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Aug 15, 2015 · Examples of Chemistry in the Real World. There are many examples of chemistry in daily life, showing how common and important it is. Digestion relies on chemical reactions between food and acids and enzymes to break down molecules into nutrients the body can absorb and use.
- Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D.
- Elements in the Human Body. Your body is made up of chemical compounds, which are combinations of elements. While you probably know your body is mostly water, which is hydrogen and oxygen, can you name the other elements that make you?
- Chemistry of Love. The emotions that you feel are a result of chemical messengers, primarily neurotransmitters. Love, jealousy, envy, infatuation, and infidelity all share a basis in chemistry.
- Why Onions Make You Cry. They sit there so harmless-looking on the kitchen counter. Yet as soon as you cut an onion, the tears begin to fall. What is it in onions that makes them burn your eyes?
- Why Ice Floats. Can you imagine how different the world around you would be if ice sank? For one thing, lakes would freeze from the bottom. Chemistry holds the explanation for why ice floats while most other substances sink when they freeze.
- Combustion. You experience combustion reactions when you strike a match, burn a candle, start a campfire, or light a grill. In a combustion reaction, a fuel reacts with oxygen from air to produce water and carbon dioxide.
- Photosynthesis. Plants use a chemical reaction called photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide and water into food (glucose) and oxygen. It’s a key reaction because it generates oxygen and yields food for plants and animals.
- Aerobic Cellular Respiration. Animals use the oxygen provided by plants to perform essentially the reverse reaction of photosynthesis to get energy for cells.
- Anaerobic Cellular Respiration. Organisms also have ways of getting energy without oxygen. Humans use anaerobic respiration during intense or prolonged exercise to get enough energy to muscle cells.
- Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D.
- Photosynthesis. Plants apply a chemical reaction called photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide and water into food (glucose) and oxygen. It's one of the most common everyday chemical reactions and also one of the most important because this is how plants produce food for themselves and animals and convert carbon dioxide into oxygen.
- Aerobic Cellular Respiration. Aerobic cellular respiration is the opposite process of photosynthesis in that energy molecules are combined with the oxygen we breathe to release the energy needed by our cells plus carbon dioxide and water.
- Anaerobic Respiration. Anaerobic respiration is a set of chemical reactions that allows cells to gain energy from complex molecules without oxygen. Your muscle cells perform anaerobic respiration whenever you exhaust the oxygen being delivered to them, such as during intense or prolonged exercise.
- Combustion. Every time you strike a match, burn a candle, build a fire, or light a grill, you see the combustion reaction. Combustion combines energetic molecules with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide and water.
With such an enormous range of topics, it is essential to know about chemistry at some level to understand the world around us. In more formal terms chemistry is the study of matter and the changes it can undergo. Chemists sometimes refer to matter as ‘stuff’, and indeed so it is.
Mar 11, 2023 · "What's That Stuff" is a regular feature of an American Chemical Society publication that gives examples of how chemistry is used to enrich everyday life. It tells us that Paper [3] is made by soaking plant fibers in water, then matting, pressing, and drying them.
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Chemistry, from the Greek word χημεία (khēmeia) meaning "cast together" or "pour together", is the science of matter at the atomic to molecular scale, dealing primarily with collections of atoms, such as molecules, crystals, and metals.
