• Question: What is the point of chemistry?

    Asked by eimearbrady to Aggelos, Andrew, Eileen, Naomi, Shane on 13 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Eileen Diskin

      Eileen Diskin answered on 13 Nov 2012:

      Haha thats a good question! I never liked chemistry in school, except when we got to do experiments that made things bubble and explode. And once our teacher had us mix some chemicals to make a smell like a banana. Those kinds of things were interesting! But other than that…I wasn’t a huge fan.

      But now I think I can see why chemistry can be alright! A lot of life-saving medicines are made in labs using chemistry. Also, a lot of foods we eat use different kinds of chemicals to make them extra-tasty (although I think that maybe a lot of these arent very good for us!). And they make our foods last a lot longer than they otherwise would, so we dont have to be as worried about foods spoiling.

      And its because of different chemicals (though I havent a clue how those kinds of scientists do it!) that we have lots of cool materials and technologies. Like the clothing we wear, the mobiles and televisions we use, and more!

      So now I know its not so bad 🙂

    • Photo: Andrew Jackson

      Andrew Jackson answered on 13 Nov 2012:

      Im with Eileen… i hated chemistry in school, but started to really like it in university. I think we had some great lecturers in college, and they really showed me how cool chemistry can be.

    • Photo: Naomi Elster

      Naomi Elster answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      For me, the point of chemistry is that knowing how chemicals react with each other is what makes it possible to understand how our bodies work, and what changes to turn our healthy cells into sick cells. Chemistry is also really important for making drugs, so without understanding chemistry, we wouldn’t have any medicine! Science is taught as three separate subjects of physics, chemistry and biology, but the truth is that they are all linked.

      I loved chemistry in school but I did have a lot of problems seeing what the point of it was at first as well. But then we learned about how car engines work, how drugs work, how we get crude oil from the ground and use chemistry to make it into useful things like petrol, diesel and plastic…there are many points to chemistry. Even the stoichiometry, or the maths part of chemistry, is something I now use in the lab the whole time! You can never tell what might be useful later 🙂

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