What is Chemistry?

Chemistry is the study of matter. Matter is basically anything that occupies space and has mass!

We use chemistry everyday and everywhere. When you bake a cake the ingredients are chosen, measured and then cooked so they react together to create something tasty (or not, depending on how you combine ingredients and cook them ).

The way food rots is chemistry, the way your soap foams up when mixed with water is chemistry and the way cleaning products clean is chemistry!

All the interactions that happen in our environment are chemistry too from the way pollutants from cars spread through the air to cleaning up oil spills in the sea.

There are lots of different types or branches of chemistry including:

Organic Chemistry - the study of substances that contain carbon.

Inorganic Chemistry - the study of compounds that don't contain carbon.

Biochemistry - the study of chemical processes inside living cells.

Nuclear Chemistry - the study of reactions that occur inside atoms.