GENERAL INSTRUCTION/S:

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GENERAL CHEMISTRY

INTRODUCTION:

Inorganic chemistry is the study of the synthesis, reactions, structures and properties of compounds of
the elements. Inorganic chemistry encompasses the compounds- both molecular and extended solids-
everything else in the periodic table.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:

a. Differentiate the branches of chemistry.

b. Trace the history of chemistry.

c. Relate chemistry to their day-to-day activities.

COURSE CONTENT:

Subject Matter: Introduction to General Chemistry

LEARNING EXPERIENCES:

What are the things present in the food that you eat or in the kind of beverages that you drink?

Minerals and elements.

These minerals and elements are present in different substances that we ingest and the things that we
use daily. It can be in a form of clothes, gadgets, medicines, and others. These minerals and elements
fall under the category of inorganic chemistry. Inorganic chemistry deals with the transformation of
matter.

But prior to that; let us first define what chemistry is. Chemistry is a natural science that deals with the
material world in all its variety of forms and transformations. Let us take a look at branches of chemistry
to further understand it.

OVERVIEW OF THE 5 BRANCHES OF CHEMISTRY:

1. Organic Chemistry – The study of carbon and its compounds; the study of the chemistry of life.

Examples: Fuels, Rubbers, Alcohol

2. Analytical Chemistry – The study of the chemistry of matter and the development of tools used
to measure properties of matter.

Examples: Blood samples, gas chromatography, distillation

Examples: Properties of colloids, Thermodynamics, absorption of a gas by a solid

4. Biochemistry – This is the study of chemical processes that occur inside of living organisms.

Examples: Carbohydrates, Proteins, Lipids, Vitamins

5. Inorganic Chemistry – The study of compounds not-covered by organic chemistry; the study of
inorganic compounds or compounds which do not contain a C-H bond. Many inorganic
compounds are those which contain metals.

Examples: Changes in properties and reaction of matter, Elements, Phases of matter

Inorganic chemistry is concerned with the properties and behavior of inorganic compounds which
includes metals, non-metals, minerals, and organometallic compounds. It studies the changes and
reactions undergone by matter.

History of Chemistry

Ancient history

Early metallurgy

The earliest recorded metal employed by humans seems to be gold which can be found free or “native”.
Egyptian weapons made from iron in about 3000 BC.
Bronze Age

The first evidence of this extractive metallurgy dates from the 5 th and 6th millennium BC, found in sites of
Majdanpek, Yarmovac and Plocnik (Serbia). Other signs of early metals are found from the third
millennium BC in places like Palmela (Portugal), Los Millares (Spain), and Stonehenge (United Kingdom).
By combining copper and tin, a superior metal could be made, an alloy called bronze, a major
technological shift which began the Bronze Age about 3500 BC.

Iron Age

The extraction of iron from its ore into a workable metal appears to have been invented by the Hittites
in about 1200 BC, beginning the Iron Age.

Ancient world

Empedocles stated that all matter is made up of four elemental substances—earth, fire, air and water.

Democritus declared that matter is composed of indivisible and indestructible atoms.

Leucippus declared that atoms were the most indivisible part of matter.

Aristotle opposed the existence of atoms in 330 BC.

Polybus argues that the human body is composed of four humours.

Epicurus postulated a universe of indestructible atoms in which man himself is responsible for achieving
a balanced life. Lucretius wrote De Rerum Natura (The Nature of Things) in 50 BC and presented the
principles of atomism.

The early development of purification methods is described by Pliny the Elder (Naturalis Historia).
Medieval alchemy

The philosopher’s stone

** The bain-marie or water bath is named for Mary the Jewess.

Alchemy in the Islamic world

**9th century chemist Jābir ibn Hayyān, who is considered as “the father of chemistry”.He introduced a
systematic and experimental approach to scientific research based in the laboratory, chemically
analyzed many chemical substances, composed lapidaries, distinguished between alkalis and acids, and
manufactured hundreds of drugs.

Al-Tusi described a version of the conservation of mass.

Rhazes design and describe more than twenty instruments, many parts of which are still in use today.

Paracelsus rejected the 4-elemental theory and with only a vague understanding of his chemicals and
medicines.

17th and 18th centuries: Early chemistry

Georg Agricola describes the developed and complex processes of mining metal ores, metal extraction
and metallurgy; described as the “father of metallurgy”.

Sir Francis Bacon published The Proficience and Advancement of Learning, which contains a description
of what would later be known as the scientific method.
Michal Sedziwój publishes the alchemical treatise A New Light of Alchemy which proposed the existence
of the “food of life” within air, much later recognized as oxygen.

Jean Beguin published an early chemistry textbook, and in it draws the first-ever chemical equation.

René Descartes publishes Discours de la méthode, which contains an outline of the scientific method.

