My personal favorite basic "chemistry is cool" example is soap. It's so integral to modern life, and seems so innocuous. But the explanation of how soap works gets into the differences between polar and nonpolar molecules, and if you get into making soap then you can explain acids and bases as well. We use chemistry every day.
RUclips channels like NileRed and Explosions & Fire made me realize what I missed out on. Also stuff like material science is amazing and applicable everywhere, but somehow school manages to beat all the fun out of chemistry.
I recently brushed up on the Krebs cycle as one of the potential explanations for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is that the Krebs cycle gets short circuited and produces fewer ATPs, thereby affecting every single little thing.
Periodic Videos is legendary! Don’t forget I was in two Objectivity videos, I am a proud member of the Bradyverse. Period Vids is OG science RUclips and of course Sir Martyn is himself a legend. But sadly I think most people outside our nerdy world of science RUclips probably won’t be able to name him…which isn’t shade at all, I wish he HAD been given his own prime time BBC TV show
As a phd chemistry student I was ready to slide on you when I read the title but you are making good points. The common folks don't really know what chemistry is because there are no fancy concepts like black holes or bang that garner mass interest. Sadly most people dont even know who fritz harber is (one of the most influential humans in a good and bad way)
As someone doing a masters degree in maths I feel very much the same. People pretty universally tend to hate doing maths and think of it only as what they were forced to do in school. Even physicists and engineers hate maths in my experience. But when I say I study maths most people tend to have not a single idea what that entails or what maths really is.
You're completely right about how underrepresented and underrated chemistry is. I also agree that chemistry is usually very abstract when you don't know the theory, but is kind of self-explanatory when you do. The famous test of obscenity comes to mind when a Supreme Court judge said he can't define porn but he knows it when he sees it. I'm a final year Chemistry PhD student, I went to a Chemistry vocational high school, then did a Chemistry BSc, MSc, an Erasmus, and now a PhD. I can't tell you how many times I had to explain to friends, family, high school teachers(!), what a Chemistry degree is and how it's different from Chemical Engineering. I completely agree that Chemistry has an image problem. As you mention most outreach demonstrations just stick to explosions and stuff like elephant's toothpaste because they are immediately understandable and offer an opportunity to talk about the underlying reaction. But as you say, this creates a false and simplified image of chemistry. I think a big problem with the wider image of chemistry is that many big chemical companies have created a really bad reputation for chemistry, mostly because of putting profit before environmental and public health concerns. Also I think that since chemistry often operates with practically invisible materials or processes it's hard to come up with experiments that make the science visible in some way. Like physics has no problem making gravity or turbulence or Newton's laws both visible and immediately understandable in experiments, but how do you show that by electrolysing water you got H2 and O2? You can't tell, the gas bubbling off has no smell, and it's colourless, so you just have to believe the person telling you if you don't know the theory. I think this is biggest problem with coming up with good demonstrations, you're very often just left having to believe what you're told instead of being able to see for yourself. Petrochemicals have been the single biggest driver of the chemical industry in the last 100 years, but fossil fuels are problematic in quite complex ways so you can't just show a destillation of oil and talk about the chemistry there without going into the wider background. Otherwise it would be really cool to see how a viscous black liquid separates into fractions of different boiling points in a column. Plastics are another massive part of chemistry, they were genuinely the start of a new era in human history, but they have also become one of our biggest problems so you can't really use the chemistry of plastics in outreach. If this wasn't the case you could make a small batch of nylon for example, which would show how two transparent, colourless liquids form a solid when mixed, or how polyurethanes puff up when they polymerise. Pharmaceuticals are another massive area of chemistry, but most of it is way too complex to be used in outreach. The only thing coming to mind is a simple thin layer chromatography setup where you'd separate compounds corresponding to different colours from autumn leaves, or flowers. Coating and functional materials are a massive part of the chemical industry, but I can't imagine anything more boring to a high schooler than that. I think batteries are a big area that people don't usually thing of as chemistry, but it definitely is. A potato battery is a very cool experiment to students of chemistry who have a basic understanding of electrochemistry but I'm afraid it's not the kind of experiment that would spark an interest in studying Chemistry in a high schooler who's trying to decide where to go. Catalysis is a massive area of chemistry, which significantly increased the maximum viable population of Earth through artificial fertilisers, and a fertiliser plant is a great experience for grad students but how do you explain the Haber-Bosch process to high school kids? I guess solar cells could be used in a good demonstration but even then you'd need 17-18 year olds so they understand the basics already. The only outreach examples where even as a postgrad researcher I was amazed are extraction of DNA from something like a fruit, electroplating something with gold and oscillating reactions. The first is an incredibly good example of making visible something you hear a lot about but never see. Of course you have to believe that the several steps of extraction and purification actually leave you with DNA and not some other gunk. The second is the only experiment I could think of that is immediately understandable. You see a lump of gold, you dissolve it in acid, and then by applying electricity you can precipitate it onto something, which will look like gold again. The third is probably the kind of demonstration that is (hopefully) so captivating and exotic that it sparks curiosity but it's kind of cheating in that way. So all in all, I share your frustration about the bad rep chemistry has. I love chemistry, I've really enjoyed learning theory throughout my uni years and slowly understanding more and more of how and why chemical processes go, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about good demonstration that could get young kids interested in chemistry and it's really frustrating how hard that is. So I think the problem is this. It's really really hard to make chemistry visible and immediately understandable and to could spark that aha moment which could get young kids interested in studying chemistry.
Ah I have a few Patreon chemists. Nilered, explosions and fire ( Tom ), chemolis, apoptosis… and a few others, but they are not world known outside of RUclips.
The main issue is that to really appreciate chemistry (i'm particularly talking about organic chemistry here, and that's the neccessary basis for understanding biochemistry and medicinal chemistry as well) you need to understand it on a level that high school chemistry education doesn't even come close to, with two lessons a week the curriculum is just gen chem to a basic level, and in my experience most students are so disinterested that they don't try to understand even that. This also means that there is a pretty severe shortage of chemistry students at university, at least where I live.
As a physicist, I say: unlike mathematicians, chemists are actually easy-going and nice people. Generally speaking. However, I understand math, whereas chemistry is just some kind of black magic to me. And it took me many attempts (and a lot of beer) to finally get a chemist to admit that whatever they know, whatever they do, they know and do by having experienced it. And the rest of the knowledge is passed down through generations just like in a magic cult. Having said that, the chemists I know don't mind. They seem to enjoy this aura of the mystical, the unexplainable... because they know that they will be right (most of the time).
Chem student here 1) THANK YOU glad to hear that I'm not the only one who feels this way 2) imo the way chem is taught in schools is HORRIBLE there is absolutely no emphasis on understanding, just memorizing and that really bothers me😅 it's better at the university level but most ppl don't go to uni for chem (obviously) and end up never being shown how logical chem is bc all they've been taught is "memorize these reactions" and not "this is why this reaction happens"
NileRed, but I'm not sure he's a good role model for chemistry... Spending thousands of dollars to make a cookie might seem like a waste of time to most people
@Rohin You call yourself a fan of Chemistry and don't follow Sir Martyn Poliakoff. Heresy. Get yourself over to Periodic Videos right this minute young man.
Heyyy who says I don’t follow Periodic Videos? Some of my earliest memories of science RUclips! Remember I am in the Bradyverse, I was in some Objectivity videos myself, and have been watching all his different channels, including Period Vids of course, for donkeys years! I think Prof Sir Martyn’s hair was still black! Although that might be some Mandela effect…
In Germany we have a very popular science communcator who is originally a chemist, she started doing RUclips videos about everything chemistry and came a long way, especially through the pandemic, where she started hosting science documentaries on TV. I'm talking about Mai Thi Nguyen Kim. She kinda made chemistry very approachable for everyone, which made it much more present in German media. I have to agree with you - without her, it wouldn't be that way.
I think food industry has done a lot of harm to the PR of chemistry. People keep hearing about some random chemical which is carcinogenic or causes some other problem and internally associate 'Chemical = Bad' Plus the marketing team of food we use daily keeps using the keywords - 'No Chemical. Completely Natural' I have seen my young 14 year old sister just say that she's not gonna eat a particular food because it has chemical in it. And I keep wondering what in the universe isn't made of chemicals (Atoms and Molecules)
I don't see it much as a problem. People keep using the term "chemicals" for synthesized chemicals and then it makes sense. See I guess I'm an engineer and I don't shy away from the fact engineering mostly sucks. I mean I like doing it as a job but as far as the consequences go I think it's quite terrible. Mind you engineering is mostly applied science. Science is benign cause it doesn't do anything, it's just knowledge. What you do with is a whole different can of worms. Most of the time it's just hastily slapping together a solution to a problem and calling it a day without really considering the long term implications. And medicine is sort of biology engineering, at least a part of it, and you can see it in places. Like take treatment of depression: people miss some serotonin, let's give them a drug that boosts serotonin, -boom, problem solved (except it probably doesn't). And so people subject to those kinds of haphazard experiments end up hating the general idea: if science is what brought us to where we are, then science sucks...
