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Asked by Nikolas to Alex, Ana, Clay, Keegan, Mark on 28 Apr 2016.
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Alexander Taylor answered on 28 Apr 2016:
There are billions of chemical reactions happening in your body every second. Most of these reactions are around maintaining “homeostasis” or equilibrium – supplying cells with oxygen and energy, removing and filtering out waste, maintaining body temperature, etc. We make proteins and enzymes using the blueprint encoded in our DNA. Our cells duplicate DNA and tons of other cellular machinery, and then divide. To power all this action, we’re constantly breaking down sugars and fats and putting that energy into our body’s energy currency, ATP. This ATP is produced in “mitochondria,” which are actually ancient bacteria that have been entrapped inside of our cells for billions of years!
It’s quite amazing that all of this works so well, so much of the time.
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Clay Robinson answered on 28 Apr 2016:
Lots and lots!
Baking is all about chemistry, and sometimes about biology.
Leavening is an old word that talks about things that cause bread to rise. There are two common ways leavening agents work. Baking powder and baking soda use a base that mix with an acid and release a gas (carbon dioxide), similar to what happens when you mix baking soda and vinegar. The other thing is yeast, an organism that eats the sugar provided and releases carbon dioxide. When the bread is baked, the heat changes the nature and structure of the proteins (chemical reactions) to turn dough into bread. Some day let some dough sit and dry by itself and compare that to dough that is baked to become bread. Chemical reactions are the difference.
Cooking any food is a series of chemical reactions that make food more digestible, mostly by changing the nature of proteins, but also fats, and sometimes sugars.
Driving a car with an internal combustion engine (gas or diesel) is made possible through a series of chemical reactions as the fuel is burned, energy is released and used to operate the engine, some energy is lost in the form of heat, and water and carbon dioxide are emitted as waste.
Your body is a tremendous series of chemical reactions and biochemical (chemistry that is activated by life). When you take a bite of food and begin to chew it, the saliva in your mouth releases enzymes that begin to digest the food, breaking the molecules into smaller chains. That process continues in your stomach and small intestines. The sugars that are released and absorbed are transported in your blood to every cell in your body where the sugars are left and more chemical reactions occur that digest the sugars, releasing energy the cell needs, and giving off water and carbon dioxide as waste products. The carbon dioxide is carried to your lungs and exhaled, with some of the water. But the blood flows through the kidneys, is filtered, and some of the water is removed and stored in your bladder until you go urinate.
And there are so many more examples. Chemistry surrounds us. -
Mark Ritchie answered on 29 Apr 2016:
Great question, but the list is impossibly long! The most important reactions are the ones we use to provide energy for work our cells have to do. These include breaking apart starches (think potato) into simpler sugars like glucose, breaking up glucose into smaller chains, and building a molecule called ATP (adenosine triphosphate) which is basically a sugar connected to several nitrogen atoms with three big huge glops of phosphorus plus four oxygen atoms (called a phosphate) stuck on it. For whatever reason, it is relatively easy to chop off one of the phosphates and release energy.
Other important reactions are re-setting the electrical potential of our nerves so they can fire when they are stimulated (ouch!), making new cells, making neurons in the brain, (so you can remember what you just read!) and so on.
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