Page 338 - Arrow Pushing in Inorganic Chemistry A Logical Approach to the Chemistry of the Main Group Elements

Epilogue

We’ve reached the end of our journey. We hope you feel you’ve gained a deeper apprecia-
tion of chemical reactivity. In particular, we hope we have helped you look at complicated
reaction stoichiometries not as meaningless facts but rather as information that can be
understood. That understanding is often speculative, but in general it’s experimentally (and
computationally) testable, given appropriate resources, and it’s far better than not having
any insight at all.
If you are planning to become a chemist, you can use this understanding in a creative way
to synthesize new molecules and to design new reactions. Indeed that’s how many organic
chemists view main-group chemistry, as a fount of new reagents and synthetic strategies.
For those of you with other career objectives, we hope you’ve acquired a new way at
looking at the natural world. Whether it’s an environmental issue, or one related to health,
or something else, you’re now in a better position to think about its molecular basis. Once
in a while, you may even be able to understand a given issue in mechanistic terms, with
actual arrow pushing!
We look forward to hearing from you about your experiences with the approach we
have espoused in this book. And we wish you the very best, as you continue to explore the
wonderful world of the elements and their compounds!

Arrow Pushing in Inorganic Chemistry: A Logical Approach to the Chemistry of the Main-Group Elements,
First Edition. Abhik Ghosh and Steffen Berg.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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