Twenty-four eye-opening chemistry experiments that take readers on an interactive journey through the periodic table of elements. Includes glossary.

Do your parents ask you to wash your hands before dinner? You might not like it, but using soap to wash your hands gets rid of dirt and fights germs. Soap, what it does and how it is made, is an amazing and simple example of the branch of science called chemistry.

Keyed to the requirements of middle and high school curricula, the experiments cover the following: Carbonation in beverages -- Chemical formulas and molar mass -- The chemistry of "cleaning" water -- Endothermic and exothermic energy -- Ester production -- Hard versus soft water -- Heat energy -- Ozone depletion -- Rusting and redox reactions -- Soap production -- Spectrometry -- Valence electrons.