“This is the simplest chemistry book I’ve ever seen!”
A bestseller in the science field with 500,000 copies sold
The author of the "Fun to Read All Night" series releases a new book after 10 years!

- Books recommended by the National Science Teachers Association
- Reflected in elementary and secondary school curriculum

Bestselling author Takeo Samaki, who received much love from readers for 『Fun Chemistry Stories That Will Keep You Reading All Night』 and 『Fun Physics Stories That Will Keep You Reading All Night』, is back with a new science series.
The "If Science Were This Easy from the Start" series, presented for the first time in 10 years, focuses on introducing the basic principles of each field of chemistry, physics, and biology in an easy and fun way.
While other popular science books that deal with everyday scientific stories often offer fragmented knowledge, this series distinguishes itself by establishing a framework for scientific thinking by organically connecting the content and carefully selecting the core principles that readers must know.


Volume 1, "If Chemistry Were This Easy from the Beginning," covers everything from the basic properties of matter to the concepts of atoms, molecules, and ions, "state changes" from solid to liquid to gas, and "chemical changes" such as combustion and reduction.
Do gases have volume? Does eating food cause you to gain exactly that much weight? Can you boil ramen without burning the paper pot? Can you dissolve salt without water? Through the rich illustrations presented by the adorable Meow and the kind Doctor, you'll learn the basic principles in a fun and engaging way, naturally finding answers to these questions.
Let's embark on a journey into the world of chemistry, which becomes even more fun once you understand the principles.

If you eat a 1kg lunchbox, how much weight will you gain afterward? What happens if someone weighs 58.5kg and eats exactly 1kg of rice and side dishes and then weighs themselves? They'll weigh exactly 59.5kg.
If you weigh yourself immediately after a meal, you'll gain exactly 1kg. So what happens after a while? A scientist has studied weight changes to understand how food changes in the body.
This is the Italian doctor Santorio Santorio.


Santorio designed and commissioned the production of a chair-type scale that can measure weight while sitting.
And I sat on that scale all day, eating, drinking, and even going to the bathroom.
Weight fluctuated from time to time.
He measured all masses of food, drink, feces, urine, etc.
If you think about it simply, you would think that your weight would increase by the mass of food and drinks consumed minus the mass of urine and feces, but the experimental results showed that the weight gain was less than expected.
Here, Santorio says, “Some of the food consumed would have passed out of the body in a form invisible to the human eye.
So I thought that the weight gain would be less.”
So then what is it that has come out of the body?
--- From "What is Matter?"

In general, the density of a substance is lower in liquids than in solids.
This is because the solid molecules are packed more densely.
But water is different.
Ice (a solid substance of water) floats on water.
This is rarely the case among natural substances.
The phenomenon of ice floating on water that we commonly see is an exceptional case.

Water is made up of water molecules.
However, water and ice have different arrangements of molecules.
Ice has a structure with many gaps between its molecules that are arranged in a regular pattern.
However, when it becomes water, the regular structure of ice breaks down.
At this moment, more molecules enter the gaps that existed when it was ice, so the structure becomes more tightly packed than when it was ice.
In nature, water is the only substance that has gaps in the arrangement of molecules when in a solid state.
The phenomenon of ice floating on water is caused by the structure of this microscopic world.
--- From “Atoms, Molecules, and the State of Matter”

If you put coffee grounds in a filter (filter paper) and pour hot water, you can see the coffee coming out of the filter.
When coffee powder comes into contact with hot water, the ingredients inside the powder dissolve in the hot water and become coffee.
Coffee is an aqueous solution, although the solvent is very hot water.
Therefore, it passes through the filter.
The residue remains on the filter paper because it is not an aqueous solution (to be precise, the coffee solution is a mixture of a regular aqueous solution and a colloidal solution).

--- From "The Principle of 'Filtration' in a Cup of Coffee"