Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments

Chapter 21. Laboratory: Synthesis of Useful Compounds

Chemical reactions are often themselves interesting, but most chemical reactions have the practical goal of synthesizing some useful compound. With the exception of purely natural products, nearly every material you come into contact with in your daily life is the product of a chemical synthesis. Those products were first synthesized on a small scale by chemists in laboratories, and later produced on an industrial scale using processes designed by chemists and chemical engineers.

In choosing the sessions for this chapter, I was faced with an embarrassment of riches. I could have chosen to synthesize ...