Descriptive vs. Explanatory

There are at least two types of chemical knowledge: descriptive and explanatory. The first is a description of things and how they behave, built on observations of the macroscopic world. The second attempts to explain why the descriptive level does what it does. This site teaches only the first.

The relationship between the two is not symmetric. The descriptive level is totally independent of the explanatory level. The explanatory is completely dependent on the descriptive. You can describe a flame, a solution, a phase change, with no theory at all. You cannot, however, build a theory of any of those without first having a description of what the theory is meant to explain. So one comes first by necessity, even though, almost universally, the explanatory is taught first.

That ordering is the source of a lot of trouble. Think about understanding a theory designed to explain something while having no understanding of the thing the theory is explaining. Most kids had fun with home chemistry kits; most students of chemistry, by the time they reach a classroom, do not. The cause, more often than not, is that they have been handed an explanation before they were ever asked to look.

So the design rule for this site is strict. No atoms, no electrons, no molecules, no chemical theory. Not because theory is unimportant (it is important), but because the descriptive layer has to stand on its own first. You may find this hard to deal with. To help, you must.