All About Chemistry

Welcome to the Okay Let's Learn Podcast.

This is two podcasts and one, one where we dive into great books and stories, and another

where we just dive into great different topics.

My name is Kevin O'Keefe, so today, okay, let's learn all about chemistry.

Pinky backing on our previous episode all about physics, this will be in a series of different

episodes that will cover different subjects that we all learn in school.

It's important that we know all this.

So what is chemistry?

If physics helps us understand how things move and how energy works, then chemistry helps

us understand what everything is made of, and importantly, how those things change.

Chemistry is the science of matter and change.

There is anything that takes up space and has mass.

The air you breathe, the water you drink, the pencil on your desk, the food you eat,

and even your own body, it's all made of matter.

So chemistry asks questions like this, what are things made of, right?

And why do some things mix together and others don't?

A typical question like iron, why does it rust?

And all these different changes, how can we use these changes to help our life become

better in terms of medicines, getting healthier, having cleaner water, everything?

So to understand chemistry, we have to go all the way down to the smallest building blocks

of matter.

And what is that?

Everything is made of tiny particles called atoms.

As we talked about in our previous episode, atoms are so small that millions of them can

fit across the tip of a pencil.

Scientists discovered, listen to this, that atoms come in different kinds, and those different

kinds of atoms are called elements.

And element is a substance that's only one type of atom.

For example, oxygen is an element, gold is an element, carbon, hydrogen, all elements.

These elements are all organized and something we all remember back in chemistry class for

May was junior year in high school with Mrs. Lawson.

It was, it is sterling, it's not, it wasn't.

It's in this chart called the periodic table.

So this table is like a giant map of all matter.

It shows all the elements that scientists have discovered.

And guess how many different types there are?

There's over a hundred.

Not too many hundred different atoms that make up everything in the universe.

And here's the amazing part.

While there's only a hundred elements, they can combine in millions of different ways.

Now before we continue, we want to stay with elements in terms of understanding what

this element is.

To understand what an element is, we have to go inside an atom and understand what's,

yes, what an atom is made of, right?

So we said the atoms are the building blocks of matter, but does that mean that atoms are

the smallest thing on the planet in nature?

Well, no, because while atoms are the smallest units of matter that behave like in elements,

okay, we'll get back to this.

Atoms themselves are made up of even smaller particles inside every atom or three main parts.

You got protons, neutrons, and electrons.

At the center of the atom is something called the nucleus.

Inside the nucleus is this tiny core of protons and neutrons.

So again, there's this core called the nucleus.

Inside there are protons and neutrons.

Protons have a positive charge.

Neutrons?

No charge at all.

They're just sitting there.

Moving around the outside of the nucleus are incredibly tiny particles called electrons.

The electrons have a negative charge.

Protons inside the nucleus, positive charge.

Electrons spinning around that nucleus, negative charge.

What you've got to basically imagine that the atom is like is like a miniature solar system.

The nucleus, right?

It's a sun.

The electrons moved around is, or like the planets, but certainly they don't go in a predictable

orbit around the nucleus.

Matter of fact, they are so, it's so complicated in the orbits and the way they move around

the nucleus that you can't even begin to explain it.

But here's a metaphor that I can help you understand and explain.

If you're talking about an atom being a football stadium, the nucleus, listen to this.

It will only be about the size of a marble at the center.

Anything else would mostly be empty space where the electrons are moving around.

So atoms are actually almost entirely, Jasper, Jasper, be quiet.

Yes, that's my dog, my crazy dog.

You may have heard about him in previous episodes of the podcast.

It's been a while since you've joined us Jasper, but don't interrupt me again.

So atoms are actually almost entirely empty space.

So here's where we get back to elements on the periodic table.

Every element is defined by how many protons are in its atoms.

So for example, hydrogen has one proton.

Carbon has six protons.

So that makes hydrogen a different type of atom than carbon.

It makes it a different element.

It has eight protons and gold, gold's on the periodic table.

Gold is an atom that has 79 protons.

It's an element.

So the number of protons is called the atomic number.

And yes, it determines what element the atom is.

So if you want to take a look at all those elements, all those hundred different atoms

that are out there, a lot of them you know.

Take a look at the periodic table.

Like I said, nickel, the abbreviation is NI.

And right there in the top left hand corner is where you'll see the number of protons

in that particular element as 28 protons.

Right next to its cobalt, 27 protons.

And right to the left of that is iron.

The initials are FE, iron.

Talk about something that's important, 26 protons.

Over this periodic table, there'll be many elements you know and many you don't.

Finally, again, we're talking about elements being different types of atoms.

Right?

So if you look at one atom that's nickel, well, just think of it as Lego blocks.

And each element is just a different color of the Legos, right?

Now this is where it gets interesting.

Chemistry is mostly about how these atoms connect and rearrange themselves to make new substances.

In other words, atoms rarely stay by themselves.

Instead they like to connect with other atoms.

So when the atoms join together, they form molecules.

What is the perfect example?

Every drop of water is made from a molecule that's called H2O.

Two atoms of hydrogen, one atom of oxygen.

