Applied Chemistry In Everyday Life

To­day, chem­istry is a sub­ject that is valu­able be­cause of its prac­ti­cal sig­nif­i­cance. Not so much in in­dus­tri­al ap­pli­ca­tions, but in ev­ery­day life – chem­i­cal re­ac­tions can help us to sim­pli­fy our own lives great­ly, and make any process sim­pler. Ob­vi­ous­ly, they will only work if we do them prop­er­ly. So, where and how can we best ap­ply our knowl­edge of chem­istry when help­ing around the house? This is what this ar­ti­cle will dis­cuss. Ac­tive sub­stances are used to clean dish­es and sur­faces. In what cas­es should they be used?

Types of sim­ple clean­ing sub­stances

Ev­ery day we use house­hold and toi­let soaps, with­out even sus­pect­ing the num­ber of chem­i­cal re­ac­tions that take place in them. In it­self, soap is a sodi­um or cal­ci­um salt of a high-molec­u­lar sat­u­rat­ed fat­ty acid (palmitic acid). It is sim­ple to make, through the re­ac­tion of sodi­um hy­drox­ide and a long-chain acid (nat­u­ral­ly, in this case we are talk­ing about house­hold soap – more aro­m­a­tiz­ers are used in mak­ing toi­let soap).

Palmitic acid molecule [Deposit Photos]

The mech­a­nism of these sub­stances works as fol­lows – thanks to the phys­i­cal fea­tures of mol­e­cules (bipo­lar­i­ty), these com­pounds dis­play lipophilic prop­er­ties. So these com­pounds can at­tract fat mol­e­cules, and thus clean dirty sur­faces.
An­oth­er ex­am­ple of us­ing knowl­edge of chem­istry in an ap­plied man­ner is tak­ing a so­lu­tion of hy­drochlo­ric acid to clean sur­faces of in­crus­ta­tions and dirt (clean­ing bath­room equip­ment). The method is some­what out­dat­ed be­cause it is dan­ger­ous – hy­drochlo­ric acid is strong, and so even a 35% so­lu­tion of this com­pound will re­move any de­posits from any kind of sur­face. The re­sult will sur­pass all your ex­pec­ta­tions.

Hydrogen chloride [Wikipedia]

How­ev­er, this method is only rec­om­mend­ed if the prob­lem can­not be solved by safe meth­ods. The main thing is to ob­serve safe­ty rules, to wear gloves, a mask and res­pi­ra­tor. Re­cent dis­cov­er­ies have brought us many com­plex com­pounds for clean­ing, but it is also pos­si­ble to pre­pare an ef­fec­tive clean­ing agent in the home.

Sodium acetate in 2D [Wikipedia]

Chem­istry in cook­ing

What dish­es can we pre­pare us­ing our knowl­edge of prac­ti­cal chem­istry? The most wide­spread “home” ex­am­ple we can con­sid­er is “soak­ing salt with vine­gar”. Ev­ery­one re­mem­bers watch­ing their moth­ers sprin­kling soda (sodi­um hy­dro­car­bon­ate) into a spoon and then pour­ing vine­gar over it (so only two com­po­nents are re­quired). Sodi­um ac­etate forms, a com­pound which can be added to dough to make it loos­er.
Why does one salt turn into an­oth­er? We’ll look at how this works in more de­tail. A salt of a weak acid and or­gan­ic acid take part in the process. As the acetic acid is stronger than the car­bon­ic one, the acid residue is re­placed. To cre­ate a new sub­stance, car­bon diox­ide forms, as a re­sult of the break­down of car­bon­ic acid. This com­pound is a side prod­uct of the re­ac­tions, and as it forms we see bub­bles, and also hear a char­ac­ter­is­tic hiss. This ef­fect doesn’t last for very long, but it’s quite im­pres­sive. Click here to find many more won­der­ful re­ac­tions with sub­stances from ev­ery­day life.

De­con­tam­i­na­tion of poi­sonous com­pounds

Few peo­ple know that the most re­li­able way to deal with bro­ken mer­cury ther­mome­ters is to use sul­fur. Sprin­kle the area where the ther­mome­ter broke and where drops of mer­cury are scat­tered. Mer­cury sul­fide is formed – a com­pound which can be eas­i­ly de­tect­ed on the floor.

                        

Cinnabar on Dolomite [Wikipedia]

Now, you can clean up the do­mes­tic “ac­ci­dent” with a broom and dust pan.