Modern Chemistry

The book I read to research this post was A Modern Approach To Comprehensive Chemistry by GN Gilmore which is a very good book that I bought from a car boot sale. This book is intended for British A level students and is around 370 pages so is a decent length. You must get a minimum of 2 A levels and 3 O levels at good grades to stand a chance of getting to university. At A level and doing a university alot of self teaching and studying is expected. The time you spend with a teacher is limited and there is a steep learning curve. This book was published in 1982 so is quite dated. Carbon is able to bond to other identical atoms hence you can get very complex molecules especially living tissue. The majority of substances known to man are organic in nature. A molecule that is organic can also appear in 2 or more forms with identical numbers of atoms which we call polymers. Diamond the hardest substance known to man is essentially pure carbon with each atom linked by 4 covalent bonds. Graphite also a form of carbon by comparison is very soft due to different bonding. The size of an atom compared to carbon 12 is called its relative atom mass. There is more than 1 form of carbon such as carbon 14 and we call these isotopes. These unusual forms can often be radioactive. Due to being radioactive they decay changing maybe in several steps to eventually something more stable. We call this decay its half life. It is measured in the time it takes for half to decay and anything from a fraction of a second to millions of years. I did enjoy reading this book and do recommend it.