Importance of Chemistry in My Life

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Course Reflection

Maria Henehan

CHEM 151

10/21/2018

Niladri Sarker

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Importance of Chemistry

Most students probably think “Why am I learning Chemistry? It’s not a subject I will use in my life.” However, that is not true, and most people that take a real Chemistry course and actually attain the information they are learning about, will realize that. Chemistry is a very important subject. No matter what you’re doing, you can almost always ensure that a chemical reaction is taking place. Chemistry is basically the study of everything.

There are a few concepts that I learned in this course that I believe are the most important. First, is Le Châtelier's Principle, which is used to determine the way a chemical reaction that has a change in temperature, volume, pressure, or concentration will go.  Le Châtelier's Principle doesn't determine why that change has occurred.  The equilibrium produces more products when the reactants in concentration are increased. When the products are increased, then the reactants are increased, as well. The equilibrium will shift to the left if the temperature is increased. This also causes the heat of the system to increase. The equilibrium will shift to the right if the temperature is decreased, and the heat of the system will decrease, as well. 

Second, it that I learned how my body needs to reach an equilibrium to keep it going by having a balanced diet of acids and bases. To maintain a healthy diet, you should be consuming less than one half of acids and more than one half of bases.  Because of this course, I learned that I should be adding more bases, such as fruits and vegetables, to my diet in order to reach the equilibrium.

Concepts Applied to My Life

There are concepts that I can easily apply from what I learned in class. First, in my life, there are times when temperature affects the solubility of a solid and of a gas. Ice is a pretty good example for this. When I make green tea, I either make it hot or cold. When I am making cold green tea, I add the ice cubes into the liquid and I don't notice any change to the ice cubes. However, when I add ice to the hot green tea to cool it down a little, the ice, at a moderate pace, melts into the liquid.  

Second, I learned that my morning cup of tea is heterogeneous, but my morning cup of coffee could be heterogeneous or homogeneous. My morning cup of tea is heterogeneous because it consists of water from the tap, which is then heated up in the microwave. Then, I put a tea bag in the hot water and leave the tea bag in until I'm finished drinking it. My morning coffee (iced mocha) is heterogeneous as well because an iced mocha has two shots of espresso, chocolate, milk, and ice. If I have a regular drip coffee, then my coffee would be homogeneous because I add cream and sugar, and they both dissolve into the hot coffee.