Knowra Chemistry Chemistry Chemistry is the natural science of substances, their composition, properties, and transformations. It explains how atoms and molecules form materials and how reactions change them.
Atom : An atom is the smallest unit of a chemical element that retains that element’s identity. Atoms are the basic units whose arrangements give substances their composition.
Chemical kinetics : Chemical kinetics studies the rates of reactions and the factors that affect them. Kinetics explains why some chemical transformations occur quickly and others slowly.
Organic chemistry : Organic chemistry studies carbon-containing compounds, their structures, properties, and reactions. Its reactions enable the synthesis of fuels, polymers, medicines, and many other compounds.
Alchemy : Alchemy was a historical tradition combining practical substance-working with theories of matter and transformation. Alchemy supplied laboratory practices and questions that later chemists reworked.
Physics : Physics studies matter, energy, motion, forces, and the fundamental laws governing them. Physics often explains interactions at a more general level than chemistry’s focus on substances.
Chemical element : A chemical element is a substance whose atoms all have the same number of protons. Elements classify matter by the proton count that defines each atom’s identity.
Reaction mechanism : A reaction mechanism is a sequence of elementary steps describing how reactants become products. Mechanisms reveal the intermediate events hidden by an overall reaction equation.
Medicinal chemistry : Medicinal chemistry designs and studies molecules intended to prevent, diagnose, or treat disease. It applies chemical structure and reactivity to the discovery of drug candidates.
Robert Boyle : Robert Boyle was a seventeenth-century natural philosopher whose work helped establish experimental chemistry. His emphasis on experiment and corpuscular explanations challenged inherited accounts of matter.
Biology : Biology studies living organisms, their structures, functions, evolution, and interactions. Biology centers on living systems, while chemistry explains many of their molecular processes.
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