ABSTRACT
Welcome to ‘‘essential physical chemistry’’! We will explore parts of this field that work out cleanly in a beautiful way to provide a sense of confidence in your understanding of this interdisciplinary science. At the end you will hopefully learn to appreciate the beauty of concepts that have been discovered since the 1600s by intellectual giants and gain a sense of amazement for the far-reaching effects of those discoveries into all aspects of molecular science. Students who have completed this course often send this author messages telling how this material has helped them later in biochemistry, inorganic chemistry, and physical chemistry laboratory courses. To get the most from this course it is highly recommended that you personally study the material in Introduction: Mathematics and Physics Review even if the course lectures start in Chapter 1. It provides a good preparation for the mathematics and physics concepts we will encounter in the rest of the book. We could have put review at the end of the book, but many students have reinforced the view of this author that it needs to be right up front at the beginning and it really makes the understanding of the later material easier.
