What Is Organic Chemistry And What Do Chemists Do?

What Is Organic Chemistry Definition?

Organic chemistry studies the structure, properties, and reaction of organic compounds that contain carbon in covalent bonds. Structure studies include the study of formulas and properties for determining their chemical composition and evaluating chemical reactions to understand their physical and chemical properties, and their behavior. The study of biological reactions includes the chemical synthesis of natural products, drugs and polymers, and the study of individual biological molecules through laboratory and theoretical (silicate) studies.

What Is Organic Chemistry?

Organic chemistry is the study of the structure, properties, reactions, composition and preparation of carbonaceous compounds. Most organic compounds contain carbon and hydrogen but may contain other elements (e.g., nitrogen, oxygen, halogen, phosphorus, silicon, sulfur).

Originally limited to the study of compounds produced by living organisms biochemistry has been expanded to include man-made substances (e.g., plastics).

Why Organic Chemistry Is Important?

Organic chemistry is important because it is the study of life and all the chemical reactions associated with life. A number of professions such as doctors, veterinarians, dentists, pharmacologists, chemical engineers and chemists apply an understanding of organic chemistry. Organic chemistry plays a role in the development of common household chemicals, food, plastics, drugs and fuels, which are most of the chemicals in everyday life.

What Do Organic Chemists Do?

Organic chemistry is a highly creative science that allows chemists to create and explore molecules, compounds. Organic chemists spend most of their time creating new compounds and finding better ways to synthesize existing ones.

Where Is Organic Chemistry Used?

There are many organic compounds around us. Many modern materials are composed of at least partial organic compounds. They are the center of economic growth, and based on biochemistry, biotechnology and medicine. Examples, where you can find organic compounds include agrochemicals, coatings, cosmetics, detergents, dyes, food, fuels, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, plastics and rubber.

Which Industries Hire Organic Chemists?

Biotechnology
Virtually all biotechnology ("biotech") is the result of biochemistry. Biotech uses living creatures and bioprocesses to make changes for a specific use. For example, a biotech company may produce seeds of disease-resistant or drought-resistant plants.

Among the most common areas of employment in biotechnology are:

• Health care
• Crop production and agriculture
• Nonfood uses of crops
• Consumer products (e.g., biodegradable plastics, vegetable oil)
• Environmental sector
• Biofuels

Consumer Products
Most of the consumer products we use involve organic chemistry. Take the cosmetics industry as an example. Biochemistry examines how the skin responds to metabolic and environmental factors, and chemists make products accordingly.

Other examples of everyday products involving organic chemistry include soaps, plastic products, perfumes, coal, and food additives.

Organic Industrial Chemistry
Important for the modern world economy, organic industry chemistry focuses on the conversion of raw materials (e.g., oil, air, natural gas, metals, water and minerals) into consumer and industrial products.

Today, organic industry chemistry is largely based on petroleum and natural gas. Since these are limited raw materials, much of the industry's focus is on learning how to convert renewable resources (e.g., plants) into industrial biochemicals.

Major organic industry chemistry sectors include:

• Rubber and plastic products
• Textiles and apparel
• Petroleum refining
• Pulp and paper
• Primary metals

Petroleum
The largest petroleum products are fuel oil and petrol. Petroleum is the raw material for many chemical products (e.g., pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers, pesticides and plastics).

The petroleum industry is generally divided into three main components:

• Upstream – Exploration and production
• Midstream – Transportation
• Downstream – Crude oil refining, natural gas processing and refining, petrochemical manufacturing

Pharmaceutical
The pharmaceutical industry develops, even manufactures and markets drugs used in human or animal medicine. Some pharmaceutical companies transact under brand-names (i.e., have a trade name. And can only be manufactured and sold by patent-holding companies) and generics (i.e., chemically equivalent, a lower-priced version of a brand-name drug). Medications and medical devices (agents that work on diseases without chemical interactions with the body).

Pharmaceuticals (brand name and generic) and medical devices are topic to many country-specific laws. And regulations regarding patenting, testing, safety assurance, effectiveness, monitoring and marketing.

Government
Federal offices (e.g., Food and Drug Administration, Patents and Trademark Offices) as well as state and local governments hire biochemists for the aforementioned specializations.