I am a Chemistry PhD student I have my own theory for chemistry's bad PR: In Physics you can start with calculating the momentum of fallen objects, in Biology you can talk about general animal behaviour or the difference between plants and animals. Chemistry on the other hand requires thinking about the world as composed of atoms and molecules as a prerequisite. At the core of it chemistry studies how the very outer bits of electron shells interact with one another, and yet this is a definition that mostly chemists will understand.
I would LOVE a video explaining how they figured out the electron transport chain. You can't see electrons, you can't see protons, how did those chemists *actually* figure this out??
All fields of science are so important, but agreed that chemistry seems to get the worst perception. I remember learning about how we're never truly touching anything due to electrons and being so tickled. Side note, your off the cuff comment about the synthetic clothing that you were "working" made me laugh! What a quick wit!
Here on YT, there are quite a few chemistry channels doing decently: NurdRage, Periodic videos, Cody's lab (well, that is a bit of lots of things), Nile Red...
as a US undergrad student, our intro biology and physics professors spent a lot of the lectures sharing their interests about the field. the intro chemistry class was solely focused on "here's what you have to do to pass the test" which is sad because I'd much rather get an appreciation for it than just learn a series of steps for a test. Thankfully the internet gives us tons of resources to do just that. Chubbyemu's case reports are great as he's a toxicologist so there's naturally lots of biochemistry that's explained for general audiences.
As a high school chem teacher, I was sitting here cheering throughout your rant, so thank you. I feel like chem was culturally dominant until physics stole the spotlight at the turn of last century. Breaking Bad increased chemistry's street cred for a bit, but probably not in the healthiest way... 'The Alchemy of Air' is a great historical book about basic chem, chem engineering and nitrogen fixation and WWI if you're looking for a good read.
Well, Fritz Haber and Alfred Nobel are by far the most famous chemists. Problem: they are also infamous. Newer important chemists are ofcourse Mizushima and Goodenough with the development of Li-ion battery, but also Nakamura should deserve a great place as developer of the blue led light. These developments have all changed our lives that we could not have imagined prior to their discoveries.
As a chemist your're right, our PR is abysmal and those pyrotechnics shows at various outreach events are can look absolutely great (that's how I got interested in chemistry), but they have (almost) nothing to do with what chemists do in research and industry. Synthetic chemistry mostly deals with transforming boring-looking substances into other boring-looking substances but with useful properties (making it more like engineering than an actual science). To me it's not boring at all; it's more like a molecular version of LEGO but that perspective requires certain level of familiarity with molecular structure, reactivity, etc., making it too abstract for many people. Then you have things like analytical, physical, quantum, process, chemistry which I'm afraid are are even more boring for the public. And then there's biochemistry that everybody loves to hate. And that applies even to us, chemists, when the Nobel Prizes are awarded, because that's not "real" chemistry. But biochemistry is what actually got me interested in medicine lately, as it provided me with at least and illusion of understanding what's going on in our bodies. Despite all that, I think there are some branches of chemistry that do get more public interest. Things like the origin of life or artificial life are very active fields of research that often grab headlines. Unfortunately it's often difficult to get funding in these areas because grant agencies often demand that applicants show tangible societal or economic benefits of their research. Nanotechnology is another interesting field, but unfortunately a lot of it tends to be clickbaity and misrepresent what's actually possible (like that Drexler's nonsense).
100 years ago anyone could acquire chemistry supplies from local suppliers without a license or permit. I remember Oliver Sacks talking about how as a child he was able to procure real chemistry supplies from stores in the 30's and 40's--and he almost burned his family house down I think.
Being a forensic chemistry major has definitely made me more aware of things like my mom telling me "oh, not that one. It has chemicals in it." It's wild how demonized the word chemicals has become all because people don't understand that chemicals are all around us.
One of my favorite applied physical chemistry RUclipsrs runs the channel Explosions&Fire. MinuteFood makes very digestible videos; same with Adam Ragusea. Periodic Videos has Martyn Poliakoff who is a famous RUclipsr. But a lot of us remember our educators over societies' scientists.
One possible explanation is that most of the chemistry work is funded or done by commercial entities, rather than public institutions, so there is less initiative to do popularization of chemistry (for the sake of gathering and justifying public funding).
I think you don't hear as much about chemistry because just doesn't need as much PR for funding. Chemical companies, petrochemical companies, pharmaceutical companies are all very profitable and all employ researchers because they churn out new substances to make money on. I suspect that even in academia it's quite easy to explain why a thing will be useful if you can make it work because the fundamental science isn't a big intellectual leap from the application. Physics does need the PR because at this point all the fundamental research will still be useful, but it will take a lot of time of the utility to trickle down to the practical improvements. Biology gets attention easily because we are biology and it evokes emotion. It either ties in to things that make you sick, or things you want to eat, or things you find cute, or things that horrify you; all tied to fundamental survival instincts.
Living Chemists I can name (mainly from YT) : - Hamilton Morris (& his pharmacopeia - tbf he names & introduces many more chemists, I just don’t remember them) - explosions & fire - Nile Red - Nighthawkinlight (I think he qualifies with some of his stuff on passive cooling coatings etc.) - though emporium (also, I think he qualifies, even though he’s usually doing genetics/biochem) - Michael Levin (if synthetic biology counts as chemistry - it must do, right?) For the deceased variety, hard to look past the negative ones - Thomas “the most destructive single organism to have ever lived” Midgley Jr. of CFC & leaded petrol fame is top of my mind…
I have learned chemistry as an aprentice at an industrial company, and from what i've observed, compared to physics and biology, chemistry is much more prevelant in actual "normal work", whereas physics is often concentrated in theoretical research. This might be a factor why we dont hear of that many chemists, there are less working in research, and many of them under the name of a big coorparation. I also have to say that chemistry that is taught in school, and studied at universities is hugely different from what is experienced in the field. Here in Austria we highly value our apprenticeships, they are accompanied by a special school which takes 3 to 4 years, its not as standardized but i got lucky and learned a lot, i started with 15 and from the first year i had to work with literal tons of Sulfuric acid, like 20m3 a day, but also analytical work down to the ppt level. However you dont get around to just experimenting in Industry, even in The R&D Depardments, most work is just trying to replicate the findings from some paper. And those people writing the papers, which are most often in universities (if not, the research is often classified so even fewer people know about it) don't have that many resources and are just waiting to get into the industry, from where their next papers will be accompanied by an NDA... Overall, i'd say research in Chemistry is much more valuable to industry, whereas research in some physics branches is much more valuable for further research and publications (Thats not true for all physics, just think of material sciences, or Semiconductor Physics, those are valuable to industry, which means if something new comes up, you hear "TSMC just discovered...." not about the actual physicists/chemists
I think the way chemistry is perceived actually reflects pretty closely how the "general public" thinks about science (let's include maths). The problem is just that other fields have famous themes that stand out. All the physics communicators all almost always talking about space, blackholes, special/general relativity, Schrödinger's cat, etc. Nobody talks about repetitive experiments, mainly struggling with noise in data, involved statistics. Theoretical physics is always explained in terms of thought experiments (Schrödingers cat, how you perceive time in a blackhole) nobody cares about the underlying mathematical structure/reasoning. In maths everyone just loves paradoxes and infinity. Biology and life sciences are always connected to medicine and saving lifes. Chemistry is in some aspects the "engineering" part of the hard sciences. When you want to actually do/build stuff, you obviously need to know which building blocks there are, and how to get them. Its about realizing the invisioned plans from all the other disciplines. Knowing that you need that atom to connect with that one is a whole lot different from actually achieving it. But its hard to communicate that struggle. Maybe it's a bit similar how the most popular sports are almost always those which we can relate to the most. "I couldn't jump that high", "I cant run that fast", "Blackholes are spooky and he is doing crazy math with it". But "They improved the yield of material x in a certain reaction by Y percent, making it an economically viable process" or "They replaced metallic catalysts with organic ones" (nobelprice of 2021)" just doesn't have the same ring to it. You have to little information to know what kind of struggle it was to achieve those results, but you still kind of know what the words mean. "transforming arithmetic algebraic geometry over p-adic fields through his introduction of perfectoid spaces, with application to Galois representations, and for the development of new cohomology theories" (fields medal of 2018) just makes you go "nah, I have no clue what they're talking about" therefore kind of making it more acknowledgeable.
