Scientific knowledge comes from combining what you have learned in textbooks with what you have learned in the laboratory. Many important facts are learned only in the laboratory, and in many respects, laboratory classes are as useful to your education as piano practice is to a musician. Sometimes you learn through your hands. Familiarity with laboratory work is essential to a realistic understanding of science, even for theoreticians, and experience with the uncertainties and limitations of experimental knowledge is vital to engineers and non-technical citizens as well. Appreciation of Quantities .
Chemistry is a quantitative science.
A keen sense of what's important and what's not important can help the experimentalist in performing experiments and can aid the theoretician to separate those ideas that really matter from those that don't. Developing this feeling for quantities takes time and experience. We don't expect you to start with it, but this laboratory should help you along the path to acquiring it. Any action requires some level of understanding in order to be carried out successfully. The most important piece of laboratory apparatus you will ever work with is your head.