In school, you may have had to learn about some basic chemistry. It may have been one of the more difficult topics that you had to learn about, in fact. Many people find chemistry to be complicated, tedious, or not particularly relevant to who they are as students or even potentially who they are as adults. But this is not the case! Chemistry is vitally important to every aspect of your life. You just have to figure out how to dig in and look for real illustrations and examples that showcase this to you.
Look for a few ways you can make the application of chemistry come to life in your mind. Many different chemicals, liquids, and cleaners that you buy come from the use of surfactants, which are complex molecular structures. The type of gasoline that you put in your car is heavily dependent on the use of chemistry. And if you read the ingredients in a box of processed food, how many can you pronounce? All of those very intriguing words that are listed as ingredients are products of chemistry in one form or another.
Surfactants
Do you know how manufacturing companies make paint or industrial cleaning solutions? Unless you’ve worked in industries where that is common knowledge, you probably don’t have the foggiest idea. But chemistry is heavily at play. Companies will use surfactants to mix with other chemicals that are then used to create these common household items or commercial products.
Without the use of chemistry and the use of surfactants, many of the things that we use every day would not be possible in their current liquid format. Brilliant chemists have been working for hundreds of years to stabilize different types of compounds, and modern technology allows them to utilize that area of science to make your life better.
Types of Gasoline
Think about what happens when you take your car to go to a gas station. You parked in front of the gas pump, and then you have to pick what quality of gas you are going to put in your engine. How do you think these numbers were developed that tell you what category gasoline is in, and how do you know what engine type mixes appropriately with all of them? It is all a matter of chemistry. Plus, the verification of what those numbers mean is vitally important, without which you could be dangerously damaging your car’s engine and have no idea why.
Ingredients in Processed Food
A final example to think about would be when it comes to the ingredients in processed foods. There is a mantra in the health food industry that says if you can’t pronounce an ingredient, you shouldn’t be eating it. Though this is kind of wacky advice concerning some of the people that say it, it does give you an example of how chemistry is involved in our daily activities. The names of the various chemicals in processed food come from the ability of chemists to break down what is in different chemicals, minerals, and complex foods.