Just throwing it out there that Darwin was a geologist. I'm sure you know that tho. Personally some of my favorite science communicators (on RUclips anyways) have a background in chemistry...NileRed, Hank Green, The Action Lab, That Chemist, etc. Honestly I don't really care for any of the "mainstream" communicators you mentioned tho
Morten Meldal, the 2022 nobel prize reciver, has a goal of starting to teach the very basic concepts of chemistry to elementary student. The hypothesis is that chemistry is all new when you get to the higher grades in school wich scare a lot of students. By teaching the kids that the world is made of atoms that are like balls, then they already have something to relate it to. Hes idea is very interesting and I wish to help spread it!
When I was in elementary school, we did learn some "kitchen chemistry" - volcanoes, acids/bases, etc. - while at home my brother and I had a chemistry set. I suspect some of the ingredients would be illegal today. I went on to earn a science degree (biology, chemistry minor), while my brother applied his knowledge to the production of illegal drugs.
Chemistry was the only science I looked forward to learning in high school bc I had a burgeoning but secret interest in the chemical composition of rocks and minerals. My first chemistry teacher only spoke with three very smart kids in my class. She didn’t seem to like anyone else. A month in she kicked me out of her class for asking too many questions. I spent the rest of class in the principal’s office trying to figure out what I did wrong. The principal doubled down and said “you’re girl so you’re probably not cut out for sciences anyway.” (Except my chem teacher was female so not a great argument but that didn’t occur to me at the time.) The whole experience killed any desire to learn any sciences…until mid-life…when I fell in love with brain science and went back to school to become a neuropsychologist. I get that you’re referring to chemistry that occurs outside the body, but I am enraptured by the brain and body chemistry that rules our behaviour. (And still utterly flabbergasted that our planet makes beautiful sparkly things like geodes.)
What I love most about what you are saying is that it's about espousing a polymathic approach. Our society is broken because of the silos we've erected. Yes, we need specialisation and depth, but IMNSHO doing so at the sacrifice of having an inherent understanding of interconnectedness is pretty much why we are facing so many of our current dilemmas. And yes, ignoring your plea at the end I'm completely unqualified to provide this response. I'm a degree-less quantum poet with a corporate day job (but hey, I recently penned a chemistry poem, using Isomers as a metaphor for kindred spirits). Polymathy FTW.
I love this rant, and I share it! I was a biochem student, daughter of a veg oil chemist, partner of a materials scientist. While I shifted to humanities, I still remember the absolute joy of learning the Krebs cycle in high school and how utterly jazzed I was by it. Also, statistics in genetics, but that might or might not be chemistry depending on your perspective. 😄
But Rohin, what about all the positive PR that Brady Haran and Nottingham Uni have done for Chemistry with Periodic Videos? Surely you are a subscriber already, right?
The problem chemistry and materials science have is that they are immensely economically important. Which means that what gets done is what makes money not what is cool. It also means that chemists spend ages turning one colourless liquid into another. Astronomy and zoology are almost economically useless so research is only done if, on some level, it is cool.
Albert Hofmann has made a significant difference in my life. In fact only a few weeks ago I celebrated a particular discovery of his on 'bicycle day'. Some of us appreciate Chemists.
I've been working in healthcare longer than I'd like to admit, over that time my exposure to science has been largely biology based. When I'm reading for pleasure outside of work I tend to alternate between fiction and non fiction, and came across The Chemical Age: How Chemists Fought Famine and Disease, Killed Millions, and Changed Our Relationship with the Earth. It's a great read for anyone interested in some of the few ways chemistry has changed the world.
The problem of all chemistry - the moment you try to understand it, you find yourself learning physics. Even biochemistry's two major arms - kinetics and thermodynamics - are defined by "biophysics". In many ways we even think the likes of Gibbs and Volta as physicists, even grouping him together with the likes of Clausius and Maxwell.
So you do RUclips with scientific content and haven't heard of Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim? She's our queen. She got the highest national honor. With a PhD in chemistry
This is how I feel a bit about doing geology. I am frequently (jokingly) taken the piss out of by my mates for being a geologist, and the vast majority of people just don't care. Granted, we aren't as useful as chemists, but knowing about our planet is kind of handy given we live on it!
I love geology for the same reason I am so fascinated by that early era of chemistry becoming biology - I am obsessed with the idea of deep time. Things that take millions or billions of years. And apart from cosmology, I think geology is THE field for studying the passage of time
Exactly, and even then who did WW choose as his alter ego? A theoretical physicist. Oh and as a Mexican I feel like I need a sepia background for this comment.
I love orgo because my professor ran it like a video game. He's cool as hell. He made it so interesting. We had boss battles and XP points in our exams. It made me appreciate chemistry a lot more.
I had to memorize the Krebs cycle at school in biology. At that time it didn't make me marble the wonders of the human body but convinced me that I should avoid biology.
Right there with math and astronomy, chemistry is among the grandparents of modern systematized science, I guess. xD It's just that we still don't really understand a whole ton about it, and it hasn't been categorized and chopped up into intuitive "chunks" (I mean, don't get me wrong, it has been subdivided in several different areas, but keyword intuitive for portions of it), so I guess people pay less attention to it overall? It's kinda hard to wrap your head around and focus when the science you are talking about is practically everywhere. xD Then again, it's with the Internetz that I started paying a bit more attention to it... with NileRed's channel, AsapScience, SciShow, PeriodicVideos, Reactions... gotta admit I never had much interest in it before. Then again, biology and biochemistry also weren't much in my list (I'm a computer guy), and particularly health I was very much ignorant about, until I found Rohin, ChubbyEmu, and more. :D I guess there's also the fact that when you talk about fundamentals, it usually involves explanations that goes down to elemental substances, molecule chains, and whatnot that... is just, understandably, detached from immediate reality - or rather, beyond human perception capability. You know what I'm talking about, the plastic balls and links that need to pop up everytime someone is going to talk about an aromatic compound, a basic element, etc. xD It's more abstract in comparison to internal organs on a body, or mechanical contraptions you can build yourself, etc. Agreed though. Put some fucking respect on chemistry's name!
I regret that I didn’t learn much chemistry when I was in school/university. I think I regret every subject I didn’t take - there’s too much to learn. They really should look into that.
A materials science PhD student here, I love how so many of the chemistry examples are actually materials science (F1 alloys, plastics, textiles etc) 😂 Truly one of the most unerrated sciences
My grandmother is a former chemist. She told me, as a little kid, about the great Mendeleev who set the standard percentage of alcohol in vodka. She also added that he had some work on a table that lists elements, nothing major. That when I fell in love with chemistry. It's just a matter of PR.
I just finished my last organic chemistry final yesterday. Throughout both semesters of the class i've found the topic to be profoundly challenging in a good way. Learning organic chemistry is really puzzle like, and i enjoyed all the hours i spent deidcated to studying it.
Best possible rant!!! Could only think of Curie. You really have a huge point. And if people arent inspired by chemistry or physics then they will become flat earths
I really appreciate this video, as a graduating high school student who plans to study chemistry in university. The straddling you talked about is exactly what I find appealing about chemistry. I also think that as others in the comments mentioned, chemistry gets a bad rap. The other draw for me is that I realized that when I studied biology in school, my favorite parts were the chemistry focused parts. I also participated in Science Olympiad and that has a lot of science "straddling" of multiple disciplines. The most fun parts of that for me were Detector Building, where I built a oxidation-reduction probe to measure chloride ion concentration this year, which was awesome. I also did the Chemistry Lab event in Science Olympiad and that covers a rotation of topics. Furthermore, I was also incredibly lucky to have awesome science teachers in middle and high school that made the subject even more appealing. All that to say: chemistry is awesome for the exact reasons it is overlooked!
im a lapsed chemist and i must agree with everything you’re said. what impresses me most is the animations of cell machinery, where the actions and behaviours of the proteins are simulated quantum mechanically, the secret life if the cell comes to mind. one thing you have to remember is in many ways chemistry is where pure science comes together, biochemistry, material science, industrial chemistry, theoretical chemistry, geochemistry, theoretical biology more less started in a chemistry department… as did the first nmr imaging machine… if i remember correctly. however all these new fields starting up in chemistry and becoming their own thing has just gutted and gutted what chemistry us… leaving a lesser science behind. chemists are better at naming things. essentially the born-oppenheimer approximation is known as in chemistry is the frank condon principle… and which one gets a snigger out of a lecture yhester of undergraduate?
