Most of us are blind. Blind to see opportunities created by chemistry to help us change our world for better.
You might think of chemistry only in the context of lab tests, food additives or dangerous substances, but the field of chemistry involves everything around us.
Everything you hear, see, smell, taste, and touch involves chemistry and chemicals (matter).
"And hearing, seeing, tasting, and touching all involve intricate series of chemical reactions and interactions in your body."
So, even if you don't work as a chemist, you're doing chemistry, or something that involves chemistry, with pretty much everything you do.
In everyday life, you do chemistry when you cook, when you use cleaning detergents to wipe off your counter, when you take medicine or when you dilute concentrated juice so that the taste isn't as intense.
The main building blocks in chemistry are chemical elements, which are substances made of a single atom.
Each chemical is unique, composed of a set number of protons, neutrons and electrons, and is identified by a name and a chemical symbol, such as "C" for carbon.
The elements that scientists have discovered so far are listed in the periodic table of elements, and include both elements that are found in nature like carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, as well as those that are manmade, like Lawrencium.
Chemical elements can bond together to form chemical compounds, which are substances made up of multiple elements, like carbon dioxide (which is made of one carbon atom connected to two oxygen atoms), or multiple atoms of a single element, like oxygen gas (which is made of two oxygen atoms connected together).
These chemical compounds can then bond with other compounds or elements to form countless other substances and materials.
With this you can apply the same principle to: Develop new product applications by making elements or compounds to react.
For example, food chemists improve the quality, safety, storage and taste of food; pharmaceutical chemists develop and analyze the quality of drugs and other medical formulations; and agricultural chemists develop fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides necessary for large-scale crop production.
Sometimes, research and development may not involve bettering the product itself, but rather the manufacturing process involved in making that product.
Chemical engineers and process engineers devise new ways to make the manufacturing of their products easier and more cost effective, such as increasing the speed and/or yield of a product for a given product.
Environmental chemists use chemistry to study how chemicals interact with the natural environment, characterizing the chemicals and chemical reactions present in natural processes in the soil, water and air.
For example, scientists do collect soil, water or air from a place of interest and analyze it in a laboratory to determine if human activities have contaminated, or will contaminate, the environment or affect it in other ways.
Some environmental chemists also help remediate, or remove contaminants, from the soil.
Chemistry can also help us to work in intellectual property, where we might apply some scientific knowledge to copyright issues, or in environmental law, where we may represent special interest groups and file for approval from regulating agencies before certain activities occur.
Question: what elements can you put together to form your own compound?
Which one?
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