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What Is Chemistry?

A workshop held at the Variety in Chemistry Education conference at Keele, UK, in 2005 discussed the question: "What Is chemistry?"

The workshop discussions proved to be really quite enlightening: the trick was to get the participants to write their ideas down on Post-It notes. This page gives a bullet point version of the discussion that followed.


Different groups require different explanations as to what chemistry is:


Some different statements that Chemistry Is:


Heartland chemistry topics include:


Boundary areas, including: "stolen from chemistry" and "smuggled into chemistry":

A subtle one this:


Some areas where chemistry is important:


Some positive images of chemistry (because we sure don't need any more negative ones):



An interesting contribution from Prof. Jacob Zabicky to the Philosophy of Chemistry Internet discussion list discussing how "fizzy" any definition of chemistry can be:

Question the following fields:



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Electronegativity Paper Literature References

© Mark R. Leach 1999 –


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