Questions, answered rather than marketed.

Chemistry is a branch of science — it studies what materials are made of, how they are built and how they react. Like any science it has a written language of its own, and in chemistry that language is three things: symbols for the elements, formulas for substances, and equations for reactions. Sodium is Na, sodium chloride is NaCl, and making it is 2Na + Cl2 → 2NaCl — the book’s own first example. ICSE, CBSE and the Kerala SSLC syllabus all set that notation in examinations; none of them sets aside time to teach it. That gap is what The Language of Chemistry, Playbook teaches.

The Language of Chemistry covers the notation taught across Classes 7 to 10 in the ICSE, CBSE and SSLC syllabuses. It teaches what all three boards assume — symbols, valency, formulas and balanced equations — rather than following a particular board’s chapter order.

A guide book explains the chapter your child has already been taught. The Playbook teaches the language underneath every chapter: the name, symbol and valency of thirty elements and twenty-five radicals as punch-out tokens, then chemical formulas, then balanced equations. It also gates progress — Chapter I will not open onto Chapter II below 172 of 184, which is 93.5 per cent — and no guide book does that.

The whole set of exercises for that chapter is repeated. Chapter I closes at 172 of 184, Chapter II at 37 of 40 and Chapter III at 51 of 55 — 93.5 per cent, 92.5 per cent and 92.7 per cent. A student below the threshold works those exercises again rather than moving on. The answers to all 19 exercises are enclosed, and there is an evaluation chart at the back. The book marks itself, so a parent who never studied chemistry can still use it.

Yes. Playway Books sends a sample copy to a school that asks, along with bulk pricing and a syllabus mapping for ICSE, CBSE and SSLC. The request form is on the For Schools page, and the Kochi office can be rung on +91 99471 23678.

112 pages in 3 chapters, with 2 punch-out token sheets carrying thirty elements and twenty-five radicals. Inside: 2 charts, 6 activities, 19 exercises and 279 questions. The answers to all 19 exercises are enclosed and there is an evaluation chart at the back, so the book marks itself.

The published price is ₹399. Retailers set their own — check Amazon.in, Flipkart and JioMart for what they are charging today. ISBN 978-81-959241-0-3.

Amazon.in, Flipkart and JioMart carry it online. In Kerala it is on the shelf at H&C Books, Ernakulam, and with other local stockists — ring the Kochi office on +91 99471 23678 and we will name the nearest one. Playway Books does not sell from this website; there is no cart here and the order goes through a retailer.

A workbook is where you write the answers down. A Playbook is where you play a round, and the tokens come punched out of the back of it — because chemistry is something you do with your hands before you do it with a pen. The tokens are the reason the book exists in print rather than as an app.

No, and it does not follow a board’s chapter order either. It teaches the notation every board assumes a student already has — symbols, valency, chemical formulas and balanced equations — which each board’s own textbook sets in exercises before it explains. The syllabus pages list exactly what each board asks for, chapter by chapter.

Yes. Playway Books sends one sample copy per school on request, with no obligation. Use the enquiry form on the For Schools page or ring the Kochi office on +91 99471 23678 — a school that would rather talk than fill in a form is not a lesser enquiry.

The Playbook teaches chemical notation, which ICSE, CBSE and SSLC all assume rather than teach. The mapping table on the For Schools page sets the book’s topics against all three boards by class level, and it is written to print cleanly so a head of department can forward it internally.

CISCE’s is a letter of appreciation for the method, dated 18 December 2002. NCERT’s is a set of comments on the method from its Department of Education in Science and Mathematics, dated 1 July 2008, which open by calling it a good attempt. Neither is accreditation and neither is an approval of the book as a prescribed text, and Playway Books does not describe them as either. The book’s own back cover credits them to “the ICSE Board” and “the CBSE Board”, which is wrong on both counts and is due to be corrected in the next print run; the preface has it right. Both letters are set out on the About page, with how each came about. The NCERT letter runs to six numbered points and the site publishes three of them.

No — and the first reason is practical rather than legal. The Playbook is consumable: 2 sheets of tokens are punched out of it and handled, 19 exercises are written in and marked against the answers enclosed at the back, and the evaluation chart is filled in as a student goes. A photocopy carries none of that, so a class working from photocopied sheets is doing a worse exercise than the one the book sets. A school that cannot buy a copy per student should ring the Kochi office on +91 99471 23678 about bulk pricing rather than photocopy — that is a shorter conversation than it sounds. What may be used without asking, what needs permission, and the law it sits under are set out on the copyright and permissions page.

Yes, when the order is placed with enough notice. Bulk orders are printed and dispatched from Kochi, so the constraint is the print run rather than a warehouse — tell us your intake date on the enquiry form and we will confirm a date before you raise a purchase order.