How to Make Chemistry an Interesting Science?

Chemistry is often described as the Central Science, highlighting its importance to numerous scientific disciplines, such as Biology, Biomedical and Chemical Engineering, Forensics, Geosciences, Materials Science, Toxicology and many more. It is the study of the structure and transformation of matter. It is very difficult to say when the documentation of chemistry began from. 

When Aristotle wrote the first systematic treatises on chemistry in the 4th century BCE, his conceptual grasp of the nature of matter was tailored to accommodate a relatively simple range of observable phenomena. In the 21stcentury, chemistry has become the largest scientific discipline, producing over half a million publications a year ranging from direct empirical investigations to substantial theoretical work.

Why study Chemistry? Many students take this question in mind when they feel difficult in the beginning phase. Well, understanding chemistry helps you to understand the world around you. Cooking is chemistry. Everything you can touch or taste or smell is a chemical. When you study chemistry, you come to understand a bit about how things work. Chemistry isn't secret knowledge, useless to anyone but a scientist. It's the explanation for everyday things, like why laundry detergent works better in hot water or how baking soda works or why not all pain relievers work equally well on a headache. If you know some chemistry, you can make educated choices about everyday products that you use.

This central science has certain difficulties among the beginners of chemistry. Let’s call them as pitfalls in Chemistry. The pitfalls in chemistry can be outlined in different headings. New words and new symbols are the first things beginners usually trip of. If misunderstanding these new words and symbols are not addressed, it is very difficult to survive. Its effects are immediate and are the usual reason people give up on their exploration of chemistry. The remedy is to find those words or symbols and get a good explanation or definition for them. When looking up the meaning of words, it’s better to try to find the origin of the word and try to understand the words in a funny manner.

           

The second pitfall is learning without having enough reality on the subject. This means the student only have an abstract or vague familiarity with the subject. The initial reaction to a misunderstood word or symbol is that the mind goes blank. This is my own experience. Have you ever been reading a book and got to the bottom of the page and realized you don’t remember a word you just read? I have witnessed students reading a paragraph out loud, and when they came to a misunderstood word, they skipped right over it and didn't even realize that they had skipped it. Their mind just went blank when they saw it. If that happens to you when studying chemistry, back up and find the misunderstood word or symbol. Perhaps it will work.

           

The third pitfall is "jumping in over your head;" in other words, you move too fast by tackling difficult tasks without first mastering the simpler tasks. The symptoms may be feeling irritated, impatient and distracted. This is also the sequential cause of misunderstood words and/or misunderstood symbols. Once the mind disconnects from the subject matter due to misunderstood words, students find themselves growing more impatient, irritated, or distracted. Even little things annoy them. If this happens, go back and find the misunderstood words and learn their meanings. Furthermore, try to learn interesting facts about chemistry. They create interest in the subject matter. Do you know, lightning strikes produce O3, which is ozone, and strengthen the ozone layer of the atmosphere? Although oxygen gas is colorless, the liquid and solid forms of oxygen are blue. The human body contains enough carbon to provide 'lead' (which is really graphite) for about 9,000 pencils. One bucket full of water contains more atoms than there are bucket full of water in the Pacific Ocean. Is it amazing? Catch up chemistry you will feel amazed every day!