Question: why do you like the chemistry ?:)

Suze Kundu answered on 13 Jun 2011:

Hey! 🙂

Aah, chemistry! What’s not to love?! I’ve had the chance to play in a lab as a job. I am paid to satisfy my curiosity!

I guess that any scientist or researcher could claim the same, but for me, chemistry is the most fascinating of the science subjects because it is everywhere, doing everything. It uses theories in physics, and combines them with maths to make something useful happen. It is necessary for all biological processes to take place.

Baking a cake or making a loaf of bread are chemistry. I happen to be a terrible cook, although I hope that I’m a better chemist! When you eat the bread, or the lovely slice of cake, and it lands in your tummy, a whole load of chemical reactions happen to break down the food, and take out all the good bits, while getting rid of the bits that might not be as useful. Now, I’m not going to get into the details of getting rid of things that our bodies don’t need (yuck!), but the way that we absorb the good bits of our food is all chemistry. Every process in our body relies on a chemical reaction.

If we move away from the human body, and animals, the world around us has benefitted from discoveries in chemistry – medical discoveries, materials chemistry to make building materials stronger, bendier, thinner, taller, etc.

With chemistry, you have the tools to make so many new things! I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s a really old vibe that comes from ancestors that were alchemists, trying to turn lead into gold. Who knows!

(I don’t deny that the shiny metals and the pretty colours attracted me to chemistry, but that’s personal preference!)