Introduction to Atoms

As we have learned in the previous lecture, the physical world is the stage for the living world. Because of this, we need to spend a little time on topics that will seem more like chemistry and physics than biology (and they are). We will only disgress in our lectures to the extent necessary to make it possible to truly understand biology.

In this lecture, we need to cover five main topics in order to understand the chemistry that is the basis for life: (1) the structure of atoms, (2) how atoms join together to form molecules, (3) the properties of water, (3) the hydrologic cycle, and (4) the characteristics of acids, bases and buffers.