Each water droplet, that's what it is.

So this simple combination obviously makes everything from oceans to rivers to rain and

ice.

On their own, hydrogen gas can burn.

Well, it helps things burn.

But when hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water, what's the result?

Liquid, water, and guess what it does?

It puts fires out.

That's chemistry.

Now here's something else that's fascinating.

Fascinating part of chemistry is when you have these reactions, when matter changes,

it's called a chemical reaction.

This happens when the atoms rearrange themselves to form new substances.

So you'll see chemical reactions happening all the time.

This could happen when wood burns in a fire, when iron rust, even when food is cooked

in an oven.

In each of these cases, the atoms are breaking apart and reconnecting in new and different

ways.

Chemistry is the science of understanding how and why all these changes are happening.

Now this goes without saying, we touched on this in the physics episode.

But as you know, matter is everything around us, which we already mentioned.

But it comes in three different states.

You're either a solid, you're a liquid or a guess.

The atoms in a solid, they're all packed tightly together.

You know what solids are, rocks, metals, even ice, liquids.

The atoms are moving a little bit more freely, but they still stay close together.

Obviously, liquids, water, milk, oil, guesses.

The atoms are spread far apart and they move quickly.

Our air, oxygen, steam, what's interesting about this is that temperature and energy can

cause all these different phases of matter to change from one state to another.

We know this, ice can melt into water when we add heat, water boils into steam.

When we add heat, this is moving from ice, a solid, into a liquid water and it's moving

from a liquid water into steam, which is a guess.

Even though the form changes, the atoms still stay the same.

They're just in different locations for a lack of a better way of putting it.

Now people think chemistry, they think of goggles, they think of being in a laboratory,

they think of the Bunsen burners and those flasks where you're pouring one liquid into

another and creating all these awesome experiments and you know what, flashback.

Junior year, high school, spack and kill high school, but keeps in New York.

Mrs. Lawson, God bless you.

In that year, that class was so important, that's where I met my best friend or I should

say we knew each other, that's when we became best friends, we were in every single class.

But yeah, we did a lot of experiments, but the fascinating part about chemistry is it's

not just happening in laboratories, right?

It's happening everywhere all the time.

It happens when we digest food, when plants grow, when soap cleans our hands.

When our body is a giant chemical factory, every second, millions of chemical reactions

are happening inside us, turning food and oxygen into energy that keeps us alive.

So this is where physics and chemistry collide and meets and again, it's just so fascinating.

I mean, one more point on this as I'm thinking about it, life itself, it's based on chemistry.

Our muscles, bones, our brain, our blood, it's all builds from molecules and one of the

most important molecules, a lot of us may not know this.

The most important molecule of life is made from the element carbon.

Why?

Because carbon's special ability to connect with so many different atoms, it forms the basis

of all these molecules that are proteins and part of our DNA.

These molecules actually carry the instructions, you talk about important, carry the instructions

for how living things grow, how we repair ourselves and how we reproduce, how we continue on

as a species.

So when we talk about studying chemistry, we're talking about how life works.

Now we can't have anything more important than that.

But let's look at five different ways that chemistry helps us every day.

We'll start at five.

Clean water, chemistry helps make our drinking water safe.

Water treatment plants, every town, every city has them.

They use chemical processes that remove dirt, bacteria, and all these bad substances.

So the water coming into our faucet is clean and safe to drink.

Chemistry.

Four.

Medicine.

Right?

It's created through chemistry.

Chemist design molecules that fight bacteria, reduce pain, and help our body control our

diseases, everything that you can think of, right?

Common medicines, penicillin, aspirin, were discovered through chemistry.

Three.

How about cooking?

How about food?

Cooking is really all about kitchen, chemistry, chemistry in the kitchen.

When bread rises, when meat browns, when milk turns into cheese, those are all chemical

reactions, changing the structure and the flavor of our food.

Two.

Technology.

Things.

Materials.

Chemistry helps create pretty much everything we use in everyday life, plastics.

Plastics worn around, created through chemistry, batteries, fabrics, computer components,

all depend on chemical discoveries.

Question number one.

How about feeding the world?

One of chemistry's greatest achievements has been helping farmers grow more food.

Fertilizers.

They give plants important nutrients so crops can grow stronger and produce more food.

How was this figured out?

Chemistry.

It helps farmers grow enough food, yes, to feed billions of people around the world.

Again, what is chemistry?

It's the science of what everything is made of and how everything can change.

It explains how atoms build molecules, how substances react, and how matter can change

from one form to another.

So whether it's the air we breathe, the food we eat, the medicines that heals us, chemistry

is working quietly behind the scenes.

It is amazing and guess what?

It's happening before our eyes.

It's not just in laboratories.

I hope friends, this has made chemistry a little bit easier to understand and fascinating

and interesting that you could dive into it.

Whether you're a kid or adult, it's never too late to learn.

So thanks for staying with me on this journey, learning all about chemistry.

Reach out to me at kevmok21 at gmail.com.

Look here in the podcast notes, we have a Facebook group which you can go to to follow

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But until next time, have fun and keep learning.