Chapter 1

So what is chemistry? The better question is what isn't chemistry?

I've got a definition...in fact I've got lots of definitions...

More than you wanted to know?

According to the first definition chemistry is the study of matter. What's matter? Matter is ANYTHING the occupies space and has mass. Pretty much covers it, matter is EVERYTHING, except stuff like light and heat, but other than those everything else falls into the definition of matter. So I repeat, what isn't chemistry?! From the clothes we wear to the food we eat, the books we read, the materials that are used to make the portable DVD player we watched in the seat in front of us on our return flight from Seattle. All this and more are a result of chemists studying the properties of materials and the changes materials undergo. By studying and experimenting on the composition, structure and properties of substances and on the reactions substance undergo chemists are able to learn about matter through observation and theoretical descriptions.

So if you want to know what chemistry is, its nearly everything. Does not help much does it. I've been studying chemistry for over thirty years and I certainly do not know it all. So what about you? Well we'll try to do the best we can during htis semester. We'll try to learn some chemistry, have some fun (a four letter word), and see if it is possible to leave the class with some appreciation of the importance of chemistry.

Is everything about chemistry neat and fun? No! There are very interesting things about chemistry but there are also some terrible things, terrible substances, dangerous and hazardous! But there are also fantastic things about chemistry. We'll try to talk about both sides.

What kinds of chemistry is going on at OSU? Lots, but lets restrict ourselves to chemistry in the chemistry department.

So those are just a few of our faculty and what they are doing. WOW! Now I need to be honest and tell you that these are some of the goals of their research. For many of these faculty their research is very basic. That is they are studying the properties of substances and the transformations they undergo. And by doing this with particular kinds of compounds they hope to gain some information through experimental observation that will eventually lead to their final goal. Most of the chemists at OSU are working on different problems, and collaborate with other chemists around the world to help solve pieces of a very large puzzle which ultimately will benefit humankind. But in their search they are also likely to find surprises, good and bad, and chemists are trained to look for the unusual and to recognize it when it happens. Because some of the greatest advances have ocurred as a result of an accident, or one unique indivdual looking at a large amount of information in a particular way, different from their colleagues.

So how do chemists...scientists...go about the process of research? They use something called the scientific method. This is systematic method for gathering experimental data, testing the data and arriving at conclusions based on the experimental data. Experiments, facts, data, laws, hypotheses, and theories are all important in the scientific method. Your textbook discusses all of these on pages 8 and 9.

So chemists (scientists) perform experiments and collect data. Scientists repeat experiments to see that the observations they make and the data they collect are reproducible. It is interesting...for scientists when they are exploring something unknown, like investigating a new compound or making a new compound or finding a new procedure for making synthezing a compound, they get a rush. It is very difficult to explain. It happened to me a few times, but the first I can still remember. I was a graduate student and I was investigating the structure of a compound that someone else had made and I'd spent several months determining the arrangement of the atoms in the this compound. And back in those days (1973/74) we had computers, but they did not do as much as computers today can do. So much of the work had to be done by hand. I had collect a large quantity of data and had used the computer to generate organize the data and as I created a 3-dimensional model I found that the arrangement of the atoms was unusual. As I put together the structure I had this overwhelming feeling of excitement as I built a model of a previously unknown arrangement of atoms and I knew this and no one else in the world knew this fact! I can only descibe it as a major rush!

Some might ask the question well Gelder how do you know that the arrangement was right? How did I know if I had the correct answer? This is another interesting issue for scientists. When they do research they are finding new information, making observations, whatever. No one knows the RIGHT answer. The only way a scientist knows if the answer is correct, is that the observations are reproducible. Scientist do not look for the right answer they simply perform experiments, repeatedly and based on the reproducibility of the observations draw conclusions and formulate hypotheses. Once the hypotheses are made, a scientist can design additional experiments to investigate further. The investigation may take the scientist in a slightly different direction, or it may reinforce the scientists understanding of the data.

After studying are large collection of observations, making and investigating hypotheses, a scientist may formulate a theory to explain the fundamental basis for all of the observations. A theory allows the scientist to develop a model which explains the data. A theory is only as good as the data. When new data is obtained, verified and tested and found to sugggest a new, or modified theory, than the scientific community...the researchers most knowledgeable about the theory with discuss the theory and how it needs to modified, or trashed to accommodate the new data/observations.

All pretty far out stuff!