Hi, I'm Mr. David Weinkauff or "Mister W" (sometimes "DW" or "deedubs")...

Welcome to our journey through the world of Chemistry.  On our journey we are going to be using a map -- the Periodic Table.  This Table describes the regions of the Periodic Kingdom.  Some regions we are going to visit and spend a lot of time in, and others we may pass through quickly.  Some we will return to repeatedly, perhaps from different directions.     

This is a land of imagination, but it is closer to reality than it may first appear to be.  This is the kingdom of the chemical elements, the substances from which everything tangible is made.  It is not an extensive country, for it consists of only a hundred fourteen or so regions (or elements as we call them), yet it accounts for everything material in our world and, more broadly, the universe.  From the fewer than one hundred natrually occurring elements that are at the center of our story, all planets, rocks, vegetation, and animals are made.  These elements are the basis for the air, the oceans, and the earth itself.  We stand on the elements, we eat the elements, we are the elements.  Because our brains are made up of elements, even our opinions are, in a sense, properties of the elements and, hence, inhabitants of the kingdom.

It is this kingdom we will be exploring.  We may not get around to covering all the regions of the kingdom but we will have enough information so that you might even think about doing some further exploration yourself.