Listen, as a biologist working in the analytical chemistry field, chemistry doesn't need the sexy image and youtubers. They're out here, earning good money from graduation, and in my limited experience, holding sketchy beliefs about evolution and the moon landing. They're off to Disneyland in a fortnight too. 😉
I did Physics A-level because I'm not that good at Maths. I did Chemistry as well. It was hard. I only got through by doing 8 years worth of past papers (I did have to teach myself the chemistry first but then I learnt the questions which were all basically the same each year).
I Iove chemistry and I'm a chemist. I think the problem with chemistry is that it's the most abstract of all sciences. Physics and biology are way more tangible. I don't know what you studied at chemistry classes in high school, but we studied all those orbitals, bonds, balls&sticks representation of molecules etc., which 1. are abstract, 2. a lot of those things are just mathematical concepts and don't even exist irl, 3. it's completely useless for everyday life. I haven't (yet) come up with a good idea what to actually teach to be more interesting and useful, but it's certainly a lot easier to do experiments and research the concepts of physics and biology. You can explain all the basic physics and biology even to little kids, but you can do almost nothing about chemistry. Even if you show them interesting "kitchen" experiments, you can't really explain them what happens.
As a yr13 a level chemistry, biology and physics student... I have a distain for all the sciences equally 😂 I do agree with how chemistry education is less interesting, I'm not particularly sure why, or at least how to put into words but I've fallen into the biochem hole and am hoping to study it at uni !!
Based on the title I expected this to be a disparagement of the "noble science." I read chemistry at university and was getting very defensive. I'm glad you agree, however, -- we just have a marketing problem! Chemistry is the closest thing in real life to alchemy, and I always wished that Linus Pauling were as famous as all the other 20th century giants in the public imagination.
Taking my organic chemistry final today. I think chemistry is a subject that's taught in a manner that makes it harder to love than biology, physics, etc. Not as relatable as bio, flashy/mathematical as physics, and doesn't feel important to students despite the immense impact it has on everyone. And the systematic way in which it's taught contributes to making learning it feel like an unrelatable slog of information that won't be used again, instead of an exploration of why things are the way they are and an emphasis on concepts rather than on specific reagents to memorize and 3d geometric analysis... Think this in part is why the public isn't as enamored with chemistry and chemists.
I agree with most of what you are saying. However, with the introduction of youtubers such as Nilered and others, it's becoming more and more open. I believe what sets chemistry apart is that it is less tangible than the other sciences and therefore needs more background information to get into
Oh how many times has it not happened that I regretted not studying chemistry solely because I had found some everyday-ish task that I wanted to understand how to do better (like cooking) and I quickly realised that it required chemical knowledge
The definition of chemistry I use is bigger than an atom, smaller than a cell. Chemistry has a ton of problems, all of the low hanging fruit was picked a long time ago, we're now in the grind phase before the next big breakthrough. The different branches of science seem to have golden ages followed by periods of hard work for less progress. Physics, for example, had the mother of all golden ages just after the second world war and if feels like they are now struggling to take their understanding to the next level. Biology is having it's golden age now, spurred on I feel by the previous advances in physics and engineering.
I'm 58, overweight, hypertensive, type 2...and I paddle and race in dragon boats. I actually do think about the Krebs Cycle and ATP production because I don't want to be flailing at 400 meters in a 500 meter race. Not that ATP will carry me all that way, but it darn sure matters that we train hard enough to get to that level, and the mitochondria are enormously important in that effort. So, yeah, in my daily aging life I do think about how to keep at least some measure of health in play as much for my sport as for myself and my family. BTW, heart is doing great. One of the few blessings I seem to enjoy...so far.
Loved your comment! Chemistry, physics, and biology are truly all around us, and it's a lifelong love of learning that opens up so many doors. Best of luck with your racing, and with your health!
*1* First of all, came looking for one thing: *YOU* . I am subscribed to your main channel, and it occurred to me that I hadn't seen anything new for ages, so I went looking for you to make sure you're still with us. I am glad that you are. *2* As to your point about the perception of chemistry, this is news to me. I'm not a scientist, but I took Chemistry in the '70s (both high school and college) and I _loved_ it. Far and away my favorite science. I mean, I do enjoy astrophysics (minus the math), but regular classroom physics? *_That_* was some amorphous stuff to me. The Chemistry lab was where it was at.
A lot of the time (especially materials science), it takes chemists, physicists and engineers. At some point the line between physics and chemistry is very blurry, and the more fundamental things often get attributed to physics by default, whilst the more directly applicable stuff (ie F1 engineering) gets attributed to engineers. Chemistry is kinda stuck in the middle, it takes fundamental concepts and observations of our universe, and makes them able to be applied to make our lives better.
"Stuff Matters-Mark Miodownik" is a fantastic book that provides a light/topical treatement to the importance of chemistry in material science. Worth a read.
My chemistry teachers in college tended to be very strict and discouraged exploration, which sort of killed any enjoyment I would have gotten out of learning it. I will say, though, that I actually use chemistry in my daily life far more often than the physics I so enjoyed.
I think what turned people away from discussing Chemistry is the fact that it's so involved in day to day life, that it blends into the background, and becomes mundane, and mundane is forgettable. Also idk how much public outreach IUPAC is doing vs industry engagement. I think it's the relic of the age old alchemy trope that alchemists keep to themselves.
I wonder if it’s a bit like ‘why does no-one speak Latin any more’, it’s like actually they do, Latin is one of the most spoken languages in the world, it’s just modern dialects of it, Spanish, French, Portuguese. Chemistry is so ubiquitous, it’s split into subfields like ‘material science’.
- mentions the Nobel Prize
- does *not* mention Nobel
hmm, maybe chemists really are invisible lol
The only 2 chemists I know are Nile Red and Walter White.
There’s other goated chemists too. Alexander Shulgin, Albert Hoffman, and the guy from the periodic table!
Walter White is fictional.
@@31redorange08 that's his point
@@jerry3790Sir Martyn Poliakoff!
Clearly, you need to be named after a color in order to be a great chemist
"here's my weight set"..."when do you ever use gravity?"...
My personal favorite basic "chemistry is cool" example is soap. It's so integral to modern life, and seems so innocuous. But the explanation of how soap works gets into the differences between polar and nonpolar molecules, and if you get into making soap then you can explain acids and bases as well. We use chemistry every day.
My favorite example is rust: Iron plus oxygen.
Not the boring thing happening to my bike, but thermal lances.
Look it up :-)
RUclips channels like NileRed and Explosions & Fire made me realize what I missed out on. Also stuff like material science is amazing and applicable everywhere, but somehow school manages to beat all the fun out of chemistry.
2 great Chem channels!
I recently brushed up on the Krebs cycle as one of the potential explanations for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is that the Krebs cycle gets short circuited and produces fewer ATPs, thereby affecting every single little thing.
I won't stand for this Martyn Poliakoff erasure!
You definitely have him there! 🙂👍
Watch Periodic Videos! Everything will change!
I have a favorite chemist too!
Periodic Videos is legendary! Don’t forget I was in two Objectivity videos, I am a proud member of the Bradyverse. Period Vids is OG science RUclips and of course Sir Martyn is himself a legend. But sadly I think most people outside our nerdy world of science RUclips probably won’t be able to name him…which isn’t shade at all, I wish he HAD been given his own prime time BBC TV show
Last time I didn't want to work out, I too started ranting about the lack of respect that chemistry gets.
As a phd chemistry student I was ready to slide on you when I read the title but you are making good points. The common folks don't really know what chemistry is because there are no fancy concepts like black holes or bang that garner mass interest. Sadly most people dont even know who fritz harber is (one of the most influential humans in a good and bad way)
As someone doing a masters degree in maths I feel very much the same. People pretty universally tend to hate doing maths and think of it only as what they were forced to do in school. Even physicists and engineers hate maths in my experience. But when I say I study maths most people tend to have not a single idea what that entails or what maths really is.
Sir Martyn Poliakoff: everyone's idea of a scientist, a university professor and a minor internet star.
Thank you. He is, who I visualize as, the face of Chemistry on RUclips.
You're completely right about how underrepresented and underrated chemistry is. I also agree that chemistry is usually very abstract when you don't know the theory, but is kind of self-explanatory when you do. The famous test of obscenity comes to mind when a Supreme Court judge said he can't define porn but he knows it when he sees it.
