What Is Organic Chemistry?

Words are funny things. A word that means one thing to one person might mean something completely different to another person. In the United States the word football refers to a game played with an oval-shaped ball that players pass with their hands or hold with their hands while they run with it. In England football refers to a game played with a round ball that players kick with their feet. (In the United States people call this game soccer.)

The word organic is another word that means different things to different people. To many people organic means “natural.” For example, gardeners sometimes talk about using organic fertilizer. What they mean is that they’re putting something natural like compost or manure on their plants instead of human-made, or synthetic, fertilizers.

Organic means something completely different to chemists. In chemistry organic means “carbon-based.” To a chemist, an organic compound is any compound that contains carbon. That is, an organic compound is any compound whose molecules contain carbon atoms. All living things are made of compounds containing mostly carbon, so lots of things that are “organic” to a gardener are also “organic” to a chemist.

Of course, there are many carbon compounds that are human-made, or synthetic. To chemists, these are organic compounds too. Plastics are organic, and so are most synthetic wonder drugs, as far as chemists are concerned. They are organic because they are carbon-based. Chemists would even say most of the synthetic fertilizers, the ones that “organic” gardeners don’t use, are organic too. This is because synthetic fertilizers are made of molecules that are made of mostly carbon atoms.

In fact, most chemists laugh a little when they see the word organic on food packages in the grocery store. All food is made of carbon-based molecules, and so are most food additives, whether they’re natural or synthetic. So to a chemist, all food is “organic.”

So when we talk about “organic chemists,” we’re not talking about chemists who only use all-natural substances. We’re talking about chemists who make and study compounds that are made of carbon, whether the compounds are natural or synthetic.