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The Chemistry LibreTexts library is a principal hub of the LibreTexts project, which is a multi-institutional collaborative venture to develop the next generation of open-access texts to improve postsecondary education at all levels of higher learning. The LibreTexts approach is highly collaborative where an Open Access textbook environment is under constant revision by students, faculty, and outside experts to supplant conventional paper-based books.  

LibreTexts are custom developed for individual instructors/classes and schools. The Modules in the Core supplement the LibreTexts.

This Atoms First text reorganizes the traditional approach of sequentially teaching any number of simple models for chemical bonding and reaction following the historical development of the science. As each model is stacked on the next to extend them and handle myriad exceptions to each, students struggle. Why each of these simplifications works and their limits of applicability is not obvious, or at least not so until the course reaches the last few weeks when instructors rush through the quantum basis of atomic and molecular structure.  At that point, perhaps in the last lectures of the term, when it is explained how each of the historical models is an expression of quantum mechanics everyone, hopefully nods their heads and says "Oh yeah". 

The first two sections of this course cover atomic and molecular structure, the rest of the text builds on this introducing simpler models as what they are, useful simplifications with an obvious basis in the quantum structure of compounds.  By starting with atomic and molecular structure the obvious basis can be made clear when the simple model is introduced.   

This site also provides lecture slides and a preface.

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