Articles

CHEMISTRY

Chemistry

Chemistry is a physics sub-discipline that studies the nature, composition, structure, and laws of change of matter. The object of chemical research involves the interrelationship between substances, or the relationship between substances and energy. Traditional chemistry is often about the contact and change of two substances, that is, the chemical reaction, or the process from one substance to another. These changes sometimes require the use of electromagnetic waves, where electromagnetic waves are responsible for exciting chemical action. But sometimes chemistry doesn't have to be about reactions between substances. Spectroscopy studies the relationship between matter and light, and these relationships do not involve chemical reactions. To be precise, the research scope of chemistry is nuclear-electronic systems including molecules, electrons, ions, atoms, and atomic groups.

The word "chemistry", if interpreted literally, means "learning of change". Chemistry mainly studies the science of the interaction of chemical substances. Chemistry, like the broader physics, is the basic science of the natural sciences. Many people call chemistry "central science" because chemistry is the core of some science disciplines, connecting physical concepts with other sciences, such as materials science, nanotechnology, and biochemistry. Scholars who study chemistry are called chemists. In the concept of a chemist, all matter is composed of atoms or substances smaller than atoms, such as electrons, neutrons and protons. But chemical reactions are carried out with atoms or atomic groups as the smallest structure. Several atoms combine in some way to form more complex structures, such as molecules, ions, or crystals. Contemporary chemistry has developed many different disciplines, and usually every chemist specializes in only one or two of them.

In middle school chemistry, chemists call it general chemistry (German: Allgemeine Chemie, English: General Chemistry, French: Chimie Générale). General chemistry is an introduction to chemistry. General chemistry courses provide simple concepts for beginners to get started. Compared to professional fields, they are not very in-depth and precise, but general chemistry provides chemists with intuitive and graphical thinking methods. Even professional chemists still use these simple concepts to explain and think about some complex knowledge.

Etymology

The etymology of the word "chemistry" in English comes in many ways. One theory is that it was named after "alchemy". The word "alchemy" in English is derived from "alkemie" in Old French and "al-kimia" in Arabic, which means "the art of transformation." The word "kimia" in Arabic comes from Greek. There is another saying that the word "chemistry" in English is derived from the Egyptian word "kēme", which means "earth".

In China, the word "chemistry" first appeared in the journal "Liuhe Cong Tan" published by the Mohai Library in 1857. Wei Liyali mentioned that Wang Tao recorded the word "chemistry" heard from Dai Desheng in his diary. It is generally believed that the word "chemistry" in Chinese was invented when Xu Shou translated the English book "Chemistry".

The word "chemistry" was introduced to Japan, replacing the original Japanese translation of "She Mi".

Early human understanding of fire

The earliest chemistry should be regarded as human research on fire. For the people at that time, fire can turn one object into another, so it became the most interesting phenomenon for people to study at that time. Without fire, humans would not find the method of refining iron and glass.

ALCHEMY

After humans discovered gold, a precious metal, many people transferred to study how to turn other substances into gold. From 300 to 1500 BC, alchemists all studied how to convert some cheap metals into gold, so they accumulated observations and techniques related to the extraction and processing of metals. Some alchemists' main job is to make medicine, and there was also the so-called alchemy technique in China. Before 2000, humans had widely used gold, silver, mercury, copper, iron, and bronze. At that time, human civilization had made some achievements in ceramics, dyeing, brewing, papermaking, gunpowder, etc. In terms of technical experience, there has been some observation and literature accumulation on the understanding of material changes.

Early Chemistry

Early chemists collected data on many different substances. Before the 17th century, chemical achievements were not large (combustion theory, alchemy), among them more accomplished ones such as Robert Boyle. By 1750, chemistry was still mysterious and dominated by incorrect theories. It wasn't until 1773 that Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier proposed the law of conservation of mass and explained the burning phenomenon by redox reaction, overthrowing the phlogiston theory prevailing in the middle Ages, and opened the road to modern chemistry; he Therefore, it is respected as the "Father of Chemistry".

Then Dalton integrated the knowledge of chemistry at that time and put forward an epoch-making atom theory with his own experiments. Since then, some chemists have discovered a variety of chemical elements, and later Mendeleev established the periodic table of the elements to make the chemical horizon more complete. In 1901, the chemist Nobel Established the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with his legacy in recognition of those who have contributed to mankind in the field of chemistry.