Everyone will agree that sometimes it feels like chemistry students speak an entirely different language. The subject has so much technical vocabulary that it will make your head spin; however, even basic words used in everyday speech take on an entirely different meaning for chemistry majors. Here are 15 words that are forever changed by the study of atoms and molecules.
1. Alcohol
Everyone: Something you drink on the weekends that makes parties more fun and causes questionable choices.
Chemists: 1. Any organic molecule with an –OH group or 2. something you drink on the weekends to make you forget about the 46 you got on your exam about alcohols.
2. Column
Everyone: An upright pillar or structure, usually supporting a house or other building.
Chemists: A purification step that is tedious, frustrating and actually living hell.
3. Organic
Everyone: All-natural, non-GMO, pesticide-free, healthy, etc.
Chemists: Terrifying, impossible, soul-crushing, tear-inducing, etc.
4. Poster
Everyone: Large sheet of paper that you hang on a wall to decorate your dorm room.
Chemists: Large sheet of paper that you bring to a meeting so that other scientists can criticize your last year’s-worth of research.
5. Research
Everyone: Doing some Google searches to find the article that you need to finish your paper.
Chemists: Endless hours in the lab repeating the same experiment over and over again, hoping that this attempt is “the one.”
6. Dry
Everyone: Free from moisture or liquid.
Chemists: The impossible anhydrous state without which your Gringard reaction will fail epically.
7. Mole
Everyone: Some kind of rodent that lives under ground or something?
Chemists: The only unit of measurement that makes chemistry a thing.
8. Protein
Everyone: Stuff found in meat, nuts, and soy that helps you make gains in the gym.
Chemists: A tangled mess of amino acids that is the cause of 75-percent of your headaches in Biochemistry I.
9. Basic
Everyone: Someone devoid of defining social characteristics that simply adopts the latest trends as their own identity.
Chemists: pH<7, duh.
10. Problem
Everyone: Adversity, challenges, tests.
Chemists: Things your teacher assigns that would be completely unsolvable were it not for the solution manual some kid in your class found online.
11. Lab
Everyone: A room with flashing lights and funny instruments where scientists do their thing.
Chemists: That place you spend eight hours a week.
12. Carbohydrates
Everyone: The stuff in bread, pasta and potatoes that is delicious, but makes you fat.
Chemists: Molecules in the general form C2H2nOn that drive you up the wall because Fischer projections are dumb and who has time to memorize all those names?
13. Lab Coat
Everyone: That white garment without which science cannot be performed.
Chemists: Something a photographer makes you wear when the school wants to take pictures for an admission brochure.
14. Free-Elective
Everyone: Free space in your schedule that allows you to explore interesting courses in subjects that don’t necessarily have anything to do with your major.
Chemists: Something that doesn’t exist.
15. Chemistry
Everyone: A horrifying subject that you take in high school and hope never to see again.
Chemists: A horrifying subject that is the source of 50-percent of your anxiety but 99-percent of your satisfaction and fulfillment as a college student.
