The chemistry set is probably cheaper than the book. They used to sell chemistry sets for children to play with that were not advertised as for college students and which thus had a much lower price than a new edition of a Chemistry book for only a single college class that is only for 1 semester before the new edition begins. It is probably not safe for most children these days to play with chemistry sets but that is how they were advertised
Also if you take college chemistry classes in the U.S.A. I would guess you probably do not have to buy a chemistry set because they have all the equipment in the classroom for most undergraduate level courses except possibly if a research project is required to graduate.
But taking college classes in a field of science does not make you a scientist
Using the scientific method makes you a scientist and college tries to undermine the scientific method in favor of politics
@shortstories with you just telling me about the scientific method, you open another doors to me.
Also you can get free math, statistics, chemistry and physics books online and in public libraries
All you have to do is follow the instructions and do the problems then check if you got the right answer in the back of the book
Do not start with the advanced books but work your way up
For example do a physics mechanics textbooks without calculus then a physics electro-magnetics textbook without calculus
Do not start with astronomy without electricity & mechanics first
@shortstories math my old enemy.
so, my first lesson are Trigonometry and Algebra, if i am even to think of any branch.
On account of you saying, "math my old enemy"
You might want to start before alegbra and work your way up to algebra
It will make you more comfortable so algebra will be less bad if you get good at adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing numbers in your head without a calculator
Like maybe practice mental math and then work on algebra after you are comfortable with basic mental math.
I really can not tell because I do not know how good at math you are.
Chemistry does not require trigonometry but physics does
Plenty of people take chemistry without physics in the beginning because the math is easier or for other reasons
But I think it is better to start with physics which requires trigonometry which is more difficult than algebra for most people
Physics and Chemistry are the foundations of all other real sciences
But physics is more foundational than chemistry so I think it is better to start with physics first
@RodrickSage
If you learn trigonometry in a high school or university they will usually require you to take algebra & geometry before trigonometry
But I completed up to vector calculus and a lot of physics classes
and I never needed any geometry for anything in any science or math class I ever took
You can just skip straight from algebra to trigonometry without studying geometry if you are learning on your own
You can get CLEP calculus college credits without college classes & skip geometry
I did not see a CLEP trigonometry
So I would suggest studying CLEP algebra and then CLEP precalculus
There also is a CLEP Calculus course you can complete after precalculus
The precalculus course includes trigonometry
Here is a 100% free Alison course to study for the CLEP algebra exam
https://alison.com/course/clep-college-algebra
Here is a 100% free Alison course to study for the CLEP pre-calculus exam
https://alison.com/course/clep-college-pre-calculus
Certificate is free but costs money for extra confirmation features
@shortstories @RodrickSage pre-calc is just college algebra with functions
@RodrickSage
Look how serious about becoming a scientist are you?
There are plenty of scientists that do not like math but practice it anyway because they need to use it to make and test models in science experiments
Being able to deny oneself and study math & apply it to engineering and science is what made western societies technologically superior to primitive societies where people did not put in the effort to learn math
Women and blacks tend to not do math as much because most are lazy