Question understanding chemistry texts that don't use weights/numbers

[mycelium]

High, everyone

Here is an example...

The initial setup of the experiment was as follows: 4-aminophenol was suspended in dichloromethane and treated with various excesses of acetic anhydride and catalytic pyridine to provide 4-acetamidophenyl acetate

Oftentimes, chemistry texts that aren't real for cooks but for actual chemists, do not use amounts of anything, like "react this with that" or the above example, "treated with various excesses of AA and catalytic pyradine.."
Is this based on molar amounts, like it you have 1.5 g of the 4aminophenol, then whatever that mol weight is, you would apply that to the others(an excess, would that be a molar excess)
Or, it because chemists already know that when you have certain chemicals you always react them in certain ways?
I have a slight learning disability and never had chemistry, so I'm trying to learn...I have a tek somewhere that shows how to synthesize acetaminophen from 4aminophenol, but I was just wondering in general.
Thank you

 

[brazil_guy]

If you want to become a chem, you'll need to go futher to advanced chemistry such as retrosynthesis, reactors and etc, but you'll need learn basic chemistry from high school to advance to another level. In that level you'll be able to optimize routes, create new ones and etc. If you just want to "cook", learn basic chemistry, lab management and practise. When you see a text like this is not to a "cooker", it is to a chem. The author's public is someone educated that knows when he says to "treated", depending on the context, may be translated to different action.

The text says "treated with various excesses of AA and catalytic pyradine.." That means you need TO ADD more than one time. The estimation could be 20% more of AA and catalytic pyradine, each time, into the solution, if you already had do this before on the recipt or you could calculate using molar mass and density plus 20%, in order to do this


Everything that you learn from basics to advanced is important. You can't reach high levels of understanding without study hard. You can start cooking within one month by just studying basic chemistry and looking at videos, but to get at high level of drug manufacturing will need to reach high level of organic chemistry knowledge.