Chemistry

Chemistry ist often one of the subjects in school, if not the subject, that many people dislike, or just didn’t pay attention to, since it’s not needed.

Then some of the people that have little to no knowledge of chemistry claim that chemicals in general are a bad thing. Of course they mean only certain substances, but the generalization includes many more substances that are even beneficial to humanity.

To be even more precise: Everything is a chemical, because almost everything can be made to react chemically. But this is just a chemist's view.

Much more hypocritical is the fact that the same people use devices encased in plastic on a daily basis. They use soap, detergent, and face creams. These are all products that contain all sorts of chemicals, most of them not occurring in nature.

Some might even stick to compounds that are only found in nature. The reason for this is simple: They are naturally occurring and thus far safer to use than anything a chemist could “cook up”.

Fact is that some of the most dangerous poisons, Botulinum toxin, is naturally occurring. It is also known as Botox and used in “face lifts”. I put this in quotes as the lifting is just the targeted destruction of neurons - no movement of the skin will result in no wrinkles there …

My point is: Danger from chemicals is everywhere. No matter whether they occur naturally or have been created artificially. The only way to protect yourself from those dangers is knowledge.

Chemistry is a big field, but I will try to impart some knowledge on chemistry to you. Let’s look on some of the small buildings blocks of everything: Atoms and Molecules.

I’ll make this into a series of posts, as I don’t think you’ll appreciate a text-dump. If I can think of an experiment you can easily try at home, I might throw it into the mix.