A Chemistry Course?

I was talking with an acquaintance in Salida the other day. When I was teaching, what did I teach? Chemistry. "Ooooooooooh, ugh...all that math!" And many teachers do it wrongly, making their students memorize (usually at the expense of understanding) a lot of routine stuff. When I taught chemistry, the periodic table hung on test days right where it usually hung. If there was a problem involved, I gave the relevant atomic weights right on the test. But could I teach a course about the concepts of chemistry, without the various calculations?

An hour later I was in the Salida Burger King, outlining a possible chemistry course on a napkin. A course covering just the essential concepts, not getting into calculations involving gas laws, stoichiometry (how many grams of product would you get from xx grams of starting material?), and so forth. Perhaps the principles of quantum mechanics--the mathematics of which are from another world anyway. Can equilibrium be taught without equilibrium calculations? I think so. What makes something an acid? What does oxidation mean?

This is an interesting concept. Maybe I'll work it up and see if Colorado Mountain College is interested in such. It wouldn't be transfer credit, and I don't even feel like writing any tests!