I'm a final year Chemistry PhD student, I went to a Chemistry vocational high school, then did a Chemistry BSc, MSc, an Erasmus, and now a PhD. I can't tell you how many times I had to explain to friends, family, high school teachers(!), what a Chemistry degree is and how it's different from Chemical Engineering. I completely agree that Chemistry has an image problem. As you mention most outreach demonstrations just stick to explosions and stuff like elephant's toothpaste because they are immediately understandable and offer an opportunity to talk about the underlying reaction. But as you say, this creates a false and simplified image of chemistry.
I think a big problem with the wider image of chemistry is that many big chemical companies have created a really bad reputation for chemistry, mostly because of putting profit before environmental and public health concerns. Also I think that since chemistry often operates with practically invisible materials or processes it's hard to come up with experiments that make the science visible in some way. Like physics has no problem making gravity or turbulence or Newton's laws both visible and immediately understandable in experiments, but how do you show that by electrolysing water you got H2 and O2? You can't tell, the gas bubbling off has no smell, and it's colourless, so you just have to believe the person telling you if you don't know the theory. I think this is biggest problem with coming up with good demonstrations, you're very often just left having to believe what you're told instead of being able to see for yourself.
Petrochemicals have been the single biggest driver of the chemical industry in the last 100 years, but fossil fuels are problematic in quite complex ways so you can't just show a destillation of oil and talk about the chemistry there without going into the wider background. Otherwise it would be really cool to see how a viscous black liquid separates into fractions of different boiling points in a column.
Plastics are another massive part of chemistry, they were genuinely the start of a new era in human history, but they have also become one of our biggest problems so you can't really use the chemistry of plastics in outreach. If this wasn't the case you could make a small batch of nylon for example, which would show how two transparent, colourless liquids form a solid when mixed, or how polyurethanes puff up when they polymerise.
Pharmaceuticals are another massive area of chemistry, but most of it is way too complex to be used in outreach. The only thing coming to mind is a simple thin layer chromatography setup where you'd separate compounds corresponding to different colours from autumn leaves, or flowers.
Coating and functional materials are a massive part of the chemical industry, but I can't imagine anything more boring to a high schooler than that.
I think batteries are a big area that people don't usually thing of as chemistry, but it definitely is. A potato battery is a very cool experiment to students of chemistry who have a basic understanding of electrochemistry but I'm afraid it's not the kind of experiment that would spark an interest in studying Chemistry in a high schooler who's trying to decide where to go.
Catalysis is a massive area of chemistry, which significantly increased the maximum viable population of Earth through artificial fertilisers, and a fertiliser plant is a great experience for grad students but how do you explain the Haber-Bosch process to high school kids? I guess solar cells could be used in a good demonstration but even then you'd need 17-18 year olds so they understand the basics already.
The only outreach examples where even as a postgrad researcher I was amazed are extraction of DNA from something like a fruit, electroplating something with gold and oscillating reactions. The first is an incredibly good example of making visible something you hear a lot about but never see. Of course you have to believe that the several steps of extraction and purification actually leave you with DNA and not some other gunk. The second is the only experiment I could think of that is immediately understandable. You see a lump of gold, you dissolve it in acid, and then by applying electricity you can precipitate it onto something, which will look like gold again. The third is probably the kind of demonstration that is (hopefully) so captivating and exotic that it sparks curiosity but it's kind of cheating in that way.
So all in all, I share your frustration about the bad rep chemistry has. I love chemistry, I've really enjoyed learning theory throughout my uni years and slowly understanding more and more of how and why chemical processes go, but I have spent a lot of time thinking about good demonstration that could get young kids interested in chemistry and it's really frustrating how hard that is. So I think the problem is this. It's really really hard to make chemistry visible and immediately understandable and to could spark that aha moment which could get young kids interested in studying chemistry.
TBH I’m a biochemist and I don’t use knowledge of the Krebs Cycle very often. I have forgotten the steps at least 5 times by now.
I’m reporting you to the high council of chemists who will confiscate all your glassware
@@medlife2 Hey … I’m a biochemist we don’t use glassware. We use disposable plastic. Glass wants to murder proteins.
My man NileRed carrying Chemistry on his back.
I have a degree in chemistry and your rant has made me feel so validated
Ah I have a few Patreon chemists. Nilered, explosions and fire ( Tom ), chemolis, apoptosis… and a few others, but they are not world known outside of RUclips.
Thank you Captain Haddock
I'm happy to see Hergé still getting some love
BILLIONS OF BLUE BLISTERING BUNSEN BURNERS
The main issue is that to really appreciate chemistry (i'm particularly talking about organic chemistry here, and that's the neccessary basis for understanding biochemistry and medicinal chemistry as well) you need to understand it on a level that high school chemistry education doesn't even come close to, with two lessons a week the curriculum is just gen chem to a basic level, and in my experience most students are so disinterested that they don't try to understand even that. This also means that there is a pretty severe shortage of chemistry students at university, at least where I live.
As a physicist, I say: unlike mathematicians, chemists are actually easy-going and nice people. Generally speaking. However, I understand math, whereas chemistry is just some kind of black magic to me. And it took me many attempts (and a lot of beer) to finally get a chemist to admit that whatever they know, whatever they do, they know and do by having experienced it. And the rest of the knowledge is passed down through generations just like in a magic cult.
Having said that, the chemists I know don't mind. They seem to enjoy this aura of the mystical, the unexplainable... because they know that they will be right (most of the time).
i wish i had someone like you in my life who would make my real life job feel like a rpg class.
Chem student here
1) THANK YOU glad to hear that I'm not the only one who feels this way
2) imo the way chem is taught in schools is HORRIBLE there is absolutely no emphasis on understanding, just memorizing and that really bothers me😅 it's better at the university level but most ppl don't go to uni for chem (obviously) and end up never being shown how logical chem is bc all they've been taught is "memorize these reactions" and not "this is why this reaction happens"
NileRed, but I'm not sure he's a good role model for chemistry... Spending thousands of dollars to make a cookie might seem like a waste of time to most people
The man has a personal ft-ir and NMR! He is the envy of every research chemist!
@Rohin You call yourself a fan of Chemistry and don't follow Sir Martyn Poliakoff. Heresy. Get yourself over to Periodic Videos right this minute young man.
Couldn’t agree more
Heyyy who says I don’t follow Periodic Videos? Some of my earliest memories of science RUclips! Remember I am in the Bradyverse, I was in some Objectivity videos myself, and have been watching all his different channels, including Period Vids of course, for donkeys years! I think Prof Sir Martyn’s hair was still black! Although that might be some Mandela effect…
In Germany we have a very popular science communcator who is originally a chemist, she started doing RUclips videos about everything chemistry and came a long way, especially through the pandemic, where she started hosting science documentaries on TV. I'm talking about Mai Thi Nguyen Kim. She kinda made chemistry very approachable for everyone, which made it much more present in German media. I have to agree with you - without her, it wouldn't be that way.
I know of her! Via a German Vietnamese scientist friend!
Chemistry communicators: Andrew Szydlo if you're serious, and Explosions&Fire if you're not. (Chemists I find, they have fantastic sense of humour)
If you like explosions are fire and are serious check out extractions and ire, his second channel
Explosions and Fire is a super underrated channel. Ironically, he's a physicist :p
Thank you 😊
I think food industry has done a lot of harm to the PR of chemistry.
People keep hearing about some random chemical which is carcinogenic or causes some other problem and internally associate 'Chemical = Bad'
Plus the marketing team of food we use daily keeps using the keywords - 'No Chemical. Completely Natural'
I have seen my young 14 year old sister just say that she's not gonna eat a particular food because it has chemical in it. And I keep wondering what in the universe isn't made of chemicals (Atoms and Molecules)
I think you have nailed it.
I don't see it much as a problem.
People keep using the term "chemicals" for synthesized chemicals and then it makes sense.
See I guess I'm an engineer and I don't shy away from the fact engineering mostly sucks.
I mean I like doing it as a job but as far as the consequences go I think it's quite terrible. Mind you engineering is mostly applied science. Science is benign cause it doesn't do anything, it's just knowledge. What you do with is a whole different can of worms.
Most of the time it's just hastily slapping together a solution to a problem and calling it a day without really considering the long term implications.
And medicine is sort of biology engineering, at least a part of it, and you can see it in places. Like take treatment of depression: people miss some serotonin, let's give them a drug that boosts serotonin, -boom, problem solved (except it probably doesn't).
