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Tbh i can hardly imagine a day of a Physicist... What the heck do you do? Write equations on a board, sit and think about cats, measure something, all in your checkered jacket with elbow patches? Wait that's a psychoanalyst's wardrobe, nwm.

I think chemistry suffers, like maths, from modern developments being difficult/impossible to appreciate if you don't have the specialist knowledge and skills. My grandfather started as a chemist in the 1930s, and was involved in the development of polymers. He told me that people did appreciate it more in his time, because polythene and polystyrene and polyurethane are things people got to use for the first time and appreciate. By the time I came across it at school it just seemed so removed from reality (unlike physics). Mind you, my mum, a chemistry teacher, used to give us little books of litmus paper in the holidays to go around testing things in the house, so despite only having O level chemistry, I have a pretty unerring instinct of the pH of household substances, but only the vaguest idea why.

Contemporary well-known chemists: Nile Red, Explosions & Fire here on CZcams, and Derek Lowe with his inspired (and utterly hilarious) "In The Pipeline" blog. More historically there's Marie Curie as you said and, of course, Alfred Nobel, after whom the prize was named

"looked at wikipedia, read through the top links isn't proper researching"?? that was the entire source for my masters thesis :|

Youp, you're right. mom is chemist, and it's viewed as the dorkiest(is this word still used?) of sciences. Physics has all these cool sayings like ""I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

As the Friendly Neighborhood Narcolept I fully approve of this message.

Alcohol is protective if you fall from a fifth floor balcony on to concrete. The relaxing effect reduces the damage from the impact. Though it was probably the alcohol that caused the fall from the balcony.

as a US undergrad student, our intro biology and physics professors spent a lot of the lectures sharing their interests about the field. the intro chemistry class was solely focused on "here's what you have to do to pass the test" which is sad because I'd much rather get an appreciation for it than just learn a series of steps for a test. Thankfully the internet gives us tons of resources to do just that. Chubbyemu's case reports are great as he's a toxicologist so there's naturally lots of biochemistry that's explained for general audiences.

I'm getting this 3 years later😂

"I would have done (insert any other field of science) if my math had been better."- every biology degree graduate. 😅

I don't know what qualifies someone for a Nobel peace prize with someone with a PhD in med. Cynical me, maybe they're European or help to save westerners. I'm sure that's rubbish, but non the less, I think that he should have at least been nominated. What a truly monumental achievement.

Thanks for being honest. I for one love your content and your approach.

Did my undergrad in chemical engineering and biochemistry. Chemistry has a very steep learning curve at the beginning. You need a lot of baseline knowledge to get to the point where you can understand patterns and piece together how everything works together. That makes it extremely difficult to start learning the subject without a good teacher. And if you never get that good teacher it seems like magic or the parts never feel like they fit together perfectly. As for why nobody knows famous chemists, I'd guess that has something to do with how cutting edge chemistry ends up being quantum physics or biochemistry (biology or medicine). Or it's materials chemistry where the goal is to produce materials with certain, slightly better properties, not establish new understanding and principles in chemical knowledge. As for usefulness of the subject in daily life, regulations do a pretty good job making sure it isn't necessary. Most people know they shouldn't mix cleaning fluids because it's dangerous. Does it matter that the danger is a cloud of hydrochloric acid gas?

Yeah. I also thought that a single glass of wine or whatever is a sign of affluence which is a clear indicator of better health, especially in the United States where I live.

As a chemist your're right, our PR is abysmal and those pyrotechnics shows at various outreach events are can look absolutely great (that's how I got interested in chemistry), but they have (almost) nothing to do with what chemists do in research and industry. Synthetic chemistry mostly deals with transforming boring-looking substances into other boring-looking substances but with useful properties (making it more like engineering than an actual science). To me it's not boring at all; it's more like a molecular version of LEGO but that perspective requires certain level of familiarity with molecular structure, reactivity, etc., making it too abstract for many people. Then you have things like analytical, physical, quantum, process, chemistry which I'm afraid are are even more boring for the public. And then there's biochemistry that everybody loves to hate. And that applies even to us, chemists, when the Nobel Prizes are awarded, because that's not "real" chemistry. But biochemistry is what actually got me interested in medicine lately, as it provided me with at least and illusion of understanding what's going on in our bodies. Despite all that, I think there are some branches of chemistry that do get more public interest. Things like the origin of life or artificial life are very active fields of research that often grab headlines. Unfortunately it's often difficult to get funding in these areas because grant agencies often demand that applicants show tangible societal or economic benefits of their research. Nanotechnology is another interesting field, but unfortunately a lot of it tends to be clickbaity and misrepresent what's actually possible (like that Drexler's nonsense).

