Chemistry

Watching fermentation. Building a three-dimensional model of a molecule.

📖 In short

Chemistry is the science of substances: what they're made of, how they change and how they react with each other. When food cooks, iron rusts, wood burns or dough rises, chemical changes are happening!

🤩 Did you know?

There are more than 90 elements in nature, and scientists have made others in laboratories.
Muslim scholars used precise balances in their experiments more than 1200 years ago.
The Arabic word “al-kimiya” passed into many languages, as in “chemistry”.
Never mix household cleaning products, because some make harmful gases.

🔎 Find out more

🌟 Elements

All substances are made of simple basic substances called elements, like oxygen, carbon, iron and gold. Scientists arrange them in a big chart called the periodic table.

🔍 Chemical reactions

When some substances are mixed, they change and make new substances. Put a little vinegar on baking soda and lots of bubbles appear! That's a chemical reaction giving off a gas.

💡 Jabir ibn Hayyan

One of the pioneers of chemistry was the Muslim scholar Jabir ibn Hayyan, who did many experiments more than a thousand years ago and improved laboratory equipment, so he's called “the father of chemistry”.

🎯 Chemistry in our lives

Chemistry is everywhere: in the medicines that cure us, the soap that cleans us, plastics, paints, fuels and fertilizers. Chemists work carefully in laboratories wearing safety goggles.

📸 More pictures

Measuring molecular masses with a mass spectrometer. Collecting soil samples at a hazardous waste site. Creating the formula for a new perfume. Checking a drug purification machine.

🧩 Test yourself

1 Who is called “the father of chemistry”?

2 What happens when we mix vinegar and baking soda?

3 There are more than ?? elements in nature, and scientists have made others in laboratories.

4 Which picture shows “Chemistry”?