In this chapter, you will learn that chemistry is the study of the composition of matter and the changes that matter undergoes. Chemistry plays an essential role in the development of materials and energy resources, in advances in medicine and biotechnology, in increasing the world's food supply, in the health of the environment, and in the study of astronomy and space exploration. The steps that scientists use to contribute to these fields are known as the scientific method. You will learn to differentiate among the steps, which are observations, hypotheses, experiments, and theories. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how scientific laws differ from theories.

In this chapter, you will learn: to define chemistry and differentiate among its divisions ways in which chemistry affects your daily life steps involved in the scientific method to distinguish between a theory and scientific law the importance of writing in the study of chemistry