DR. VITUS BLOG

Chemistry also is concerned with the
utilization of natural substances and the
creation of artificial ones. Cooking ,
fermentation, glass making, and metallurgy
are all chemical processes that date from
the beginnings of civilization. Today, vinyl,
Teflon, liquid crystals, semiconductors , and
superconductors represent the fruits of
chemical technology. The 20th century has
seen dramatic advances in the
comprehension of the marvelous and
complex chemistry of living organisms, and
a molecular interpretation of health and
disease holds great promise. Modern
chemistry, aided by increasingly
sophisticated instruments, studies materials
as small as single atoms and as large and
complex as DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid),
which contains millions of atoms. New
substances can even be designed to bear
desired characteristics and then
synthesized. The rate at which chemical
knowledge continues to accumulate is
remarkable. Over time more than 8,000,000
different chemical substances, both natural
and artificial, have been characterized and
produced. The number was less than
500,000 as recently as 1965.
Intimately interconnected with the
intellectual challenges of chemistry are
those associated with industry. In the
mid-19th century the German chemist
Justus von Liebig commented that the
wealth of a nation could be gauged by the
amount of sulfuric acid it produced. This
acid, essential to many manufacturing
processes, remains today the leading
chemical product of industrialized
countries. As Liebig recognized, a country
that produces large amounts of sulfuric
acid is one with a strong chemical industry
and a strong economy as a whole. The
production, distribution, and utilization of a
wide range of chemical products is
common to all highly developed nations. In
fact, one can say that the “iron age” of
civilization is being replaced by a “polymer
age,” for in some countries the total volume
of polymers now produced exceeds that of
iron.