Chemistry Made Easy: Turning Tough Concepts into Everyday Fun!

[Ignitechem]

 Hi Everyone! I’m Hina! 🌟

I believe chemistry is extremely easy—and I’m not just saying that! With 7 years of teaching experience, I’ve been helping students understand tricky concepts, break them down into simple steps, and even make chemistry their favorite subject! 🧪💡

Here’s a fun fact: Ever wonder how detergents clean your clothes? Detergents are made of molecules with a hydrophobic tail (which loves grease) and a hydrophilic head (which loves water). When you wash clothes, the tail grabs onto the stains, and the head pulls it away with water. That’s chemistry in action! 🧼✨

See how exciting chemistry is? Stay tuned—I’ll share more fun facts and tips to make chemistry so easy, you’ll love it! 😊

[exchemist]

12 minutes ago, Ignitechem said:

 Hi Everyone! I’m Hina! 🌟

I believe chemistry is extremely easy—and I’m not just saying that! With 7 years of teaching experience, I’ve been helping students understand tricky concepts, break them down into simple steps, and even make chemistry their favorite subject! 🧪💡

Here’s a fun fact: Ever wonder how detergents clean your clothes? Detergents are made of molecules with a hydrophobic tail (which loves grease) and a hydrophilic head (which loves water). When you wash clothes, the tail grabs onto the stains, and the head pulls it away with water. That’s chemistry in action! 🧼✨

See how exciting chemistry is? Stay tuned—I’ll share more fun facts and tips to make chemistry so easy, you’ll love it! 😊

This is a science forum. Most of us are a bit beyond chemistry for 10 yr olds. 
 

Actually I don’t think chemistry is easy for schoolchildren. There are a lot of facts to learn, about  a lot of different chemical elements and their compounds, and it is not easy to visualise what is going on with all these substances. My son found it harder than either basic physics or basic biology and I can see why. 

[studiot]

Just now, exchemist said:

My son found it harder than either basic physics or basic biology and I can see why. 

You should read him G I Brown's book for bedtime reading.

 

😀

 

[exchemist]

1 minute ago, studiot said:

You should read him G I Brown's book for bedtime reading.

 

😀

 

Bit late for that now: he’s in his final semester of reading ancient history.
 

But I was able to pick up a chemistry-related error in the draft of his dissertation, on the trading of Egyptian faïence across the Eastern Med before the Bronze Age Collapse, which was gratifying. All to do with tin glaze - or rather its irrelevance to Egyptian faïence, as opposed to “real” Medieval faïence. Turns out the Egyptian variety was sintered sand, i.e. glass and featured copper compounds to make it blue, whereas it was  the Medieval variety which was stoneware with the famous white tin glaze. The Egyptian variety should not really be called faïence at all, though it is, for historical reasons. All rather confusing. So he took out the incorrect references to tin glaze.

[studiot]

Just now, exchemist said:

faïence

Thanks you have taught me a new word and facts about I subject I am pretty ignorant of.  +1

[Phi for All]

1 hour ago, Ignitechem said:

See how exciting chemistry is? Stay tuned—I’ll share more fun facts and tips to make chemistry so easy, you’ll love it! 😊

!

Moderator Note

We do believe chemistry is exciting, but we're a science discussion forum. If you're willing to stick around and talk about your posts, we'd love to take advantage of your experience, but posting factoids by themselves is not what we're here for. It's considered soapboxing if you aren't interested in talking about what you post.

Hopefully you're interested in some give and take. Welcome to SFN!

 

[exchemist]

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Thanks you have taught me a new word and facts about I subject I am pretty ignorant of.  +1

As indeed was I, until I read the draft dissertation. My French mother-in-law used to refer to faïence to mean stoneware as opposed to fine porcelain. That is what it seems to mean nowadays in modern French. But it used to be far more specific. The word apparently comes from a town in Italy, Faenza, where tin-glazed ceramics were pioneered in, I think, the early Medieval period, continuing through the Renaissance. 

Egyptian "faïence" however bore no relation to this. It was sintered glass and seems to have been highly prized in ancient Greece and elsewhere for decorative objects, being found in archaeological sites of palaces and high caste dwellings. They used alkali, e.g. from natron, a soda mineral alkali (from which the Na symbol for sodium comes) mined in places like Wadi El Natrun in Egypt. The alkali lowers the softening point of quartz, allowing the surface of the objects to acquire a glazed impermeable outer layer. Copper compounds gave these objects a green or blue colour. It was an alternative to lapis lazuli.  There are, according to his dissertation, signs the manufacturing technique may possibly have been exported to the Levant at some stage, but it is not certain.

