Continuing through the 500s and science, I get to chemistry. In high school, I was a chemistry wiz. I took t
wo years of chemistry, acing both years, but somehow between the end of high school and the beginning of college, I managed to persuade myself that I wasn’t good at chemistry and I barely passed freshman chemistry when I was still enrolled at nerd school.
I picked this book out of all the options because I had imagined it might be a college-level chemistry textbook and I could right the wrongs I had committed against myself and finally and properly learn some chemistry.
This was not the book that I expected. Instead it’s a collection of articles that seem to assume at least a year of college chemistry knowledge to fully understand (and my year of college chemistry is three decades behind me and was pretty much forgotten on the spot, let alone available for use these many years later). Nevertheless, I gave it a try, starting with the creation of new elements and working my way through a variety of topics that culminated with chemistry and society.
Reader, I understood less than half of what I read. I still would like to re-learn (or would that be just plain learn?) chemistry, but I’m not much closer to it now, although I have to admit that some side-reading in Wikipedia and elsewhere in trying to understand some of what was presented did bring me infinitesimally closer to understanding basic chemistry.
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