STUDYING THE WORLD OF CHEMISTRY

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Chemistry is the study of materials and how we can change them to make new, more useful materials. This is the basis of the chemical industry.

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Many chemists work in chemical industries that are involved in making useful products from raw materials. The raw materials may include coal, oil, natural gas, metal ores, air, water, animal fats and plant oils .

It is important to consider the internal structure of materials and how can their properties can be changed by altering their structure. For example, natural rubber is soft and sticky.

This makes it unsuitable, for example for making car tyres. Adding sulphur to natural rubber in a process called vulcanization makes the rubber hard. Chemicals make up everything around us. The things we see, touch, smell and even feel are made up of Chemicals. It is possible to change some of these chemicals, either permanently or temporarily.

Medicines, plastics, soaps, detergents, textiles, cosmetics, paints, food additives, fertilisers, solvents and pesticides are some of the products made by the chemical industry.

Career prospects in chemistry

There are many possible careers involving chemistry. Many chemists work works in laboratories, either discovering new materials (research and development) or in routine testing of materials and products. For example, a firm manufacturing paint not only needs people to develop new and improved paints but also needs other people to check samples of paint from the production line to ensure the standards are unchanged. Other chemists may be required to collect and analyse, for example soil and water samples to test for pollution.

Many chemists are trained to dispense drugs and pharmaceutical chemicals prescribed by a doctor. These chemists are often called pharmacists. Other chemists train as teachers and lecturers to train the next generation of chemists.

Many other jobs use chemistry to some extent, for example a hairdresser who uses chemicals on the customers hair and nurses who have to use chemicals safely with patients.

Applications of chemistry

The study of chemistry is most useful for anybody living in the modern world. Here are some examples.

Hospital work

Let us look at hospital work for example, in hospital, nurses often collect blood and urine samples and send them to a laboratory analysis by chemists. In the laboratory, presence of glucose in urine or blood can show diabetes and analysis of blood samples can also show conditions such as cancer. Other chemists will be involved in formulating and dispensing drugs and medicines. Nuclear medicine uses radioactive substances to diagnose and treat diseases, such as certain cancers

Forensic Science

Following a serious incident, chemists may be involved in looking for clues such as analysis of materials found at the crime scene, e.t.c. In breathalyser tests exhaled gases are chemically anaylsed to determine how much alcohol a person has consumed. Chemicals are also used to detect invisible traces of blood at crime scenes.

Military

Chemical warfare uses chemical agents such as gases. Explosives may be mixtures of chemical substances, such as gunpowder, or they may even be chemical compounds, such as TNT. The explosion is caused by a chemical reaction set off by shock or hear. Atomic bombs use the splitting of atoms to release huge amounts of energy.

Industry

As I have already mentioned, chemists work in research and development and in testing the quality of materials during production.

Agriculture

Chemists can test the acidity of soils to check wether they are suitable for growing particular crops. They can also suggest fertilisers that might improve growth. Pesticides are chemicals that are used to kill insects or other organisms, such as fungi which can damage crops.

Space Science

The American expedition to the moon brought back samples of Moon rock that chemists back on Earth could analyse upon. Chemists have developed materials that are suitable for use in space as well as rocket files that are safe and efficient.

Adverse effects of chemicals

Chemicals can pollute the environment. They can also cause other problems. Such chemicals are poisonous and can cause illness and death, for example, Mercury, chlorine and cyanide. Corrosive chemicals such as acids and strong bases can cause harm if they are swallowed, breathed in, or come into contact with the skin or eyes. They can also damage materials, especially metals. Drugs are chemicals that have an effect on the human body. They can be sued to treat, cure or prevent diseases. If drugs are not used in the correct way, they can be harmful and lead to drug abuse. For example, let me talk about the over use of alcohol or sleeping pills. Some drugs are illegal, such as marijuana, cocaine and heroin. Drug abuse can lead to illness, death and prison sentences.

Carrying out an investigation

Now let us look at how investigations are really carried out in the chemistry world. I have talked about the concept about what we really means by chemistry, I have talked about the career prospects in chemistry, the application of chemistry and also the adverse effect of chemical but knowing how to carry out an investigation should not be left out.

