8 Everyday Examples to Help Your Child Appreciate Chemistry

Does your child dislike studying chemistry? Does he/she consider chemistry to be a useless subject?

You can’t blame young students for having a certain disdain for chemistry. After all, there are all these strange looking chemistry formulae that one has to learn, and it’s difficult for students to grasp the relevance of chemistry in today’s digital world.

To make matters worse, chemistry is often taught in a boring and gruelling manner in the classroom. It’s almost as if the teacher is speaking some alien code when in fact chemistry is omnipresent in the world around us.

To quote celebrity doctor and thinker Deepak Chopra, “To think is to practice brain chemistry”. Living organisms are created from chemistry – from the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe, everything is the result of a chemical reaction. Chemicals are also present in everyday items such as toothpaste, salt, sugar, graphite (used in pencils), moth balls, and chalk.

Chemistry is an interesting subject. What if you shared some of the everyday applications of chemistry with your child? Perhaps they may learn to appreciate the subject. To help you here is a list of everyday applications of ‘chemistry at work’ along with suggestions on how to broach the topic.

Making Chemistry Interesting and Relevant to Young Minds

Do you know what do plants eat? Plants and trees are everywhere. While kids know that we need trees to prevent soil erosion and to keep the air clean, but from where do these hard-working, useful things get their food? The answer is photosynthesis, a chemical reaction by which plants break down the water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide into food for themselves and oxygen for our planet. CO2 + 6 H2O + light → C6H12O6 + 6 O2

From where do you get the energy to play around all day? While plants get their energy from the sun, humans and animals derive it from the food that we eat. But how does that food give us energy? The answer lies in a chemical process in our bodies, known aerobic cellular respiration. The oxygen we breathe combines with the glucose present in food to produce energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and heat. Chemically, this is what our bodies do –

C6H12O6 + 6O2 → 6CO2 + 6H2O + energy (36 ATPs)

You love to eat bread, but how is it made? Food products such as bread involve the use of bacteria or yeast. When the bacteria are introduced in the bread dough, the same chemical process of generating ATP comes into play. Only this time it is the bacteria generating the heat. This process of fermentation causes the dough to rise and become ready for baking. Fermentation is also used to make yoghurt, wine, beer, and cheese, among other food products.

How is the food that we eat, digested in our stomachs? Yes, you guessed it – it’s chemistry. When we eat food, the enzyme present in the saliva breaks it down into sugar and other carbohydrates. The hydrochloric acid present in the stomach further breaks it down, so that the body can absorb the nutrients.

When your clothes get dirty, Mummy washes them using a detergent. That’s chemistry too! Detergents clean by way of a chemical ‘soap’ reaction. Water alone cannot remove oil and other stains on the clothes. The chemical detergent, when added to the water, binds the grime and creates enough surface tension for the dirt to be washed away.

Where would civilisation be without the invention of fire? Every time you light a match, the chemical reaction of combustion takes place. Combustion is when a hydrocarbon and oxygen combine to create heat and water, and in the process produce a flame. hydrocarbon + O2 → CO2 + H2O

When you fall sick, we rely on chemistry to make you alright. Medicines are the best example of chemistry. The pills we take to recover from the common flu are based on chemistry. Antibiotic drugs contain chemicals that attack the perpetrating pathogens without adversely affecting the body. Painkillers include chemical compounds that work with the nervous system and the brain, to stop you from feeling the pain. The drug Penicillin is known to have saved more than a 100 million lives since its invention in the early twentieth century.

Did you know that chemistry breakthroughs are continually shaping the modern world? The LCD television sets we love to watch would not have been possible if the scientist George Gray at the University of Hull had not invented a molecule known as the 5CB. Derivatives of this molecule are present in watches, calculators, phones, computers and almost all TVs of today.

Chemistry is only as thought-provoking as we make it for our children. So the next time you hear, “But Mom, why do I need to study Chemistry?”, cite these everyday examples of the wonders of chemistry.

If you want to inculcate a love for the sciences in your child, perhaps hiring an experienced private tutor is the way to go. Begin your FREE search for an online tutor right here on MyPrivateTutor.