The Chemistry Major

in the chemistry major you'll take classes that focus on specific branches of chemistry which I'll go into shortly but what you might not expect is that you'll take a lot of math physics and some biology courses there's especially more math and even calculus use than you would assume from a high school chemical at chemistry is a fair amount of memorization associated with it like biology does but this majors hallmark is problem-solving for example in a general chemistry class you might be asked what will be the new pressure of a gas in a fixed container if you raise the temperature from 273 Kelvin to 350 Kelvin you may know how to solve this because it just involves the ideal gas law and some basic algebra but it's definitely not just a memorization problem as a chem major you'll take general chemistry organic chemistry and physical chemistry or as you'll hear them called gen chem ochem and P chem these are really the bulk of your classes and each take about a year to complete on top of these chem majors will have to take about a year of physics and a year and a half of calculus which is basically identical to what engineers have to do as well which is why I emphasized how much math and problem solving there is Gen chem comes first and is where you learn the basics but we'll go into more depth and you might have learned in high school chemistry you learn the periodic table how to mathematically balance chemical equations the evolution of how the atom was understood and the ideal gas law and more you'll also learn how battery cells work and use equations to predict their energy in the lab you may have to predict the amount of products you'll have at the end of a combustion reaction or you might be asked to create a battery cell which will apply your knowledge of ions oxidation and reduction reaction these labs are going to get you familiar with all the equipment you would need to use as the chemist in ochem you'll have to learn and memorize lots of different skeletal structures which give detail to the bonding of a molecule like single or double bonds that exist in the compound you'll also learn how various compounds can be changed so given a skeletal structure you'd be asked if something is added to it what will the new compound be and this can be used to our advantage to manipulate compounds into something useful like medicine you'll learn what many different commonly known nutrition compounds are made of like protein amino acids carbs and vitamins in lab you may be asked to create a product given an initial starting material and through various organic chemistry mechanisms arrive at a final product you'll be asked to predict the amount of products you will end up with and you'll also learn that the more steps in a procedure the more air you will have built into the experiment then P chem is where the high-level math comes in you will probably be required to use calculus throughout these classes you will learn the proofs behind concepts taught in gen chem and why most of these concepts were grossly oversimplified - what actually happens you'll even get into quantum mechanics which is a big physics topic but you'll see how it applies to chemistry quantum mechanics is essentially the physics of how things move and behave on a very small scale like electrons atoms and photons or light one example would be infrared spectroscopy this is a technique where we can shine infrared light on a chemical to determine what it is now we can't see infrared light which is what some remote controls use to turn on your TV but using a device called an infrared spectrometer we can analyze the spectrum of light that comes off which tells us which wavelengths are most present in the light so essentially depending on how the graph looks and where the maximum points are we can tell what the chemical is if you're a chemistry student interested in biotechnology drug design or the food industry one course you are likely to enjoy is biochemistry or biochemical principles depending on what your school calls it in this class we will use advanced chemistry and mathematical concepts to study biological organisms and the cellular constituents such as proteins lipids carbohydrates and membranes in this course you will learn their structures and the metabolic processes associated with them for example for carbohydrates you'll go into great detail on glycolysis the Krebs cycle and the electron transport chain for lipids one metabolic process you will study is beta oxidation and for proteins or amino acids you will not only study protein synthesis for you will also study proteins versatility and function in biological organisms this class will be challenging most will require math for post-lab calculations and some schools might even require to develop a little bit of computer coding skills to program various functions for lab calculations one thing you are sure to practice in the lab is protein purification given a starting sample protein purification is done so that you can run various experiments on the sample and study the many processes and functions of protein next let's talk about quantitative analysis which is another class you'll take simply put quantitative analysis is determining how much of a given component is present in a sample it may be expressed in mass concentration or relative abundance of one or all components in general chemistry and many of your other chemistry courses you will have spent a lot of time balancing equations and be asked to solve for how much product can be made given a known starting material in this class you go deeper in theory about chemical equilibrium problems and apply this theory and lab to analytical