Learning Objectives

Chemistry is the study of matterwhat it consists of, what its properties are, and how it changes. Being able to describe the ingredients in a cake and how they change when the cake is baked is called chemistry. Matter is anything that has mass and takes up spacethat is, anything that is physically real. Some things are easily identified as matterthis book, for example. Others are not so obvious. Because we move so easily through the air, we sometimes forget that it, too, is matter.

Chemistry is one branch of science. Science is the process by which we learn about the natural universe by observing, testing, and then generating models that explain our observations. Because the physical universe is so vast, there are many different branches of science (Figure (PageIndex{1})). Thus, chemistry is the study of matter, biology is the study of living things, and geology is the study of rocks and the earth. Mathematics is the language of science, and we will use it to communicate some of the ideas of chemistry.

Although we divide science into different fields, there is much overlap among them. For example, some biologists and chemists work in both fields so much that their work is called biochemistry. Similarly, geology and chemistry overlap in the field called geochemistry. Figure (PageIndex{1}) shows how many of the individual fields of science are related.

There are many other fields of science, in addition to the ones (biology, medicine, etc.) listed

Alchemy Is in No way Chemistry!

As our understanding of the universe has changed over time, so has the practice of science. Chemistry in its modern form, based on principles that we consider valid today, was developed in the 1600s and 1700s. Before that, the study of matter was known as alchemy and was practiced mainly in China, Arabia, Egypt, and Europe.

Alchemy was a somewhat mystical and secretive approach to learning how to manipulate matter. Practitioners, called alchemists, thought that all matter was composed of different proportions of the four basic elementsfire, water, earth, and airand believed that if you changed the relative proportions of these elements in a substance, you could change the substance. The long-standing attempts to transmute common metals into gold represented one goal of alchemy. Alchemys other major goal was to synthesize the philosophers stone, a material that could impart long lifeeven immortality. Alchemists used symbols to represent substances, some of which are shown in the accompanying figure. This was not done to better communicate ideas, as chemists do today, but to maintain the secrecy of alchemical knowledge, keeping others from sharing in it.

In spite of this secrecy, in its time alchemy was respected as a serious, scholarly endeavor. Isaac Newton, the great mathematician and physicist, was also an alchemist.

Alchemy and the ACS (American Chemical Society)

While watching the video below and answer the following questions.

Questions

The study of modern chemistry has many branches, but can generally be broken down into five main disciplines, or areas of study:

In practice, chemical research is often not limited to just one of the five major disciplines. A particular chemist may use biochemistry to isolate a particular chemical found in the human body such as hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying component of red blood cells. He or she may then proceed to analyze the hemoglobin using methods that would pertain to the areas of physical or analytical chemistry. Many chemists specialize in areas that are combinations of the main disciplines, such as bioinorganic chemistry or physical organic chemistry.

Chemists at work

The American Chemical Society (ACS) has designed a series of videos illustrating the different fields that a chemist could pursue. Please watch this 2 minute and 23-second video and answer the questions below:

Read the original post:
1.1: What is Chemistry? - Chemistry LibreTexts