Changing materials

Perhaps the most fundamental use of chemistry is to make natural materials more useful. This is not a new development, but has been part of human development ever since people learned how to make fire. Today, the ability of chemists to make millions of compounds from around 100 elements cannot be ignored wherever you live. Housing, clothes, food, medicines, transport and leisure all involve the use of materials developed by chemists from natural materials found in the rocks, in the oceans, in the air or in plants. In the picture, the child's clothes and toys, the windsurfing board and wet suit are all products of the chemist's skill.

• Useful products from oil
  • Forming crude oil
  • Separating crude oil
  • Fuels from crude oil
  • The products of burning hydrocarbons
  • Hydrocarbon families
  • Modifying hydrocarbons
  • Addition polymers
• Useful products from metal ores and rocks
  • Metal ores
  • Extracting metals
  • Extracting aluminium by electrolysis
  • Extracting iron by smelting
  • Purifying metals by electrolysis
  • Other products from rocks and minerals
• Useful products from air
  • Converting nitrogen into ammonia
  • Making nitrogenous fertilisers
• Representing reactions
  • Using word equations
  • Using chemical symbols
• Quantitative chemistry
  • Predicting reacting quantities
  • Determining the formulae of simple compounds
• Changes to the atmosphere
  • The changing composition of the atmosphere
  • The atmosphere and the Carbon Cycle
• Geological changes
  • The formation of different types of rock
  • Looking at the record of the rocks
  • Plate tectonics and rock formation