What Is the Importance of Chemistry to Daily Life

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Digestion; enzymes promoting chemical reactions that power our bodies. Lifting your arm requires your body to make and burn ATP using oxygen with carbon dioxide as one of the waste gases produced. - The internal combustion engine takes liquid gasoline, converts it to a gas, burns it takes the waste to make mechanical energy and then expels some noxious gases. The rare metals in the catalytic converter scrub out the sulfuric acid, but we still get the ingredients for smog out of them. - Cooking is the heating and combination of compounds to make something new. In some cases, like rising bread we have an actual chemical reaction where the yeast changes the food. - When concrete dries and hardens the water actually causes a chemical reaction with the cement making a binding action drying concrete isn't just losing water it is undergoing a chemical change and one that creates heat as well (an exothermic reaction). - When you write with ink on paper, the ink and paper unite in a chemical reaction so that you can't erase it. Specialized inks allow a short period where you can erase some inks, but most inks dry and can't be erased; they have bound with the paper. This includes your pen and your ink jet printer. - Plastics are all about organic chemistry. - The sun undergoes fusion and yes that too is chemistry. It creates radiation and photons so we can see. Some of the radiation interacts with oxygen to create ozone and the ozone layer shields us from harmful UV radiation. - Steel is 94% iron and 6% carbon. The carbon forms complex bonds making steel so strong that you can bend an iron crowbar, but not a steel one. Steel is one of the most common construction materials, next to glass (a chemical combination of silicon), plastic (organic chemistry) and aluminum which is refined from bauxite ore using extremely high voltage--another instance of chemistry in action. -

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