Welcome to Chemistry, an OpenStax College resource. This textbook has been created with several goals in mind: accessibility, customization, and student engagement—all while encouraging students toward high levels of academic scholarship. Instructors and students alike will find that this textbook offers a strong foundation in chemistry in an accessible format.

Chemistry is designed for the two-semester general chemistry course. For many students, this course provides the foundation to a career in chemistry, while for others, this may be their only college-level science course. As such, this textbook provides an important opportunity for students to learn the core concepts of chemistry and understand how those concepts apply to their lives and the world around them. The text has been developed to meet the scope and sequence of most general chemistry courses. At the same time, the book includes a number of innovative features designed to enhance student learning. A strength of Chemistry is that instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom.

Our Chemistry textbook adheres to the scope and sequence of most general chemistry courses nationwide. We strive to make chemistry, as a discipline, interesting and accessible to students. With this objective in mind, the content of this textbook has been developed and arranged to provide a logical progression from fundamental to more advanced concepts of chemical science. Topics are introduced within the context of familiar experiences whenever possible, treated with an appropriate rigor to satisfy the intellect of the learner, and reinforced in subsequent discussions of related content. The organization and pedagogical features were developed and vetted with feedback from chemistry educators dedicated to the project.