Chapter 1 Student competencies

• Describe the features of the three states of matter at the macroscopic and at the molecular/atomic level.
• Understand what is specifically meant and be able to identify each of the following: atom, molecule, substance, element, compound, homogeneous mixture, heterogeneous mixture.
• Understand and describe the mixture separation techniques of filtration, distillation, and chromatography.
• Understand the law of constant composition (also referred to as the law of definite proportions).
• Describe and identify each of the following: chemical property, physical property, intensive property, extensive property, physical change, and chemical change.
• Understand the process of acquiring knowledge in science.
• Know the metric units and the prefixes ranging from 10^-6 to 10⁶.
• Understand the Kelvin, Celsius, and Farenheit temperature scales and be able to convert among them without the aid of any given formulas.
• Understand volume units commonly used in chemistry.
• Know the density formula and be able to use it to determine density, volume, or mass.
• Understand precision and accuracy.
• Be able to identify the number of significant digits in a number and to determine the number of significant digits that result from a calculation involving addition/subtraction and multiplication/division operations.
• Quickly conduct organized dimensional analysis calculations that require multiple factors to convert from one unit to another.