Chemistry: Is It Under My Bed?

After recently having the wonderful opportunity to teach an introductory chemistry course to a class of non-majors, I found my biggest challenge was to find a way to connect with my students.  Being not terribly old myself, I thought that I could stand in front of them, wave my hands excitedly, make a complete fool out of myself, and everyone would take me seriously.  After a few lectures of this, I came to the conclusion it was not working.  Surprise, surprise.

 Very surprised.

(source: http://goo.gl/yy7Qh)

After stewing in thought for a few days, I realizes something that I had never truly expounded upon before; chemistry is literally, everywhere.  From the keys on the keyboard I'm using to write this blog post to the coffee you drink in the morning to the slightly more fun liquid refreshment others consume in alarming quantities on the weekends, Chemistry has always been a large part of life!  So I began with some simple examples.  Most students in my class could correctly identify NaCl on the board.  The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Yes, NaCl is a salt."  

Students: "No, NaCl is salt."

Me: "Ah, but there are other things besides NaCl that are known as salts.  For instance..."

Students:  "Burn the Heretic!"

The previous scene may be a slight exaggeration.

(source: http://goo.gl/YNcOM)

We then went onto discuss salts and salt solutions, solubility rules and the like.  I explained what happened, on the molecular level, when something dissolves.  The next day, a student asked me if it was weird that he watched the sugar in his coffee dissolve before he drank it.  With a goofy grin, I told him, "Only if you weren't thinking about solubility."

The semester went on, and eventually we started discussing food chemistry.  Things like how enzymes work in the body, how food is broken down, stored, and eventually used as a source of energy.  In my admittedly short career as a chemist, one of my most satisfied moments came when a student told me;

"I'll probably never look at food the same way again."

And that, my friends, is the entire point of chemistry!  Everything in this world should constantly be changing your perception, challenging you to understand why, what is happening, how can we make it better, more effective, or change this process in some way?  From the farthest reaches of space to the dust mites under your bed, chemistry is everywhere.  Changing your perceptions to understand the science only improves your notions of the world.  And who knows, you might learn a thing or too as well.

{Note:  The author has repeatedly stared at innocuous solutions while adding various salts, hoping something sinister will develop.}