problems there are many quantitative analysis techniques but one example you may be familiar with is an acid based titration in this technique you'd be able to determine the concentration of let's say an acid by neutralizing it with a base of a known concentration quantitative is important because it will help you predict how much product to expect and determine your actual yield quantitative analysis is used in a wide range of scientific industries such as agriculture food and drug companies hospital laboratories chemical / polymer manufacturers and many more for example analytical chemists frequently use quantitative analysis in the formulation and testing of foods and drugs because it is used to measure nutrient levels and provide an accurate dose another example is a medical lab tech who would use tests to determine the amount of various constituents of blood such as amount of red blood cells blood cholesterol levels or the amount of protein excreted in urine two common job titles that people have PhDs typically hold our analytical chemists and chemists although it might be possible to find some senior level analytical chemist or chemist positions without a PhD most jobs will require a PhD as of 2016 the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there were eighty six thousand six hundred and xD chemists in the workforce with a mean annual wage of 80,000 and $20 a year and expected employment growth of 2.3 percent one thing to note is that this number only accounts for chemists who specifically have chemists in their job title one huge plus about becoming an analytical chemist or a chemist is that they can find work in a wide range of scientific industries a list of industries that employ different types of chemists include chemical or forensic analysis like for criminal or civil investigations process development product validation quality control or toxicology which is the study of biological effects and safety of drugs and other chemicals and of course there's many more industries and fields of chemistry you can go into now earlier I mentioned that analysts frequently use quantitative analysis to measure the amount of a given constituent and in these careers they would use various quantitative analysis techniques on a daily basis in conjunction with quantitative analysis chemists use qualitative analysis to determine the different types of constituents in the sample to put it simply if you have an unknown sample you use qualitative techniques to determine which compounds are present and quantitative techniques to determine how much of those compounds are present if math and science really excites you but you would prefer not to work in a lab chemistry is a great major to prepare yourself to be a doctor pharmacist nurse or dentist because this major would satisfy most of your pre health requirements and give four years of in-depth problem-solving practice now some specific chemistry jobs would include being an agro chemists biochemists inorganic chemist and many more for example in agrochemical tree knowledge to improve agricultural practices like improve crop production or making the process of taking raw Goods and turning them into consumable foods and beverages in organic chemistry is essentially looking at compounds that don't have a carbon hydrogen bond this knowledge can be used in mining geosciences and in production of semiconductors like the ones used in your computers and cell phones if you think designing drugs for pharmaceutical companies to help people recover from illness sounds interesting then pursuing a career as a biochemist might be a great career for you as a biochemist you would advanced problem-solving skills to develop molecules that would interact with the body and help cure or treat disease now although some of these may interest you entry level chemistry jobs are often not incredibly exciting because fresh out of school with just a bachelor's degree you are limited in your knowledge and skill sets jobs may involve simply following procedures created by a superior like adding a certain amount of a chemical to another solution but won't be very academically challenging of course this may not always be true but it's a very common occurrence for those with bachelor's degrees so obtaining further education is basically required for majors like chemistry biochemistry or biology if you want to go more into the design or research and development kind of work I provided a link to the American Chemical Society careers page down below which has huge lists and definitions of chemistry careers and if you look around you'll notice something if you go to the toxicology page on the right it says that 50 percent of toxicologists have a PhD 25 percent have a master's and 25 percent have a bachelor's if you go to let's say nuclear chemistry they say on the right that technicians in the field require a bachelor's degree and that research or professional staff require a PhD and whether you look at medicinal chemists crystallography nano chemistry and so on they all say something similar such that technicians are the ones with a bachelor's but to do the research and design work you usually need a masters and quite often the PhD so make sure to take note on that if you guys like this video don't forget to comment like and subscribe and I'll see you all next time [Music]

Channel: Zach Star

Views: 150,973

Keywords: majorprep, major prep, chemistry, chemistry major, chem major, major in chemistry, chemistry careers, chemistry curriculum, college chemistry, chemistry courses, chemistry classes, science, life sciences, life science majors

Id: yUT5uanuHfA

Length: 10min 33sec (633 seconds)

Published: Sat May 27 2017