Jan Baptist van Helmont published a book that contains the results of numerous experiments and
establishes an early version of the law of conservation of mass; founder of pneumatic chemistry.

Robert Boyle refined the modern scientific method. He is regarded today as the first modern chemist
and one of the pioneers of modern experimental scientific method and Boyle’s law.

Joseph Priestley, co-discoverer of the element oxygen, which he called “dephlogisticated air” and
published his work before Scheele. He invented soda water, his writings on electricity, and his discovery
of several “airs” (gases).

Georg Stahl coined the name “phlogiston” for the substance believed to be released in the process of
burning.

Georg Brandt analyzed a dark blue pigment found in copper ore (later named cobalt).

Axel Fredrik Cronstedt identified an impurity in copper ore as a separate metallic element, which he
named nickel. He is one of the founders of modern mineralogy and also discovered the mineral scheelite
in 1751, which he named tungsten. Joseph Black isolated carbon dioxide, which he called “fixed air” and
formulated the concept of latent heat to explain the thermochemistry of phase changes.

Louis Claude Cadet de Gassicourt creates Cadet’s fuming liquid, later discovered to be cacodyl oxide,
considered to be the first synthetic organometallic compound.

Henry Cavendish isolated hydrogen, which he called “inflammable air”. He discovered hydrogen as a
colorless, odourless gas that burns and can form an explosive mixture with air.
Carl Wilhelm Scheele discovered oxygen, which he called “fire air”, but did not immediately publish his
achievement. He discovered tungstic acid, could be made from Cronstedt’s scheelite.

José and Fausto Elhuyar the brothers succeeded in isolating the metal now known as tungsten by
reduction of this acid with charcoal.

Alessandro Volta constructed a device for accumulating a large charge by a series of inductions and
groundings.

**Modern chemistry flourished from the time of Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, as the “father of modern
chemistry”. He burnt phosphorus and sulfur in air, and proved that the products weighed more than the
original. Thus, in 1789, he established the Law of Conservation of Mass, which is also called “Lavoisier’s
Law.

Berthollet was the first to introduce the use of chlorine gas as commercial bleach; determined the
elemental composition of the gas ammonia; potassium chlorate (KClO3), is known as Berthollet’s Salt.

Mikhail Lomonosov he anticipated the kinetic theory of gases, regarded heat as a form of motion, &
stated the idea of conservation of matter.

19th century

Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, who learned manufacture of gunpowder and explosives under Antoine
Lavoisier.

Amedeo Avogadro and Ludwig Boltzmann made great advances in explaining the behavior of gases.

Jean Perrin’s experimental investigation of Einstein’s atomic explanation of Brownian motion.

Michael Faraday was another early worker, whose major contribution to chemistry was
electrochemistry.

John Dalton is remembered for his work on partial pressures in gases, color blindness, and atomic theory
and the Dalton’s law.

Jeremias Benjamin Richter proposed that chemical elements combine in integral ratios.

Joseph Proust proposed the law of definite proportions, which states that elements always combine in
small, whole number ratios to form compounds.

Jöns Jacob Berzelius worked the modern technique of chemical formula notation and is considered one
of the fathers of modern chemistry. He is credited with identifying the chemical elements silicon,
selenium, thorium, and cerium.. He is also credited with originating the chemical terms “catalysis”,
“polymer”, “isomer”, and “allotrope”.

Humphry Davy discovered several alkali and alkaline earth metals, as well as contributions to the
discoveries of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. He isolated Sodium, calcium, magnesium,
strontium and barium. He coined the term chlorine.

Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac stated that the ratio between the volumes of the reactant gases and the
products can be expressed in simple whole numbers.

The element iodine was discovered by Bernard Courtois.

Amedeo Avogadro postulated that, under controlled conditions of temperature and pressure, equal
volumes of gases contain an equal number of molecules (Avogadro’s law).

Friedrich Wöhler and Justus von Liebig performed the first confirmed discovery and explanation of
isomers.
William Prout classified biomolecules into their modern groupings: carbohydrates, proteins and lipids.

Friedrich Wöhler synthesized urea, thereby establishing that organic compounds could be produced
from inorganic starting materials and disproving the theory of vitalism.

***By the end of the 19th century, scientists were able to synthesize hundreds of organic compounds.
The most important among them are mauve, magenta, and other synthetic dyes, as well as the widely
used drug aspirin.

Friedrich Wöhler and Justus von Liebig discovered and explained functional groups and radicals in
relation to organic chemistry, as well as first synthesizing benzaldehyde. Liebig made contributions to
agricultural and biological chemistry. He is considered the “father of the fertilizer industry” for his
discovery of nitrogen as an essential plant nutrient.

Mid-1800s

Germain Hess proposed Hess’s law and law of conservation of energy.

Hermann Kolbe obtained acetic acid from completely inorganic sources.

