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What’s the Matter

Posted by Chemistry Tutor on February 24th, 2010

Air, Water and Other Things

Everything in this world takes up space and has weight – even air.

The three states of matter are solid, liquid, and gas. This refers to how a thing feels, how hard it is, or how it moves or looks, even if it’s invisible, like air. A table is a solid object, water is a liquid, and air is a gas. These three things are made up of small parts called molecules and even smaller parts called atoms. These small parts are that chemists study and rearrange to create new products that make our lives much better.

Atomie Brew: The Molecule and I
A molecule is the smallest part of anything. You cannot see molecules, but everything in the world is made up of them. The best way to understand this is to imagine yourself shrinking way, way down until you become a molecule. If you were a wood molecule on a tabletop, a salt crystal (one grain of salt) on the table would look like a mountain to you. If you were a molecule of water, you would be the littlest part of a drop. The last part of that water drop to evaporate would be you. But, while molecules are small, the parts that make them up are even smaller. These very small parts that form molecules are called atoms.

If you were a molecule of oxygen, you would be made up of two atoms. You would need two atoms of oxygen, because one atom of oxygen does not behave like oxygen.

A substance with only one kind of atom is called an element. Oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon are all elements. If you were an element of nitrogen, you would be made up of only nitrogen atoms. If you were an element of carbon, you would be made up of only carbon atoms. You could not be anything else.

Atoms of different elements come together to make different molecules. A molecule of water is made up of three atoms. If you were one atom of oxygen, you would have to be joined by two friends representing hydrogen atoms to make a molecule of water, because water has two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. You would now be a substance, made up of two (or more) different elements, called a compound. Water, carbon dioxide, and sugar are all examples of compounds. As a molecule you could exit in three possible forms. Chemists would identify you as one of the three states of matter: solid, liquid, or gas.

If necessary, a scientist, or chemist, could again split you apart, using electricity, back into your original parts. Now you would no longer be water but three separate atoms – two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. The very smallest part of you that could ever exist as water would have to be a molecule.

Chemistry experiments that you’d want to perform

Posted by Chemistry Tutor on February 23rd, 2010

The diet coke and mentos experiment.

Very often, people forget that not only can studying chemistry be fun, teaching it can be too. Teachers who employ various aids to teach chemistry or for that matter any subject, have been found to receive better feedback from students in general. To make learning chemistry fun, it is the duty of a teacher to show students how chemistry can be fun. And what better way to do this than fun experiments? Like your teacher we believe that chemistry can be fun too. Here we describe 3 basic experiments that might help you see how much fun chemistry can be!

The moth balls and soda experiment.
Drop a few moth balls in a jarful of soda water or any aerated soft drink. What do you see? You’ll notice that the moth balls bob up and down in the water. They’ll do this for quite some time if you keep the jar closed. This happens because as the moth balls sink, they gather carbon-di-oxide bubbles on their surface and rise to the surface. When they come to the top, the gas bubbles burst and the moth balls sink again.

The diet coke and mentos experiment.
Be careful with this one! Do not do this indoors. So what we’re looking at creating here is a diet coke volcano. Place a funnel or something over a jar full of diet coke. Put a few tablets of mentos in this funnel and run for your life! A huge, very high volcanic eruption of diet coke takes place! What happens is that the mentos has incisions all over it and this leads to a large surface are. CO2 present in the coke occupies these areas causing it to come gushing out all at once.

The invisible ink experiment.

How chemistry aids in engineering and science

Posted by Chemistry Tutor on February 22nd, 2010

Chemistry is and always has been an integral part of engineering and science. Chemistry is useful to all kinds of engineers. In other words it is not just the ‘chemical’ engineers who need to use chemistry in their field.

Also you don’t have much of a choice do you? Most colleges teach chemistry as part of their curriculum, regardless of whether you like it or not. The same can be said for schools. Also if you’re aspiring to do research especially in physics you don’t have much of a choice as the fields where research opportunities are maximum, are all related to chemistry. To be specific, these fields are mostly to do with the study of sub atomic particles, something which involves quite a large percentage of chemistry.

Studies to do with biology, also involve quite an impressive amount of chemistry. Bio-chemical reactions, synthesis of large biomolecules (also called macromolecules) like carbohydrates, proteins ,lipids, sugars etc, all involve chemistry to a considerable extent. Studies in biology cannot be carried out without knowledge of chemistry. So any research that you’d want to do in biology or any medical profession that you’d like to go into, knowledge of chemistry is a must.

Physics as we’ve already seen involves quite a lot of chemistry. To come to engineering, mechanical engineers for example need to have basic working knowledge of properties of different metals, oils etc, civil engineers must know how much stress can a material hold, packing of atoms in different materials etc.

In advanced areas like space research too, chemistry is involved. The search for better minerals from say, outer space is an everlasting process.

In lots of other professions, knowledge of chemistry is often a prerequisite. Who know, if nothing interests you, you might end up becoming a chemistry teacher.

How to study for general chemistry

Posted by Chemistry Tutor on January 4th, 2010

General Chemistry is easily the most basic, most conceptual of all chemistry fields. Most other fields of chemistry like organic, inorganic chemistry use applications of general chemistry to explain themselves. For example, chemical bonding, a study of how bonds are formed and what type of interactions are possible between two particles, is easily THE most important topic or concept, if you will, in all of chemistry. Proper understanding of chemical bonding ensures or makes the study of Organic and Inorganic chemistry easy. Most organic concepts revolve around how carbon is bonded to various other atoms.

Studying for general chemistry shouldn’t be taken as a task that must be done. It should be considered basic and something that is fun to do. Not enjoying general chemistry will cause problems in remembering concepts taught, and this can have far reaching consequences. General chemistry cannot be learnt from a book. It has to be ‘felt’. Whatever you learn, be it in school or during research in a library or on the internet, make a note of it somewhere. Referring to these notes in future will help you imprint the concepts that you think you should know.

A good book or decent resources, say for example sites like ours, is a very handy tool in remembering general chemistry concepts. Animations that explain a concept and simple language are very effective in driving home a complex idea. Sometimes, concepts taught might not be accurate or might even be ambiguous. There is hence a need that whatever source you study from is genuine, or vouched for by experts.

Most concepts in general chemistry do not involve mugging up or learning from a lot of books. The key is understanding a concept. When you learn a new concept, try and illustrate it with some examples, apply what you’ve learnt to scenarios that may arise, only then is mastery of general chemistry possible.