Chemical synthesis facts for kids
Chemical synthesis is like building with chemicals! It's when scientists use chemical reactions to make a new product, or even several products. Think of it as putting different chemical "lego bricks" together to create something new.
This process involves mixing chemicals and changing them in specific ways. Often, chemists use many different chemical reactions, one after another, to get to their final product.
When chemists do a chemical synthesis in a laboratory, they make sure it's:
- Reproducible: This means if someone does the experiment again, they will get the same results.
- Reliable: The process works well, even if small things change a little bit.
- Proven: It has been shown to work in many different labs.
To start a chemical synthesis, chemists first choose the chemical compounds they want to combine. These starting chemicals are called reagents or reactants. They mix these chemicals in a special container, like a flask or a chemical reactor. After the reaction, they often need to do a "work-up" to get the pure product.
The amount of product they make is called the reaction yield. This is usually measured in grams or as a percentage of how much product they expected to get. Sometimes, an unwanted side reaction happens, which means less of the product they want is made.
The word synthesis in chemistry was first used by a chemist named Adolph Wilhelm Hermann Kolbe.
How Chemists Plan Syntheses
It's rare for a single chemical reaction to make the desired product right away. Chemists use many clever ways to figure out the best steps to create a new chemical.
- Cascade reactions: Imagine a domino effect! In these reactions, one chemical change triggers another, and then another, all within the same starting chemical.
- Multi-component reactions: This is like a big chemical party where many different starting chemicals (sometimes up to 11!) all come together to form one single product.
- Telescopic synthesis: This is a super-efficient way to make chemicals. A starting chemical goes through many changes without stopping to clean up or separate the in-between products after each step. It's like a continuous assembly line!
Making Organic Compounds
Organic synthesis is a special type of chemical synthesis. It focuses only on making organic compounds. These are chemicals that contain carbon, and they are super important for life and many everyday products.
Making a complex organic compound from scratch can take many steps. Chemists try to find the shortest and most efficient way to do it. Being good at organic synthesis is a very valuable skill. Some chemists, like Robert Burns Woodward, have even won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for making very valuable or difficult compounds!
- A purely synthetic process starts with basic chemicals found in a lab and creates something completely new.
- A semisynthetic process starts with a chemical found in nature (like from plants or animals) and then changes it into a new compound.
Related pages
See also
In Spanish: Síntesis química para niños
