It started with a dumb question.
I was boiling water for noodles and just… stared at the steam.
The bubbles. The hiss. The way the water disappeared into the air.
> "Where does it go?" I whispered.
"And… what is happening here, exactly?"
Steam wasn't magic. I knew that.
But the truth? I didn't know what it really was either.
So I opened my notebook and wrote:
Chemistry. From zero.
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🌍 Chapter 1: What is Chemistry?
If biology is the study of life, and physics is the study of forces and motion, then chemistry is the study of stuff.
Stuff that makes up everything.
Water. Air. Food. Bricks. Blood. Breath. Plastic. Bones. Ash. Smoke. My own skin.
Chemistry isn't about reactions.
It's about understanding what everything is made of, and how things change when they combine or break apart.
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⚛️ Chapter 2: Matter — The Starting Point
Okay. So what's "stuff"?
Science calls it matter — anything that has mass and takes up space.
Your chair? Matter.
The air you breathe? Matter.
Even your breath — hot and invisible — is made of particles.
And all matter is made of atoms.
Tiny particles. The smallest piece of a substance that still behaves like that substance.
> "So atoms are like Lego bricks," I wrote.
"Everything is built from them."
Water = atoms.
Salt = atoms.
You = atoms.
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🧱 Chapter 3: Elements, Compounds, and Mixtures
There are different types of atoms, called elements.
Hydrogen
Oxygen
Carbon
Iron
Gold
Each element has its own type of atom.
When atoms of the same element group up? Still an element.
But when atoms of different elements combine in fixed ways — we get compounds.
Water? That's a compound:
H₂O = 2 hydrogen atoms + 1 oxygen atom
And salt? NaCl = sodium + chlorine
But not everything combines evenly. Some things just mix — like air (a mixture of gases), or oil in water (a mixture that doesn't even like itself).
> "So… matter can be pure (elements or compounds), or mixed."
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🧪 Chapter 4: Chemical Reactions — When Stuff Changes
Let's go back to the boiling water.
That's not chemistry yet. That's just physical change — water going from liquid to gas. No new substance is made.
But if I take hydrogen gas and oxygen gas and make them combine to form water?
Boom. That's chemistry.
> "A chemical reaction is when substances break apart or join together to make new substances."
Atoms rearrange. New bonds form. Old ones break.
But the atoms themselves? They never disappear.
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⚖️ Chapter 5: Laws of Chemical Combination (Finally)
Okay. Now that I understood atoms, elements, and reactions — I was ready to ask:
> "When things combine… how do they combine?"
Turns out, scientists asked the same thing centuries ago.
And they figured out some powerful rules.
Let's go through them slowly.
(Atomic Mass is the mass of one atom of an element, e.g HYDROGEN =1 , Carbon =12, Oxygen =16 to find it you should know the Atomic Number of elements its approximately the double of the Atomic Number)
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1. Law of Conservation of Mass (by Antoine Lavoisier)
This one's simple but powerful.
> "Mass can neither be created nor destroyed during a chemical reaction."
That means:
What you start with, you end with.
If you burn 10 grams of wood and it turns to 2 grams of ash, the missing 8 grams? It's not gone. It became gas — smoke, carbon dioxide, water vapor.
> "So nothing disappears. It just changes form."
Even when something explodes, burns, or dissolves — no atoms vanish. They just rearrange.
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2. Law of Definite Proportions (by Joseph Proust)
This one says:
> "A compound is always made of the same elements in the same fixed ratio by mass."
Take water again.
No matter where you find it — in a pond, a bottle, or the ocean — it's always 11% hydrogen, 89% oxygen by mass.
Always.
Even if you cry, boil it, or freeze it.
Water = H₂O. Two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen.
Never one hydrogen and two oxygen. That'd be something else.
> "So nature follows strict recipes."
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3. Law of Multiple Proportions (by John Dalton)
This one's a bit trickier.
Dalton said:
> "If two elements combine to form more than one compound, the masses of one element that combine with a fixed mass of the other are in simple whole number ratios."
Confusing? Here's an example.
Carbon and oxygen can form:
CO (carbon monoxide)
CO₂ (carbon dioxide)
In CO:
12 g carbon combines with 16 g oxygen
In CO₂:
12 g carbon combines with 32 g oxygen
That's a 1:2 ratio of oxygen — simple, clean numbers.(between different compounds the ratio is always same but of one element)e.g You cannot compare CO2 AND H20 becuse they do not have same element.
> "Atoms combine in simple, countable ways."
Which makes sense — because atoms are discrete particles, like marbles.
You can't have half an atom.
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📐 Chapter 6: Why These Laws Matter
Before these laws, people thought reactions were random.
They burned stuff and thought matter vanished.
They didn't know atoms existed.
These laws set the stage for atomic theory.
They told scientists:
"There must be particles we can't see."
"They must combine in specific ways."
"And nothing is ever truly destroyed."
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📝 Artic's Summary (Stuff I'll Actually Remember)
Matter = anything that takes up space and has mass.
All matter is made of atoms.
Elements = pure types of atoms.
Compounds = fixed combinations of atoms.
Chemical reaction = atoms rearrange, new substances form.
Laws of Chemical Combination:
1. Conservation of Mass: Mass is never lost — just rearranged.(Nobody can create anything from nothing and nobody can dissappear matter into nothing.
2. Definite Proportions: Compounds are made in fixed, constant ratios.(A pure compound always has a fixed ratio no matter where did you get it from )
3. Multiple Proportions: When elements form more than one compound, they do it in simple ratios.(Same element different compounds have ratio in whole numbers like Co and co2 , No and no2 etc)
And the most important law?
> "Nothing is random. Everything follows structure."
Even the messiest reactions have rules underneath them.