Quite interesting, actually. The dissertation was all abut the archaeological evidence for the trading and uses of these objects, not the chemistry of manufacture. But when I read it, of course that was the  bit that intrigued me, so I started looking it up. 

Edited Saturday at 04:07 PM by exchemist

[TheVat]

Chemistry was my strongest subject as an undergrad.  Probably a fork in the road there, ca. age 20.  Wouldn't have taken much to push me over towards biochemistry or forensic chemistry.  An interesting road not taken.  

 

7 hours ago, exchemist said:

Actually I don’t think chemistry is easy for schoolchildren. There are a lot of facts to learn, about  a lot of different chemical elements and their compounds, and it is not easy to visualise what is going on with all these substances. My son found it harder than either basic physics or basic biology and I can see why. 

Yep.  The good grade I received in organic chemistry really meant something to me, because I had to work my ass off for it.  I recall being delighted at learning how Kekulé has first visualized the benzene ring - dreaming of the snake biting its own tail.  Our prof also liked to draw visual puns employing the benzene ring on the blackboard.  

[exchemist]

46 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Chemistry was my strongest subject as an undergrad.  Probably a fork in the road there, ca. age 20.  Wouldn't have taken much to push me over towards biochemistry or forensic chemistry.  An interesting road not taken.  

 

Yep.  The good grade I received in organic chemistry really meant something to me, because I had to work my ass off for it.  I recall being delighted at learning how Kekulé has first visualized the benzene ring - dreaming of the snake biting its own tail.  Our prof also liked to draw visual puns employing the benzene ring on the blackboard.  

Bet he didn't include this though:

[studiot]

Just now, TheVat said:

Chemistry was my strongest subject as an undergrad.  Probably a fork in the road there, ca. age 20.  Wouldn't have taken much to push me over towards biochemistry or forensic chemistry.  An interesting road not taken.  

Physicists like atoms whereas chemists like molecules.

This book about the story of the molecule is fascinating.

John Buckingham is an organic chemist and a pharmacist.

[swansont]

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Physicists like atoms

A common expression in atomic physics is “one atom good, two atoms bad”

[KJW]

18 hours ago, exchemist said:

Actually I don’t think chemistry is easy for schoolchildren. There are a lot of facts to learn, about  a lot of different chemical elements and their compounds, and it is not easy to visualise what is going on with all these substances. My son found it harder than either basic physics or basic biology and I can see why. 

I often say to people "nobody knows chemistry". This hyperbole comes from my observation that quiz show contestants who seem to know about physics, mathematics, biology, astronomy, geography, history, literature, etc seem to not know about chemistry, passing or getting wrong rather easy questions. It seems to be the one subject that very few contestants know about.
 

[exchemist]

8 hours ago, swansont said:

A common expression in atomic physics is “one atom good, two atoms bad”

Yep. We don't have an exact solution to Schrödinger's equation for the electrons in the hydrogen molecule, let alone anything more complex. And I seem to recall we can only get an "exact" solution for the hydrogen molecule cation, with one electron, if we invoke the Born-Oppenheimer approximation.  

Physics is hard because of the maths, but this is fairly simple algebra at the level it is taught to 11-12 yr olds. The qualitative principles, at this level, are fairly clean, simple and logical. Biology is complicated in that there are a lot of facts, but it is largely descriptive of things one can actually see, either directly or down a microscope. So that's fairly easy to conceptualise. But chemistry involves a lot of different liquids, solid or gaseous substances, all looking very much alike and which change into others, according to a complicated set of only very loosely observed rules, governed partly by the Periodic Table, with all its numerous elements, and partly by other rather abstract concepts such as acids and base or, even worse, oxidation states.  It's very messy. 

I don't believe it is a coincidence that chemistry was the last of the main physical sciences to get put on a proper footing, in the c.19th.

[studiot]

Just now, exchemist said:

It's very messy. 

Chemistry is messy.

What a suprise.

😀

[exchemist]

1 hour ago, studiot said:

Chemistry is messy.

What a suprise.

😀

Haha yes, it’s a bit “pope found to be Catholic”, I realise. But it is not intended as a profound insight. 🙂

[TheVat]

17 hours ago, exchemist said:

Bet he didn't include this though:

Ha! My favorite line in the handbook description is Arsole is only moderately aromatic.  

Our class jokes were more like...

[exchemist]

5 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Ha! My favorite line in the handbook description is Arsole is only moderately aromatic.  

Our class jokes were more like...

Haha. And then there is this stuff, which keeps coming round at regular intervals..........:

 

 

 

[studiot]

Alas, Alac, poor Joe

His voice we'll hear no more.

For what he took for H₂O

Was H₂SO₄