You can learn facts about chemistry by reading a book which majority of us did or from the internet, but to really understand the subject you have to see it in action in the world around you. You do this by means of experiments. Many hundreds of years ago people thought that a base metal such as lead could be turned to gold, it is possible to make a chemical that would allow people to live forever(immortal as I will put it), when a substance burns it loses an invisible
component.

All of these seemed reasonable ideas with the level of knowledge that people had. There was nothing to disprove them. It was only much later that practical
investigation proved all of them to be incorrect. There are things today that we accept as being correct, which in the future will be shown to be incorrect.

Can you think of any scientific problems that might need chemistry to solve them?
If you can be able to, don't hesitate to drop it in the comments section below.

Scientists may detect evidence of global warming and suggest ways in which the effects might be avoided. They might solve the problem of depletion of the ozone layer. They might also produce chemicals that cure previously incurable illnesses. They might devise fuels that are cheap, renewable and cause no pollution.

There is no end to what chemists might do in the future as the world is advancing so also chemists are advancing in their various research daily.

Can you think of any other problems that might be solved by chemists?
If you can be able to, don't hesitate to drop it in the comments section below.

Unfortunately, chemistry can also be used not to benefit people but to harm them.
Chlorine is a gas that can be used to kill bacteria in water supplies, preventing diseases such as cholera.
However, it was used in the First World War (1914-18)(though I was not born then but history have it in record) as a poisonous gas to kill enemies.
lt is important to remember that it is not the chemists who used chlorine in warfare.

The whole population - both scientists and other people - should be interested in chemistry and other sciences to ensure that discoveries are always put to the
best possible uses.

Procedure for scientific investigation

lf perhaps you have a scientific problem to solve, there is a set of procedure you should follow. These are:

  1. First make sure you have the problem in a proper form to study. Dont make your investigation too wide. Check to see if you can look up the answer in a book or on the internet. Thank God for the advanced technology development, you can try looking into the internet. For example, what causes iron to rust is a question popularly asked in the world. It also takes me some times to get answer to thar question

  2. Think about the question. Then think about a possible answer based upon what you know from similar situations or from research. We call this a hypothesis. Write down your hypothesis and brief notes on your thinking that led you to make it. From
    your hypothesis, make predictions that you can test by experiment.

  3. Now plan experiments to test your hypothesis. It is important to do this carefully(in carrying out a scientific investigation, every procedure must be done very carefully because any slight mistake can ruin everything down and bring it back to zero. In your experiments there are things that might change; these are called variables and they can be divided into two types.

Independent variable. This is one you can vary under your own control.

Dependent variable. This is one that changes in response to the independent variable.

For example, if you are investigating the factors that speed up a chemical reaction, you could carry out the reaction at different temperatures or with different
concentrations of reactants. The temperature and concentration are your choice, so they are independent
variables. The time taken for the reaction, which leads to you being able to calculate its speed, is a dependent variable.

It is often important to carry out an experiment where all the independent variables are kept constant. This is called a control experiment.
You should only change one independent variable at a time. If you change both temperature and concentration at the same time you cannot tell what effect each one has. Decide what results you are going to look at and how to record them.

  1. Now carry out the experiments correctly. Where possible you should repeat results to make sure you get similar answers. Record these results carefully and include all of them, even if they seem to spoil your ideas.

  2. Look at your results and your hypothesis. Do they match? That is one of the question you should ask yourself after getting to this step. If they do not match, revise your hypothesis and go back to further experimentation.

  3. If they match completely you have produced a theory.

Now what is really a theory?
A theory is an idea that has experimental support. At this point other scientists might attempt to check your results by carrying out similar experiments.
Only when all scientists agree can we say you have produced a scientific truth or a law or a principle.

And that is it, after all scientist agree, you have produced your own law which you can either name after anything either your name or anything.

REFERENCES

. https://www.livescience.com/amp/45986-what-is-chemistry.html
. https://www.britannica.com/science/chemistry/Biochemistry
. https://www.toppr.com/guides/chemistry/some-basic-concepts-of-chemistry/importance-and-scope-of-chemistry/
. https://www.online-sciences.com/chemistry/applications-branches-and-fields-of-studying-chemistry/amp/
. https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Introductory_Chemistry/Map%3A_Introductory_Chemistry_(Tro)/01%3A_The_Chemical_World/1.03%3A_The_Scientific_Method_-_How_Chemists_Think
. https://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-scientific-investigation-definition-steps-examples.html



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