Best possible rant!!! Could only think of Curie. You really have a huge point. And if people arent inspired by chemistry or physics then they will become flat earths

My grandmother is a former chemist. She told me, as a little kid, about the great Mendeleev who set the standard percentage of alcohol in vodka. She also added that he had some work on a table that lists elements, nothing major. That when I fell in love with chemistry. It's just a matter of PR.

I Iove chemistry and I'm a chemist. I think the problem with chemistry is that it's the most abstract of all sciences. Physics and biology are way more tangible. I don't know what you studied at chemistry classes in high school, but we studied all those orbitals, bonds, balls&sticks representation of molecules etc., which 1. are abstract, 2. a lot of those things are just mathematical concepts and don't even exist irl, 3. it's completely useless for everyday life. I haven't (yet) come up with a good idea what to actually teach to be more interesting and useful, but it's certainly a lot easier to do experiments and research the concepts of physics and biology. You can explain all the basic physics and biology even to little kids, but you can do almost nothing about chemistry. Even if you show them interesting "kitchen" experiments, you can't really explain them what happens.

This isbthe reason Breaking Bad exists!

Try @NileBlue and @NileRed This absolutely got me back on track in chemistry. And it's not just about blowing up things. It's really entertaining as well.

8:28 WERK !! 🫰

you think chemistry is bad, try maths at school

When I was in college, I majored in biology, but briefly switched to biochemistry. I finished with a chemistry minor, and ironically, almost every job I held post-graduation was as a chemist. Go figure. As a woman, I was incredibly pleased when Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry ❤❤ Go chemistry!

As a yr13 a level chemistry, biology and physics student... I have a distain for all the sciences equally 😂 I do agree with how chemistry education is less interesting, I'm not particularly sure why, or at least how to put into words but I've fallen into the biochem hole and am hoping to study it at uni !!

As a physicist, I say: unlike mathematicians, chemists are actually easy-going and nice people. Generally speaking. However, I understand math, whereas chemistry is just some kind of black magic to me. And it took me many attempts (and a lot of beer) to finally get a chemist to admit that whatever they know, whatever they do, they know and do by having experienced it. And the rest of the knowledge is passed down through generations just like in a magic cult. Having said that, the chemists I know don't mind. They seem to enjoy this aura of the mystical, the unexplainable... because they know that they will be right (most of the time).

Based on the title I expected this to be a disparagement of the "noble science." I read chemistry at university and was getting very defensive. I'm glad you agree, however, -- we just have a marketing problem! Chemistry is the closest thing in real life to alchemy, and I always wished that Linus Pauling were as famous as all the other 20th century giants in the public imagination.

"that I'm *snap* werkin-" killed me

Both my brothers and my boyfriend are chemists, so YES, I can name some live chemists...

im a lapsed chemist and i must agree with everything you’re said. what impresses me most is the animations of cell machinery, where the actions and behaviours of the proteins are simulated quantum mechanically, the secret life if the cell comes to mind. one thing you have to remember is in many ways chemistry is where pure science comes together, biochemistry, material science, industrial chemistry, theoretical chemistry, geochemistry, theoretical biology more less started in a chemistry department… as did the first nmr imaging machine… if i remember correctly. however all these new fields starting up in chemistry and becoming their own thing has just gutted and gutted what chemistry us… leaving a lesser science behind. chemists are better at naming things. essentially the born-oppenheimer approximation is known as in chemistry is the frank condon principle… and which one gets a snigger out of a lecture yhester of undergraduate?

But Rohin, what about all the positive PR that Brady Haran and Nottingham Uni have done for Chemistry with Periodic Videos? Surely you are a subscriber already, right?

Chemistry doesn't need PR. Too many people major in it anyway, relatively to available jobs. And the CZcams chemists just encourage people to do dangerous things in their own homes without training. We certainly don't need more of that.

Carl Williams made some good stuff!

Living Chemists I can name (mainly from YT) : - Hamilton Morris (& his pharmacopeia - tbf he names & introduces many more chemists, I just don’t remember them) - explosions & fire - Nile Red - Nighthawkinlight (I think he qualifies with some of his stuff on passive cooling coatings etc.) - though emporium (also, I think he qualifies, even though he’s usually doing genetics/biochem) - Michael Levin (if synthetic biology counts as chemistry - it must do, right?) For the deceased variety, hard to look past the negative ones - Thomas “the most destructive single organism to have ever lived” Midgley Jr. of CFC & leaded petrol fame is top of my mind…

Chem student here 1) THANK YOU glad to hear that I'm not the only one who feels this way 2) imo the way chem is taught in schools is HORRIBLE there is absolutely no emphasis on understanding, just memorizing and that really bothers me😅 it's better at the university level but most ppl don't go to uni for chem (obviously) and end up never being shown how logical chem is bc all they've been taught is "memorize these reactions" and not "this is why this reaction happens"