And so people subject to those kinds of haphazard experiments end up hating the general idea: if science is what brought us to where we are, then science sucks...
I am a Chemistry PhD student I have my own theory for chemistry's bad PR:
In Physics you can start with calculating the momentum of fallen objects, in Biology you can talk about general animal behaviour or the difference between plants and animals.
Chemistry on the other hand requires thinking about the world as composed of atoms and molecules as a prerequisite.
At the core of it chemistry studies how the very outer bits of electron shells interact with one another, and yet this is a definition that mostly chemists will understand.
I would LOVE a video explaining how they figured out the electron transport chain. You can't see electrons, you can't see protons, how did those chemists *actually* figure this out??
All fields of science are so important, but agreed that chemistry seems to get the worst perception. I remember learning about how we're never truly touching anything due to electrons and being so tickled.
Side note, your off the cuff comment about the synthetic clothing that you were "working" made me laugh! What a quick wit!
Here on YT, there are quite a few chemistry channels doing decently: NurdRage, Periodic videos, Cody's lab (well, that is a bit of lots of things), Nile Red...
The Royal Institution constantly have scientists speaking and showing stuff.
Their Christmas lectures are legendary...
as a US undergrad student, our intro biology and physics professors spent a lot of the lectures sharing their interests about the field. the intro chemistry class was solely focused on "here's what you have to do to pass the test" which is sad because I'd much rather get an appreciation for it than just learn a series of steps for a test. Thankfully the internet gives us tons of resources to do just that. Chubbyemu's case reports are great as he's a toxicologist so there's naturally lots of biochemistry that's explained for general audiences.
As a high school chem teacher, I was sitting here cheering throughout your rant, so thank you. I feel like chem was culturally dominant until physics stole the spotlight at the turn of last century.
Breaking Bad increased chemistry's street cred for a bit, but probably not in the healthiest way...
'The Alchemy of Air' is a great historical book about basic chem, chem engineering and nitrogen fixation and WWI if you're looking for a good read.
I had lunch with Linus Pauling in my freshman year of uni (in the US). Of course, he's dead now. Nothing to do with me though.
Well, Fritz Haber and Alfred Nobel are by far the most famous chemists. Problem: they are also infamous. Newer important chemists are ofcourse Mizushima and Goodenough with the development of Li-ion battery, but also Nakamura should deserve a great place as developer of the blue led light. These developments have all changed our lives that we could not have imagined prior to their discoveries.
As a chemist your're right, our PR is abysmal and those pyrotechnics shows at various outreach events are can look absolutely great (that's how I got interested in chemistry), but they have (almost) nothing to do with what chemists do in research and industry. Synthetic chemistry mostly deals with transforming boring-looking substances into other boring-looking substances but with useful properties (making it more like engineering than an actual science). To me it's not boring at all; it's more like a molecular version of LEGO but that perspective requires certain level of familiarity with molecular structure, reactivity, etc., making it too abstract for many people. Then you have things like analytical, physical, quantum, process, chemistry which I'm afraid are are even more boring for the public.
And then there's biochemistry that everybody loves to hate. And that applies even to us, chemists, when the Nobel Prizes are awarded, because that's not "real" chemistry. But biochemistry is what actually got me interested in medicine lately, as it provided me with at least and illusion of understanding what's going on in our bodies.
Despite all that, I think there are some branches of chemistry that do get more public interest. Things like the origin of life or artificial life are very active fields of research that often grab headlines. Unfortunately it's often difficult to get funding in these areas because grant agencies often demand that applicants show tangible societal or economic benefits of their research. Nanotechnology is another interesting field, but unfortunately a lot of it tends to be clickbaity and misrepresent what's actually possible (like that Drexler's nonsense).
100 years ago anyone could acquire chemistry supplies from local suppliers without a license or permit. I remember Oliver Sacks talking about how as a child he was able to procure real chemistry supplies from stores in the 30's and 40's--and he almost burned his family house down I think.
"explosions and fire" is a youtube channel that is all about buying chemistry supplies from normal shops and making, well, you work it out :)
Names Erlenmeyer, but can't name a chemist. 😂
I loved chemistry in school, but that was over 25 years ago. I had amazing professors. They really do make the difference.
Being a forensic chemistry major has definitely made me more aware of things like my mom telling me "oh, not that one. It has chemicals in it." It's wild how demonized the word chemicals has become all because people don't understand that chemicals are all around us.
One of my favorite applied physical chemistry RUclipsrs runs the channel Explosions&Fire. MinuteFood makes very digestible videos; same with Adam Ragusea. Periodic Videos has Martyn Poliakoff who is a famous RUclipsr. But a lot of us remember our educators over societies' scientists.
One possible explanation is that most of the chemistry work is funded or done by commercial entities, rather than public institutions, so there is less initiative to do popularization of chemistry (for the sake of gathering and justifying public funding).
You think chemists are under represented, try naming a Geographer. Geography is the bridge of all social and physical sciences.
I think you don't hear as much about chemistry because just doesn't need as much PR for funding. Chemical companies, petrochemical companies, pharmaceutical companies are all very profitable and all employ researchers because they churn out new substances to make money on. I suspect that even in academia it's quite easy to explain why a thing will be useful if you can make it work because the fundamental science isn't a big intellectual leap from the application. Physics does need the PR because at this point all the fundamental research will still be useful, but it will take a lot of time of the utility to trickle down to the practical improvements. Biology gets attention easily because we are biology and it evokes emotion. It either ties in to things that make you sick, or things you want to eat, or things you find cute, or things that horrify you; all tied to fundamental survival instincts.
good point!
I think this is a great point I hadn’t thought about, and in some ways it makes me happy
Living Chemists I can name (mainly from YT) :
- Hamilton Morris (& his pharmacopeia - tbf he names & introduces many more chemists, I just don’t remember them)
- explosions & fire
- Nile Red
- Nighthawkinlight (I think he qualifies with some of his stuff on passive cooling coatings etc.)
- though emporium (also, I think he qualifies, even though he’s usually doing genetics/biochem)
- Michael Levin (if synthetic biology counts as chemistry - it must do, right?)
For the deceased variety, hard to look past the negative ones - Thomas “the most destructive single organism to have ever lived” Midgley Jr. of CFC & leaded petrol fame is top of my mind…
Don't forget extractions and ire
Cody’s lab!
As a Brazilian chemist, I'm 100% with you. And when people think about chemists, they usually think about bombs and recreative drugs.
I have learned chemistry as an aprentice at an industrial company, and from what i've observed, compared to physics and biology, chemistry is much more prevelant in actual "normal work", whereas physics is often concentrated in theoretical research. This might be a factor why we dont hear of that many chemists, there are less working in research, and many of them under the name of a big coorparation. I also have to say that chemistry that is taught in school, and studied at universities is hugely different from what is experienced in the field.
Here in Austria we highly value our apprenticeships, they are accompanied by a special school which takes 3 to 4 years, its not as standardized but i got lucky and learned a lot, i started with 15 and from the first year i had to work with literal tons of Sulfuric acid, like 20m3 a day, but also analytical work down to the ppt level. However you dont get around to just experimenting in Industry, even in The R&D Depardments, most work is just trying to replicate the findings from some paper. And those people writing the papers, which are most often in universities (if not, the research is often classified so even fewer people know about it) don't have that many resources and are just waiting to get into the industry, from where their next papers will be accompanied by an NDA...
Overall, i'd say research in Chemistry is much more valuable to industry, whereas research in some physics branches is much more valuable for further research and publications
(Thats not true for all physics, just think of material sciences, or Semiconductor Physics, those are valuable to industry, which means if something new comes up, you hear "TSMC just discovered...." not about the actual physicists/chemists
I think the way chemistry is perceived actually reflects pretty closely how the "general public" thinks about science (let's include maths). The problem is just that other fields have famous themes that stand out. All the physics communicators all almost always talking about space, blackholes, special/general relativity, Schrödinger's cat, etc. Nobody talks about repetitive experiments, mainly struggling with noise in data, involved statistics. Theoretical physics is always explained in terms of thought experiments (Schrödingers cat, how you perceive time in a blackhole) nobody cares about the underlying mathematical structure/reasoning.
In maths everyone just loves paradoxes and infinity. Biology and life sciences are always connected to medicine and saving lifes.
Chemistry is in some aspects the "engineering" part of the hard sciences. When you want to actually do/build stuff, you obviously need to know which building blocks there are, and how to get them. Its about realizing the invisioned plans from all the other disciplines. Knowing that you need that atom to connect with that one is a whole lot different from actually achieving it. But its hard to communicate that struggle.
