What Is Chemistry?
Chemistry is a field of science concerned with chemical elements and compounds and how they interact. You might relate chemistry with lab tests, food additives, or hazardous chemicals, but the domain of chemistry includes everything in our physical environment.
“Everything you hear, see, smell, taste, and touch include chemistry and chemicals (matter).” According to the American Chemical Society (ACS), “Hearing sense, visual perception, gustatory perception, and touching perception all involve complex chemical processes and interactions in your body.”
Even if you’re not a chemist, you’re performing chemistry (or anything related to chemistry) in almost every activity you engage in. When you cook, use cleaning detergents to wipe down your counters, take medicine, or dilute concentrated juice so that the taste isn’t as strong, you’re engaging in chemistry.
According to the ACS, chemistry is the study of matter, defined as everything around us having mass and occupying space. The changes that matter may go through when exposed to various settings and situations. Chemistry aims to understand the properties of matter, such as mass, composition, and how and why matter changes. Whether matter transforms after combining with other matter, freezes after being left in a freezer for two weeks, or changes colours after exposure to too much sunlight.
Common subdisciplines of Chemistry include:
- Organic Chemistry
- Inorganic Chemistry
- Biochemistry
- Physical Chemistry
- Chemical Immunology
- Analytical Chemistry
- Materials Chemistry
- Nuclear Chemistry
- Microchemistry
- Theoretical Chemistry
How to Approach Learning Chemistry
Learning chemistry involves developing an appreciation of the “big picture” of the subject, including basic science. The fundamental assumptions in chemistry include understanding primary life forms, genetics, and evolution. To develop in the field of chemistry further, you will also need to have an understanding of quantum mechanics.
If you want to learn more about how cells work, you have to understand how individual cells function in an ecosystem, including various external and environmental factors. One could learn more about cellular energy and how it circulates in an organism and environment to further their understanding of chemistry. This is where research and experiments become crucial in your approach to learning chemistry or any other science.
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Chemistry Class Curriculum FAQs
Learning chemistry at the kindergarten level, children learn about fundamental principles, formations of different things, and basic formulas to broaden their minds about how nature works around us. Moreover, they will learn about basic safety equipment and procedures while working with chemical instruments and learn emergency laboratory protocols in case of accidents while under professional adult supervision.
In middle school, students will explore the structure of the atom on a deeper level and work on assignments to better comprehend the link between protons, neutrons, electrons, and energy levels in atoms, as well as their periodic table positions. After learning basic concepts, students often move on to density, change of state, the periodic table and bonding, water molecules and dissolve and chemical change. Covalent and ionic bonding should also be discussed at some point.
In beginning classes, students learn introductory chemistry, where they learn how to operate in a lab, including performing experiments, taking measurements, recording data, and writing lab reports. Students then have to learn advanced courses like organic and inorganic chemistry, bio, and physical chemistry. The tutor will focus more on practical work like performing different experiments, learning chemical reactions and their outcomes at this level instead of theory work.
Students study the advanced courses of chemistry and focus more on practical work at the university level. They have to attend different kinds of labs to explore what they have learned in theory. Different topics are covered in university, including atomic structure, electrochemistry, units, measurement, thermochemistry, chemical bonding, equations and stoichiometry, solutions, and mixtures. Reports and research papers are expected to be written by students on different topics. Every chemistry student will work on a final thesis project at the end of their graduate degree.
How To Become a Chemistry Tutor?
If you have a passion for teaching others and love chemistry, becoming a chemistry tutor is easy. You need a minimum of a high school degree or GED to start teaching kindergarten and middle school grade levels. You may need a degree in a specialist subject for higher-level chemistry courses depending on the level of practice you plan to teach. The costs of chemistry tutors vary because you will set your pay rates and time schedules depending on your own experience and circumstances.<
Your first step will be to decide which topics you’d like to tutor. Then choose the age groups and grade levels you want to teach. Learn the curriculum and critical concepts for those grade levels. And lastly, establish your teaching methods, tools, and eventually, you will create your own course materials over time as you get more experience working with students.
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