For a lot of people, chemistry is a subject that is regarded as distant from everyday life. They visualize the subject chemistry by thinking of scientists who wear goggles that cover half of their faces and hold beakers that contain multiple complicated chemicals, working in their labs to produce a new chemical that expedite the process of, for instance, battery charging. However, this image is not true.

Chemistry can be found everyday and everywhere. When one gets up and fries an egg, the protein in the egg coagulates, or clots, by the heat of the frying pan, and the egg whitens on the outer part to become what people commonly associate as the white of an egg. Also, when one eats bread, the starch in the bread gets broken by the saliva, which contains an enzyme called salivary amylase, in the mouth.

Chemistry is also present outside of the house. When one goes to McDonald’s for lunch and buys a Big Mac that costs two dollars and one cent, one would sometimes notice that the coin is rusty. This is because the oxygen in the air and the iron from the coin have a chemical reaction to produce rust and water. This is why coins usually do not get rusty in an environment that is dry and contains less oxygen, like a mountain area.

The human body itself is full of chemistry. Our body undergoes countless chemical reactions everyday; they are occurring in your body right now. As mentioned above, salivary amylase breaks down the starch while chewing. Hormones that have special types of chemicals, such as steroids, work to produce changes in our bodies, such as sweating and growing. Inside the blood stream, hemoglobin binds to oxygen to carry this essential gas all across our bodies.

If people pay more attention to the world around them, they would be happier. They would look up the sky and enjoy its blueness, smell the scent of flower and enjoy its sweetness, feel the roughness of tree bark and enjoy its oldness. On the same line, people would be happier if they pay closer to chemistry that is hidden in the everyday world. They would come to enjoy the unique and charming aspects that only chemistry can bring, and eventually realize that happiness is something that does not require an effort to be achieved; rather it is everywhere.