chemistry 101 - an introduction to the study of matter
When learning the basics of chemistry - chemistry 101, if you will - the first thing to understand is that chemistry is the study of matter. Not only do chemists study the properties of matter, but they also study the relationship and relationships between matter and energy (though that's a little more advanced than chemistry 101).
Matter, very simple, is anything that has a physical property. It's the "stuff," if you will, from which things are made. If that sounds like a very rough definition, that's because the definition of matter is itself somewhat disputed and disputable. Various people use the word to mean various things within the world of chemistry, physics and science in general.
That said, most everyone can agree that matter does exist in four states: solid, liquid, gas and plasma. Beyond that, there are disputes as to the theoretical states of matter, the BoseEinstein condensates and Fermionic condensates. There is also the quarkgluon plasma state of matter, which is part of string theory and provable only using dubious yet beautiful, highly advanced (and almost entirely theoretical) mathematics.
Then there is also the argument for dark matter, which is either a state or a type of matter that we can't identify or measure, but rather we infer its existence from its gravitational effect on objects made of the types of matter that we can, actually, measure. In other words, Pluto's orbit is kind of weird. We should be able to measure it exactly, given that we know the gravitational pull of nearby celetial objects, but we can't. Therefore there must be some other type of matter - dark matter, or dark energy, if you will - that has an effect on Pluto's journey around the sun. The dark matter exists not because we can see it or measure it, but because something has to exist in order to make Pluto behave the way it does.
But I've strayed pretty far afield from chemistry 101 at this point. In chemistry 101 you won't be learning about things such as dark matter, cosmology or string theory. You'll be learning about the basic building block of matter, the Atom, and how to measure, identify and manipulate it.
The atom is microscopic. It has a dense nucleus and is surrounded by rapidly moving negatively charged particles called "electrons." The nucleus consists of both positively charged particles called protons, and neutral particles called neutrons. Begin your chemistry 101 journey there, and build outward once you have the basics mastered.
10 years ago
