Department of Applied Chemistry

Chemistry is often defined as the study of matter and the reactions in which matter is involved.
In fact, physicists, geologists, and biologists also study matter, but it is only chemists who study
the reactions in which matter is involved. For example, a chemist who is trying to make chemical
compounds tries to understand the reactions that lead to the production of these compounds. In
fact, a very large proportion of chemists are employed by the chemical and pharmaceutical
industries to prepare and manufacture plastics, coatings, ceramics, drugs, fillers, alloys, and
many other new things. These synthetic chemists must first determine what reaction can be used
to make their target compound and then determine under what optimized conditions the
production of the desired compound will be least expensive with the appropriate yield. Once the
best reaction conditions are determined, a chemist must determine how the compound can be
purified, and finally the chemist must identify the compound. This final identification step
involves not only determining the exact percentage of the elements that make up the compound,
but also determining the three-dimensional structure of the compound.