Maybe it's a bit similar how the most popular sports are almost always those which we can relate to the most. "I couldn't jump that high", "I cant run that fast", "Blackholes are spooky and he is doing crazy math with it". But "They improved the yield of material x in a certain reaction by Y percent, making it an economically viable process" or "They replaced metallic catalysts with organic ones" (nobelprice of 2021)" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
You have to little information to know what kind of struggle it was to achieve those results, but you still kind of know what the words mean.
"transforming arithmetic algebraic geometry over p-adic fields through his introduction of perfectoid spaces, with application to Galois representations, and for the development of new cohomology theories" (fields medal of 2018) just makes you go "nah, I have no clue what they're talking about" therefore kind of making it more acknowledgeable.
My favourite chemist is a physicist.
Hi Tom!
Just throwing it out there that Darwin was a geologist. I'm sure you know that tho. Personally some of my favorite science communicators (on RUclips anyways) have a background in chemistry...NileRed, Hank Green, The Action Lab, That Chemist, etc. Honestly I don't really care for any of the "mainstream" communicators you mentioned tho
Morten Meldal, the 2022 nobel prize reciver, has a goal of starting to teach the very basic concepts of chemistry to elementary student. The hypothesis is that chemistry is all new when you get to the higher grades in school wich scare a lot of students. By teaching the kids that the world is made of atoms that are like balls, then they already have something to relate it to. Hes idea is very interesting and I wish to help spread it!
When I was in elementary school, we did learn some "kitchen chemistry" - volcanoes, acids/bases, etc. - while at home my brother and I had a chemistry set. I suspect some of the ingredients would be illegal today. I went on to earn a science degree (biology, chemistry minor), while my brother applied his knowledge to the production of illegal drugs.
Chemistry was the only science I looked forward to learning in high school bc I had a burgeoning but secret interest in the chemical composition of rocks and minerals. My first chemistry teacher only spoke with three very smart kids in my class. She didn’t seem to like anyone else. A month in she kicked me out of her class for asking too many questions. I spent the rest of class in the principal’s office trying to figure out what I did wrong. The principal doubled down and said “you’re girl so you’re probably not cut out for sciences anyway.” (Except my chem teacher was female so not a great argument but that didn’t occur to me at the time.) The whole experience killed any desire to learn any sciences…until mid-life…when I fell in love with brain science and went back to school to become a neuropsychologist. I get that you’re referring to chemistry that occurs outside the body, but I am enraptured by the brain and body chemistry that rules our behaviour. (And still utterly flabbergasted that our planet makes beautiful sparkly things like geodes.)
Thank you for sharing your story! I’m so glad you were able to realize your curiosity of the natural world ❤
@@rachaelregier8442aw cheers! Me too.
What I love most about what you are saying is that it's about espousing a polymathic approach. Our society is broken because of the silos we've erected. Yes, we need specialisation and depth, but IMNSHO doing so at the sacrifice of having an inherent understanding of interconnectedness is pretty much why we are facing so many of our current dilemmas. And yes, ignoring your plea at the end I'm completely unqualified to provide this response. I'm a degree-less quantum poet with a corporate day job (but hey, I recently penned a chemistry poem, using Isomers as a metaphor for kindred spirits). Polymathy FTW.
Periodic videos, NurdRage, NileRed,.. Cody? maybe? My list ends there.
explosions and fire!!! (+ extractions and ire) chemiolis!!!!
🤔 and then I thought of Walter White.
I love this rant, and I share it! I was a biochem student, daughter of a veg oil chemist, partner of a materials scientist. While I shifted to humanities, I still remember the absolute joy of learning the Krebs cycle in high school and how utterly jazzed I was by it. Also, statistics in genetics, but that might or might not be chemistry depending on your perspective. 😄
But Rohin, what about all the positive PR that Brady Haran and Nottingham Uni have done for Chemistry with Periodic Videos? Surely you are a subscriber already, right?
Love Periodic Videos!
The problem chemistry and materials science have is that they are immensely economically important. Which means that what gets done is what makes money not what is cool. It also means that chemists spend ages turning one colourless liquid into another.
Astronomy and zoology are almost economically useless so research is only done if, on some level, it is cool.
Yes, very bad PR indeed😅 When I tell people that I'm a chemist, the most common reaction I get is "omg, I hated chemistry in school"
Albert Hofmann has made a significant difference in my life. In fact only a few weeks ago I celebrated a particular discovery of his on 'bicycle day'.
Some of us appreciate Chemists.
Most chemists are too busy with the drugs. 🙃
On behalf of the entire rave community, thank you chemists
I've been working in healthcare longer than I'd like to admit, over that time my exposure to science has been largely biology based. When I'm reading for pleasure outside of work I tend to alternate between fiction and non fiction, and came across The Chemical Age: How Chemists Fought Famine and Disease, Killed Millions, and Changed Our Relationship with the Earth. It's a great read for anyone interested in some of the few ways chemistry has changed the world.
The problem of all chemistry - the moment you try to understand it, you find yourself learning physics. Even biochemistry's two major arms - kinetics and thermodynamics - are defined by "biophysics".
In many ways we even think the likes of Gibbs and Volta as physicists, even grouping him together with the likes of Clausius and Maxwell.
The famous saying is that biology is just chemistry, chemistry is just physics, physics is just maths and no one really knows what maths is.
@@OmniversalInsectthe version I've heard is that all of science is either physics or stamp-collecting.
So you do RUclips with scientific content and haven't heard of Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim? She's our queen. She got the highest national honor. With a PhD in chemistry
Your ability to grow facial hair makes me jealous
This is how I feel a bit about doing geology. I am frequently (jokingly) taken the piss out of by my mates for being a geologist, and the vast majority of people just don't care. Granted, we aren't as useful as chemists, but knowing about our planet is kind of handy given we live on it!
I love geology for the same reason I am so fascinated by that early era of chemistry becoming biology - I am obsessed with the idea of deep time. Things that take millions or billions of years. And apart from cosmology, I think geology is THE field for studying the passage of time
@@medlife2 That's what I love about it. I like doing science, I like learning history, what better field is there for combining them?
The only major thing I can think of that brought chemistry to the public eye was Breaking Bad, probably not a good sign.
Exactly, and even then who did WW choose as his alter ego? A theoretical physicist. Oh and as a Mexican I feel like I need a sepia background for this comment.
The use of war gases in Syria got a bit of attention, also not very positive.
How is that beard so thick? It's so thick it looks fake lol
Good luck on your Arctic expedition.
the biggest hurdle is more that chemist study chemicals. Chemicals it self as a subject for most have a negative image for most people.
I love orgo because my professor ran it like a video game. He's cool as hell. He made it so interesting. We had boss battles and XP points in our exams. It made me appreciate chemistry a lot more.
I had to memorize the Krebs cycle at school in biology. At that time it didn't make me marble the wonders of the human body but convinced me that I should avoid biology.
Right there with math and astronomy, chemistry is among the grandparents of modern systematized science, I guess. xD It's just that we still don't really understand a whole ton about it, and it hasn't been categorized and chopped up into intuitive "chunks" (I mean, don't get me wrong, it has been subdivided in several different areas, but keyword intuitive for portions of it), so I guess people pay less attention to it overall? It's kinda hard to wrap your head around and focus when the science you are talking about is practically everywhere. xD
Then again, it's with the Internetz that I started paying a bit more attention to it... with NileRed's channel, AsapScience, SciShow, PeriodicVideos, Reactions... gotta admit I never had much interest in it before. Then again, biology and biochemistry also weren't much in my list (I'm a computer guy), and particularly health I was very much ignorant about, until I found Rohin, ChubbyEmu, and more. :D
I guess there's also the fact that when you talk about fundamentals, it usually involves explanations that goes down to elemental substances, molecule chains, and whatnot that... is just, understandably, detached from immediate reality - or rather, beyond human perception capability. You know what I'm talking about, the plastic balls and links that need to pop up everytime someone is going to talk about an aromatic compound, a basic element, etc. xD
It's more abstract in comparison to internal organs on a body, or mechanical contraptions you can build yourself, etc.
Agreed though. Put some fucking respect on chemistry's name!
I regret that I didn’t learn much chemistry when I was in school/university. I think I regret every subject I didn’t take - there’s too much to learn. They really should look into that.
A materials science PhD student here, I love how so many of the chemistry examples are actually materials science (F1 alloys, plastics, textiles etc) 😂 Truly one of the most unerrated sciences
I don't care if you're in your home, and my name's not Jim.
