading the reviews at Amazon for the text by Linus Pauling, and it seems like you guys even did not praised it enough. Taking it

--

Juangra, I am Israeli.

In a general sense, I would say that the question of "why" is left out from many chemical literature by two good reasons; sometimes, the "why" is not still known; sometimes because the "why" is too complex to be explained to students with a determined level of education.

Einstein once said: "The trouble with chemistry is that it is too difficult for chemists". He failed to understand that chemistry is too difficult for physicists or mathematicians as well. That is the reason for which mathematical physics is a well-developed field and taught to physics undergrad students, whereas mathematical chemistry is still in its infancy, with mathematicians tending "to avoid the more interesting and difficult problems", as emphasized in the J. Chem. Inf. Comput. Sci. paper cited in a previous post.

Yes the text by Linus Pauling is a good starting point, although must be outdated for some topics.

--

I am more perplexed because the chemical industry plays a major role in Israel's economy. Israel has its own journals as the Israel Journal of Chemistry and societies as the Israel Chemical Society. The Nobel Prize for chemistry of 2011 was awarded to a Israeli: Dan Shechtman.

In my country, as in rest of European countries, chemistry is taught as part of general education!