flask Materials & Environmental Chemistry
From the plastics in your phone to the batteries in EVs to the chemistry of clean air and water, this topic covers the materials that build the modern world and the environmental chemistry that protects it.
What you will learn
- Classify polymers, ceramics, and composites
- Explain semiconductors
- Describe battery chemistry
- Discuss pollutants and green chemistry
- Relate materials to properties
High School concepts
Atmospheric Chemistry: Ozone, Greenhouse Gases, and Air
Explore the chemistry of the air: how the ozone layer blocks ultraviolet light, how greenhouse gases trap heat, and how pollutants like smog and acid rain form.
How Batteries Work: Galvanic Cells and Lithium-Ion Chemistry
Understand how batteries turn chemical energy into electricity: galvanic cells, the Daniell cell, electron flow, and how lithium-ion batteries shuttle ions to power the modern world.
Corrosion: The Chemistry of Rust and How to Stop It
Learn the redox chemistry behind rust, why it spreads, and how barrier coatings, galvanizing, and sacrificial anodes protect metals from corrosion.
Green Chemistry: Designing Safer, Cleaner Chemical Processes
Meet the 12 principles of green chemistry: preventing waste, atom economy, safer solvents, catalysis, and designing chemical processes that are clean by design.
Polymers: How Monomers Become Plastics, Fibers, and Rubber
Learn what polymers are, how addition and condensation polymerization build long chains, and why thermoplastics and thermosets behave so differently.
Semiconductors: The Materials Behind Computer Chips
Discover how semiconductors sit between conductors and insulators, what the band gap means, and how doping silicon with tiny impurities makes modern electronics possible.