The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry by Larry Gonick

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The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry by Larry Gonick and Craig Criddle is a non-fiction book that utilizes visual images and cartoons to cover the basics and intricacies of Chemistry. It consists of two-hundred and fifty-six pages and was published by Collins Reference on May 3, 2005. It covers topics such as chemicals reactions, solutions, acid basis, and chemical thermodynamics in unique fashion that makes chemistry fun and easy to learn as well as understand. The book has no consistent build up or story to it. It simply moves from chemistry subject A to chemistry subject B, explaining the various components that make up the subject of chemistry.
To begin with, the authors, Larry Gonick and Craig Criddle, as I alluded to earlier, have written this book to consist of varying subjects and topics all underneath the umbrella that is chemistry. The twelve key subjects covered are hidden ingredients (basically properties and elements), matter becoming electric and their relation to electrons, togetherness and atomic structure, chemical reactions, heat of reaction, matter in a state (solid, liquid, gas) , solutions, reaction rate and equilibrium, acid basics, chemical thermodynamics, electrochemistry, organic chemistry, and using logarithms. Overall each subject is covered equally in depth and some subjects build upon each other while some don’t. There isn’t a specific author’s purpose rather than to educate the reader. However the subjects that constantly return and are tied in with each chapter are the history of chemistry and how chemical principles were discovered. These repeating subjects also show us applications of chemistry in the real world and the importance of chemistry in our lives. In general the book trudges through subjects...

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... in the first semester of chemistry. However this book reviewed me on many many things we had learned in class. The book has left me the impression that chemistry can be very interesting as well as enjoyable to learn about. For most of the time I saw chemistry as a simply a boring science that was based of math and other weird things, but as I progressed reading this book it made me realize how great chemistry really was. It made me understand that chemistry is not a boring science used by only a few it is beyond science it is a part of life that we see nearly every day! I absolutely loved the book, and experiencing all the joy that came with reading it as well as doing this project. I would recommend this book to all that are learning about chemistry because everybody deserves to learn about chemistry the way this book teaches it with its whimsical and fun style.

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