ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book begins with understanding how to parse the identities and roles of input materials used in a chemical reaction and how to balance chemical equations. It discusses the variety of presentations of experimental procedures appearing in the chemistry literature and shows how their quality impacts the definiteness of any metrics analysis that is possible. The book summarizes the types of chemical reactions that are possible and introduces a standardized nomenclature to describe ring construction strategies. It examines metrics that are specific to waste production and input material consumption applied to individual chemical reactions. The book explores the concepts of intrinsic greenness and minimum atom economy, and assesses the probability that a given chemical reaction will achieve intrinsic greenness subject to minimum atom economy and reaction yield constraints.