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin (commonly known as Lord Kelvin) established the concept of absolute
zero, the temperature at which all molecular motion ceases.

Louis Pasteur discovered that the racemic form of tartaric acid is a mixture of the levorotatory and
dextrotatory forms. August Beer proposed Beer’s law.

Pierre Bouguer and Johann Heinrich Lambert, established the analytical technique known as
spectrophotometry. Benjamin Silliman, Jr. pioneered methods of petroleum cracking, which made the
modern petrochemical industry possible.
Stanislao Cannizzaro discovered that when benzaldehyde is treated with concentrated base, both
benzoic acid and benzyl alcohol are produced.

William Henry Perkin sought to synthesize quinine, the anti-malaria drug, from coal tar. He discovered
the first synthetic dye, known as mauveine or Perkin’s mauve.

William Crookes is noted for his cathode ray studies and invented the Crookes tube.

Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff used spectroscopy to discover caesium and rubidium.

Alexander Parkes exhibited Parkesine, one of the earliest synthetic polymers, at the International
Exhibition in London. This discovery formed the foundation of the modern plastics industry.

Cato Maximilian Guldberg and Peter Waage, proposed the law of mass action. Johann Josef Loschmidt
determined the exact number of molecules in a mole, later named Avogadro’s number.

***Today, the large majority of known organic compounds are aromatic, and all of them contain at least
one hexagonal benzene ring.

Adolf von Baeyer began work on indigo dye, a milestone in industrial organic chemistry which changes
the dye industry. Alfred Nobel found that when nitroglycerin was incorporated in an absorbent inert
substance, this mixture he patented in 1867 as dynamite.

Dmitri Mendeleev’s developed the first modern periodic table, or the periodic classification of the
elements arranged in order of increasing atomic weight, the resulting table displayed a recurring
pattern, of properties within groups of elements. It contains 66 elements then known based on atomic
mass, which he published in Principles of Chemistry.

John Newlands, who proposed the law of octaves, and Lothar Meyer, who developed an early version of
the periodic table with 28 elements organized by valence.
Jacobus Henricus van ‘t Hoff and Joseph Achille Le Bel, developed a model of chemical bonding that
explained the chirality experiments of Pasteur and provided a physical cause for optical activity in chiral
compounds.

J. Willard Gibbs formulated a concept of thermodynamic equilibrium of a system in terms of energy and
entropy. He discovered the concept of chemical potential, the “fuel” that makes chemical reactions
work.

Ludwig Boltzmann established statistical derivations of many important physical and chemical concepts,
including entropy, and distributions of molecular velocities in the gas phase.

Late 19th century

Carl von Linde’s invention of a continuous process of liquefying gases in large quantities formed a basis
for the modern technology of refrigeration. He developed a methyl ether refrigerator and an ammonia
refrigerator.

Svante Arrhenius developed an ion theory to explain conductivity in electrolytes.

Jacobus Henricus van ‘t Hoff develops the general thermodynamic relationship between the heat of
conversion and the displacement of the equilibrium as a result of temperature variation.

Henry Louis Le Chatelier, He established that by changing of volume, for imposed pressure changes.

Hermann Emil Fischer proposed the structure of purine, a key structure in many biomolecules. He also
began to work on the chemistry of glucose and related sugars.

Eugene Goldstein named the cathode ray, later discovered to be composed of electrons, and the canal
ray, later discovered to be positive hydrogen ions that had been stripped of their electrons in a cathode
ray tube.
Alfred Werner discovered the octahedral structure of cobalt complexes, thus establishing the field of
coordination chemistry.

William Ramsay ascribed a discrepancy to a light gas included in chemical compounds of nitrogen using
two different methods to remove all known gases from air.

J. J. Thomson discovered the electron using the cathode ray tube.

In 1898, Wilhelm Wien demonstrated that canal rays can be deflected by magnetic fields, and that the
amount of deflection is proportional to the mass-to-charge ratio. This discovery would lead to the
analytical technique known as mass spectrometry.

Marie Skłodowska-Curie studied uranium in which she established that it has rays (Uranium was
discovered by Henri Becquerel); which the casts off rays similar to the X-rays discovered by Wilhelm
Röntgen.

Pierre Curie, known for his work on radioactivity as well as on ferromagnetism, paramagnetism, and
diamagnetism; notably Curie’s law and Curie point. Pierre and Marie Curie explored radioactivity by
working to separate the substances in uranium ores. They discovered a new radioactive element---
element polonium. Ernest Rutherford call it alpha, beta, and gamma rays.

20th century

Mikhail Tsvet invented chromatography, an important analytic technique.

Hantaro Nagaoka proposed an early nuclear model of the atom, where electrons orbit a dense massive
nucleus.

Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch developed the Haber process for making ammonia, a milestone in industrial
chemistry with deep consequences in agriculture.
Haber with Max Born, proposed the Born–Haber cycle as a method for evaluating the lattice energy of
an ionic solid. Haber as the “father of chemical warfare” for his work developing and deploying chlorine
and other poisonous gases. Robert A. Millikan, who is best known for measuring the charge on the
electron.

Albert Einstein explained Brownian motion in a way that definitively proved atomic theory.

Leo Baekeland invented bakelite, one of the first commercially successful plastics.

Robert Andrews Millikan – measured the charge of individual electrons with unprecedented accuracy
through the oil drop experiment, in which he measured the electric charges on tiny falling water (and
later oil) droplets. His study established that electron’s charge —that all electrons have the same charge
and mass.

S. P. L. Sørensen invented the pH concept and develops methods for measuring acidity.

Antonius Van den Broek proposed the idea that the elements on the periodic table are more properly
organized by positive nuclear charge rather than atomic weight.

William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg proposed Bragg’s law and established the field of X-ray
crystallography, an important tool for elucidating the crystal structure of substances.

Peter Debye develops the concept of molecular dipole to describe asymmetric charge distribution in
some molecules. Niels Bohr introduced the concepts of quantum mechanics to atomic structure by
proposing what is now known as the Bohr model of the atom, where electrons exist only in strictly
defined circular orbits around the nucleus.

Henry Moseley introduces concept of atomic number to fix inadequacies of Mendeleev’s periodic table,
which had been based on atomic weight.

Frederick Soddy formulated the concept of isotopes.

Gilbert N. Lewis laid the foundation of valence bond theory.

Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach establish concept of quantum mechanical spin in subatomic particles.

G. N. Lewis and Merle Randall published Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances,
first modern treatise on chemical thermodynamics.

Louis de Broglie he introduced a revolutionary theory of electron waves based on wave–particle duality.

Wolfgang Pauli developed the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that no two electrons around a
single nucleus in an atom can occupy the same quantum state simultaneously, He made contributions to
quantum mechanics and quantum field theory.

Erwin Schrödinger produced the papers that gave the foundations of quantum wave mechanics. He
introduced a theory describing the behaviour of such a system by a wave equation that is now known as
the Schrödinger equation.

Werner Heisenberg was one of the key creators of quantum mechanics. He discovered a way to
formulate quantum mechanics in terms of matrices. He also made important contributions to the
theories of the hydrodynamics of turbulent flows, the atomic nucleus, ferromagnetism, cosmic rays, and
subatomic particles.

Quantum chemistry

In 1927 article of Walter Heitler and Fritz Londonis often recognised as the first milestone in the history
of quantum chemistry. This is the first application of quantum mechanics to the diatomic hydrogen
molecule, and thus to the phenomenon of the chemical bond. In 1930 it is described by Paul Dirac.
In 1951, a milestone article in quantum chemistry is the seminal paper of Clemens C. J. Roothaan on
Roothaan equations.

Glenn T. Seaborg best known for his work on isolating and identifying transuranium elements.

Edwin Mattison McMillan for independent discovery of transuranium elements.

Molecular biology and biochemistry

**By the mid 20th century, Linus Pauling’s book on The Nature of the Chemical Bond used the principles
of quantum mechanics to deduce bond angles in ever-more complicated molecules. James Watson and
Francis Crick deduced the double helical structure of DNA by constructing models constrained by and
informed by the knowledge of the chemistry of the constituent parts and the X-ray diffraction patterns
obtained by Rosalind Franklin. Kary Mullis devised a method for the in-vitro amplification of DNA, known
as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which revolutionized the chemical processes used in the
laboratory to manipulate it. Matthew Meselson and Frank Stahl, the result of their collaboration has
been called as “the most beautiful experiment in biology”. They used a centrifugation technique that
sorted molecules according to differences in weight. Because nitrogen atoms are a component of DNA,
they were labelled and therefore tracked in replication in bacteria.

Late 20th century

John Pople developed the Gaussian program greatly easing computational chemistry calculations. Yves
Chauvin offered an explanation of the reaction mechanism of olefin metathesis reactions. Karl Barry
Sharpless and his group discovered a stereoselective oxidation reactions including Sharpless
epoxidation, Sharpless asymmetric dihydroxylation,[97][98][99] and Sharpless oxyamination. In 1985,
Harold Kroto, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley discovered fullerenes, a class of large carbon molecules
superficially resembling the geodesic dome designed by architect R. Buckminster Fuller. Sumio Iijima
used electron microscopy to discover a type of cylindrical fullerene known as a carbon nanotube, though
earlier work had been done in the field as early as 1951. This material is an important component in the
field of nanotechnology. Robert A. Holton and his group achieved the first total synthesis of Taxol. Eric
Cornell and Carl Wieman produced the first Bose–Einstein condensate, a substance that displays
quantum mechanical properties on the macroscopic scale.

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