This course takes a historical perspective on the creation of the science, which didn’t really exist until a super-smart, super-wealthy Frenchman put the puzzle pieces together – Hank tells the story of how we went from alchemists to chemists, who understood the law of conservation of mass as proposed by a decapitated aristocrat, and explains how we came to have a greater understanding of how chemical compounds work and eventually a complete understanding of what atoms and molecules are.