It’s all Chemistry – from soaps to matchboxes!

Vacations just got over and now you are back to school and textbooks. Feel like
groaning? Well, you don’t have to. After all, learning can be fun too. Especially when you
realize that what you learn can be observed anywhere, anytime and what you study in
your textbooks can be observed all around you. This is especially true when it comes to
subjects like physics and chemistry. For instance, have you ever wondered about things
around you-living and man-made, how they came about, what they are made of and so
on?

Let’s look at some here:

The good old soap

The soap that you use everyday to clean yourself up and smell good is just a mix of
chemicals in the right proportion, sodium or potassium fatty acids salts, vegetable oils,
washing soda and perfumes put through a chemical reaction called saponification.
Perhaps you can try making it at home, with due adult supervision. It is chemistry in
action, fun and a lot of satisfaction. Check out the box below. You can even find ways
to recycle bits of old soap, learn about how soap works, what happens when you
microwave soap and so on.

Water! Water!

Have you ever found that soap (again!) doesn’t always give the same amount of lather
with different types of water? Well, it’s about hard and soft water. Hard water contains
a good quantity of dissolved minerals which makes lathering difficult and gives it a
characteristic raw taste. Going by the way our water resources are being used up, hard
water and its raw taste will be a total reality soon and to tackle that we have techniques
and processes like water softening, de-ionisation, reverse osmosis and desalination. Do
look them up because you are going to hear about them very often in the future.

Salt for ice

In the searing summer heat you would wish that you were in a faraway land where it is
cold and there is snow and ice. So what happens when there is a whole lot of ice all
around? Then it is fun no more because all that snow and ice would block the walkways
making it slippery and dangerous to move around. Ask anyone living in an area with a
cold and icy winter and they will tell you that they use salt (yes S A L T, sodium chloride)
on sidewalks and roads to melt the ice and snow and keep it from refreezing.
Salt is also used to make homemade ice cream. Salt works by lowering the melting or
freezing point of water. However it isn’t the only salt used for de-icing and other de-
icing compounds such as Ammonium sulfate, Calcium chloride, Potassium chloride,
Potassium acetate and Magnesium chloride are also used and each one of these has its
pluses and minuses. So, a mundane thing like salt is not just about making your food
tasty.

Strike it right!

After ice, how about some fire? We are talking about the safe match box or safety
match, that is. They are 'safe' because they don't combust spontaneously and have to
be struck against a special surface so that they can burn. The match heads contain some
chemicals, sulphur, phosphorus, potassium chlorate, with powdered glass, colorants,
fillers, and a binder made of glue and starch. You strike the match stick on a surface of
powdered glass or silica (sand), red phosphorus, binder, and filler and the friction
generates heat. This heat works on red phosphorus and it ignites spontaneously.

So, you see chemistry is not boring after all. It explains a lot of things around us, answers
questions and provides answers to some of our problems.

DID YOU KNOW??

-- There is another variant of the ‘strike anywhere’ match – sometimes featured in

Charlie Chaplin movies where he flips out a match stick and swipes it on his pant seat to
make it burn. It uses phosphorus sesquisulfide’. However, these are now classified as
‘dangerous goods’ and out of public use.

-- Mosquitos are attracted by dark clothing, the carbon dioxide that we give off, the
lactic acid that you release (after exercise or eating certain foods), the skin temperature
and some of the fragrances that we wear. If chemistry is what attracts them to use then
chemistry it must be to get rid of them too. Chemicals like Citronella Oil, Lemon
Eucalyptus Oil, Cinnamon Oil, Castor Oil, lemongrass Oil are very effective repellents as
is pyrethrum, an insecticide that is derived from the flowers of the daisy
Chrysanthemum cinerariifoliu.

-- Chemicals are an integral part of healthcare, protection and cosmetic industry. For
example Sunscreen contains reflective particles such as zinc oxide or titanium oxide that
filter, reflects or scatters away the light from the sun so that less of it reaches the
deeper layers of your skin.

-- Even the stylish tattoos that you wear are made of Iron Oxide, Carbon, Cinnabar,
Cadmium Red and a host of chemicals.

I am sure now after reading all this you are now a bit more tuned towards chemistry.
Forget the labs, the chemicals and the apparatus and the confounding formulae and just
look at what we see around us and the chemistry behind it. Learning will follow,
naturally.