Listen, as a biologist working in the analytical chemistry field, chemistry doesn't need the sexy image and youtubers. They're out here, earning good money from graduation, and in my limited experience, holding sketchy beliefs about evolution and the moon landing. They're off to Disneyland in a fortnight too. 😉

I agree with most of what you are saying. However, with the introduction of youtubers such as Nilered and others, it's becoming more and more open. I believe what sets chemistry apart is that it is less tangible than the other sciences and therefore needs more background information to get into

A lot of the time (especially materials science), it takes chemists, physicists and engineers. At some point the line between physics and chemistry is very blurry, and the more fundamental things often get attributed to physics by default, whilst the more directly applicable stuff (ie F1 engineering) gets attributed to engineers. Chemistry is kinda stuck in the middle, it takes fundamental concepts and observations of our universe, and makes them able to be applied to make our lives better.

Doc, I know maybe chemists scientist aren't yet in your area of Expertise, it seems like your already getting familiar with them, I'm not gonna lie and tell you I know of any of them, but I like NileRed youtube channel it's a very cool chemistry channel you should check it out

I actually never had to take a single chemistry class. It was an option in high school, but I took physics instead, and in university I had the option of taking 1 year of chemistry, biology, or physics (there might have been another option) for my computer science degree, and I chose physics, but then after taking the first half, I would have needed to stay in school another semester to fit it into my schedule, so I took a test that gave me credit for chemistry. I took it without studying and got one point less than I needed to get credit, studied, and then got a couple points more than I needed when I retook it. I actually think I learned more from taking the test and putting together the pieces I knew to answer questions than studying for it. To be fair, my freshman year science class in high school touched on all the major fields of science a little bit, and I had a background interest in science, so I wasn’t coming in with a blank slate.

Nice rant. :D Well, in germany we have @maithinkx who started out as a chemistry/science youtuber but has their own TV show. Main point again and again is interpreting studies and scientific way of reasoning. Most memorable quote: "Nothing about nutrition is simple."

*1* First of all, came looking for one thing: *YOU* . I am subscribed to your main channel, and it occurred to me that I hadn't seen anything new for ages, so I went looking for you to make sure you're still with us. I am glad that you are. *2* As to your point about the perception of chemistry, this is news to me. I'm not a scientist, but I took Chemistry in the '70s (both high school and college) and I _loved_ it. Far and away my favorite science. I mean, I do enjoy astrophysics (minus the math), but regular classroom physics? *_That_* was some amorphous stuff to me. The Chemistry lab was where it was at.

I am a Chemistry PhD student I have my own theory for chemistry's bad PR: In Physics you can start with calculating the momentum of fallen objects, in Biology you can talk about general animal behaviour or the difference between plants and animals. Chemistry on the other hand requires thinking about the world as composed of atoms and molecules as a prerequisite. At the core of it chemistry studies how the very outer bits of electron shells interact with one another, and yet this is a definition that mostly chemists will understand.

Last time I didn't want to work out, I too started ranting about the lack of respect that chemistry gets.

What I love most about what you are saying is that it's about espousing a polymathic approach. Our society is broken because of the silos we've erected. Yes, we need specialisation and depth, but IMNSHO doing so at the sacrifice of having an inherent understanding of interconnectedness is pretty much why we are facing so many of our current dilemmas. And yes, ignoring your plea at the end I'm completely unqualified to provide this response. I'm a degree-less quantum poet with a corporate day job (but hey, I recently penned a chemistry poem, using Isomers as a metaphor for kindred spirits). Polymathy FTW.

Morten Meldal, the 2022 nobel prize reciver, has a goal of starting to teach the very basic concepts of chemistry to elementary student. The hypothesis is that chemistry is all new when you get to the higher grades in school wich scare a lot of students. By teaching the kids that the world is made of atoms that are like balls, then they already have something to relate it to. Hes idea is very interesting and I wish to help spread it!

I would LOVE a video explaining how they figured out the electron transport chain. You can't see electrons, you can't see protons, how did those chemists *actually* figure this out??

Oh how many times has it not happened that I regretted not studying chemistry solely because I had found some everyday-ish task that I wanted to understand how to do better (like cooking) and I quickly realised that it required chemical knowledge

How did Hugh Jackman get on at the end there🤔

As a phd chemistry student I was ready to slide on you when I read the title but you are making good points. The common folks don't really know what chemistry is because there are no fancy concepts like black holes or bang that garner mass interest. Sadly most people dont even know who fritz harber is (one of the most influential humans in a good and bad way)