• Question: what is your favourite random fact about chemistry in everyday life?

    Asked by anon-199620 to Sylvia, Sumit, Martin, Kate, Bryony, Aryanne on 4 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 4 Mar 2019:


      If it wasn’t for chemistry producing small molecules in the regions of space where star and planets form, then we wouldn’t have small stars like our own Sun. No small stars would likely mean that we wouldn’t exist!

    • Photo: Kate McGonagle

      Kate McGonagle answered on 4 Mar 2019:


      This is such a fun question. Chemistry is everywhere! E numbers in the foods we eat all refer to molecules, do you know what vinegar is made of? Water and acetic acid – a simple little molecule, you can google it’s structure ( I tried to paste the image in but it won’t let me!). Acetic acids E number E260.

    • Photo: Sumit Konar

      Sumit Konar answered on 5 Mar 2019:


      Chemistry is everywhere. I cannot think of anything where chemicals are not present. All are made of atoms, molecules. Toothpaste, coffee, tea, cooking oil, sugar, salt, meat, vegetables, camera, mobile, TV: all are made of inorganic and organic materials. Our body is also made of chemicals (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen are the elements that make most our body). I recommend you to go through the website (https://www.compoundchem.com/) where you will find lots of fun molecules.

    • Photo: Sylvia Soldatou

      Sylvia Soldatou answered on 5 Mar 2019:


      I agree with Kate and Sumit that Chemistry is everywhere!
      I drink a lot of tea during the day and the first thing I do when I go to work is to make a cup of tea. When we make a cup of tea we are all becoming natural products chemist, as we are extracting caffeine and other tea ingerdients from the sachet/tea leaves in the hot water! I basically do something similar but more complicated in the lab, I take the marine organism and extract in different solvents to get the interetsing compounds out of it

    • Photo: Bryony Hockin

      Bryony Hockin answered on 5 Mar 2019:


      I agree with the other scientists saying that chemistry is everywhere! My favourite chemistry fact is that hot water freezes quicker than cold water – weird, but true.

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