Styling hair, killing bugs, and curing cancer are very different activities. But to do them, people need to know about the solutions that color and perm hair, or the agents that kill insects or cancer cells. And that means they all use chemistry in their jobs.

Chemistry–and chemicals–are all around us. Chemistry is the study of “stuff”–its properties, structure, and reactions with other matter.

Just think about it. “A chef who knows how long to simmer tomato sauce is carrying out the chemical reactions that release the flavorful lycopene compounds from a tomato’s cells. A cosmetologist who gives you a perm is carrying out chemical reactions that join together in new ways the protein molecules that make up your hair. We’re all chemists at some time or another,” says Mark Michalovic at the Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry.

In Our Daily Choices

“Today we know much more than we did even 50 years ago,” says Brian Coppola, professor of chemistry at the University of Michigan. “We have to make lots of decisions about health, nutrition, medicine, and the environment.” These are basically questions about chemicals and chemistry. They affect us on a daily basis as we buy products, choose what to put into our bodies, decide what to throw out, and so forth.