Wow I guess I won’t show you around again then Jim
@med
he should stop eavesdropping on private conversations
My grandmother is a former chemist. She told me, as a little kid, about the great Mendeleev who set the standard percentage of alcohol in vodka. She also added that he had some work on a table that lists elements, nothing major. That when I fell in love with chemistry. It's just a matter of PR.
poor geology, no mention at all...
I just finished my last organic chemistry final yesterday. Throughout both semesters of the class i've found the topic to be profoundly challenging in a good way. Learning organic chemistry is really puzzle like, and i enjoyed all the hours i spent deidcated to studying it.
Best possible rant!!! Could only think of Curie. You really have a huge point. And if people arent inspired by chemistry or physics then they will become flat earths
I really appreciate this video, as a graduating high school student who plans to study chemistry in university. The straddling you talked about is exactly what I find appealing about chemistry. I also think that as others in the comments mentioned, chemistry gets a bad rap. The other draw for me is that I realized that when I studied biology in school, my favorite parts were the chemistry focused parts. I also participated in Science Olympiad and that has a lot of science "straddling" of multiple disciplines. The most fun parts of that for me were Detector Building, where I built a oxidation-reduction probe to measure chloride ion concentration this year, which was awesome. I also did the Chemistry Lab event in Science Olympiad and that covers a rotation of topics. Furthermore, I was also incredibly lucky to have awesome science teachers in middle and high school that made the subject even more appealing. All that to say: chemistry is awesome for the exact reasons it is overlooked!
im a lapsed chemist and i must agree with everything you’re said.
what impresses me most is the animations of cell machinery, where the actions and behaviours of the proteins are simulated quantum mechanically, the secret life if the cell comes to mind.
one thing you have to remember is in many ways chemistry is where pure science comes together, biochemistry, material science, industrial chemistry, theoretical chemistry, geochemistry, theoretical biology more less started in a chemistry department… as did the first nmr imaging machine… if i remember correctly.
however all these new fields starting up in chemistry and becoming their own thing has just gutted and gutted what chemistry us… leaving a lesser science behind.
chemists are better at naming things. essentially the born-oppenheimer approximation is known as in chemistry is the frank condon principle… and which one gets a snigger out of a lecture yhester of undergraduate?
Listen, as a biologist working in the analytical chemistry field, chemistry doesn't need the sexy image and youtubers. They're out here, earning good money from graduation, and in my limited experience, holding sketchy beliefs about evolution and the moon landing. They're off to Disneyland in a fortnight too. 😉
The beauty of chemistry is how useful it is. Birds of paradise live in Indonesia, Australia and PNG.
I knew that was wrong as soon as it came out of my mouth, you can see my slight hesitation 😂
@@medlife2The Amazon forest is vast and deep. Who knows what we have yet to discover? :D
I did Physics A-level because I'm not that good at Maths. I did Chemistry as well. It was hard. I only got through by doing 8 years worth of past papers (I did have to teach myself the chemistry first but then I learnt the questions which were all basically the same each year).
"that I'm *snap* werkin-" killed me
I Iove chemistry and I'm a chemist. I think the problem with chemistry is that it's the most abstract of all sciences. Physics and biology are way more tangible. I don't know what you studied at chemistry classes in high school, but we studied all those orbitals, bonds, balls&sticks representation of molecules etc., which 1. are abstract, 2. a lot of those things are just mathematical concepts and don't even exist irl, 3. it's completely useless for everyday life. I haven't (yet) come up with a good idea what to actually teach to be more interesting and useful, but it's certainly a lot easier to do experiments and research the concepts of physics and biology. You can explain all the basic physics and biology even to little kids, but you can do almost nothing about chemistry. Even if you show them interesting "kitchen" experiments, you can't really explain them what happens.
"I would have done (insert any other field of science) if my math had been better."- every biology degree graduate. 😅
As a yr13 a level chemistry, biology and physics student...
I have a distain for all the sciences equally 😂
I do agree with how chemistry education is less interesting, I'm not particularly sure why, or at least how to put into words but I've fallen into the biochem hole and am hoping to study it at uni !!
Based on the title I expected this to be a disparagement of the "noble science." I read chemistry at university and was getting very defensive. I'm glad you agree, however, -- we just have a marketing problem! Chemistry is the closest thing in real life to alchemy, and I always wished that Linus Pauling were as famous as all the other 20th century giants in the public imagination.
Taking my organic chemistry final today. I think chemistry is a subject that's taught in a manner that makes it harder to love than biology, physics, etc. Not as relatable as bio, flashy/mathematical as physics, and doesn't feel important to students despite the immense impact it has on everyone. And the systematic way in which it's taught contributes to making learning it feel like an unrelatable slog of information that won't be used again, instead of an exploration of why things are the way they are and an emphasis on concepts rather than on specific reagents to memorize and 3d geometric analysis... Think this in part is why the public isn't as enamored with chemistry and chemists.
But... but... chemistry is SO MAGICAL! Combine two elements that are fatal to humans... and you get delicious salt!
Yes, I love ammonium chloride.
I agree with most of what you are saying. However, with the introduction of youtubers such as Nilered and others, it's becoming more and more open. I believe what sets chemistry apart is that it is less tangible than the other sciences and therefore needs more background information to get into
Oh how many times has it not happened that I regretted not studying chemistry solely because I had found some everyday-ish task that I wanted to understand how to do better (like cooking) and I quickly realised that it required chemical knowledge
When I took organic chemistry, I told my friends, "it's just like baking - just a bit more precise!"
The definition of chemistry I use is bigger than an atom, smaller than a cell. Chemistry has a ton of problems, all of the low hanging fruit was picked a long time ago, we're now in the grind phase before the next big breakthrough. The different branches of science seem to have golden ages followed by periods of hard work for less progress. Physics, for example, had the mother of all golden ages just after the second world war and if feels like they are now struggling to take their understanding to the next level. Biology is having it's golden age now, spurred on I feel by the previous advances in physics and engineering.
I'm 58, overweight, hypertensive, type 2...and I paddle and race in dragon boats. I actually do think about the Krebs Cycle and ATP production because I don't want to be flailing at 400 meters in a 500 meter race. Not that ATP will carry me all that way, but it darn sure matters that we train hard enough to get to that level, and the mitochondria are enormously important in that effort.
So, yeah, in my daily aging life I do think about how to keep at least some measure of health in play as much for my sport as for myself and my family.
BTW, heart is doing great. One of the few blessings I seem to enjoy...so far.
Loved your comment! Chemistry, physics, and biology are truly all around us, and it's a lifelong love of learning that opens up so many doors. Best of luck with your racing, and with your health!
*1* First of all, came looking for one thing: *YOU* . I am subscribed to your main channel, and it occurred to me that I hadn't seen anything new for ages, so I went looking for you to make sure you're still with us. I am glad that you are. *2* As to your point about the perception of chemistry, this is news to me. I'm not a scientist, but I took Chemistry in the '70s (both high school and college) and I _loved_ it. Far and away my favorite science. I mean, I do enjoy astrophysics (minus the math), but regular classroom physics? *_That_* was some amorphous stuff to me. The Chemistry lab was where it was at.
A lot of the time (especially materials science), it takes chemists, physicists and engineers. At some point the line between physics and chemistry is very blurry, and the more fundamental things often get attributed to physics by default, whilst the more directly applicable stuff (ie F1 engineering) gets attributed to engineers. Chemistry is kinda stuck in the middle, it takes fundamental concepts and observations of our universe, and makes them able to be applied to make our lives better.
"Stuff Matters-Mark Miodownik" is a fantastic book that provides a light/topical treatement to the importance of chemistry in material science. Worth a read.
Food containing "chemistry" is seen negatively for some reason.
Chemophobia
My chemistry teachers in college tended to be very strict and discouraged exploration, which sort of killed any enjoyment I would have gotten out of learning it. I will say, though, that I actually use chemistry in my daily life far more often than the physics I so enjoyed.
I think what turned people away from discussing Chemistry is the fact that it's so involved in day to day life, that it blends into the background, and becomes mundane, and mundane is forgettable.
Also idk how much public outreach IUPAC is doing vs industry engagement. I think it's the relic of the age old alchemy trope that alchemists keep to themselves.
I wonder if it’s a bit like ‘why does no-one speak Latin any more’, it’s like actually they do, Latin is one of the most spoken languages in the world, it’s just modern dialects of it, Spanish, French, Portuguese. Chemistry is so ubiquitous, it’s split into subfields like ‘material science’.
Couldn't agree more! 👍👍👍