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CAREERS THAT USE CHEMISTRY
Not only are there all of these specialties to the large field of chemistry, there are loads of career paths you could choose. Some are 100% chemistry while others use chemistry every day but focus on other work. Some examples...
DOCTOR
You all know what a doctor is. Doctors have to know loads about biochemistry and the chemical reactions going on in your body. Not only how they work normally but what happens when they go wrong. They also have to understand how drugs affect your body's systems.
PHARMACIST, PHARMACOLOGIST
There are the people at the drug store who fill your prescriptions. There are also the people who study pharmacology in school and learn how to create new drugs to cure diseases. Someone with a Pharmacology major might work in a lab all day studying and creating new compounds. There are then several years of testing to see how the compounds interact with the human body.
UNIVERSITY RESEARCHER
These are the folks who spend their whole careers working at a university focusing on one or two specific ideas in chemistry. They may also be teachers of chemistry classes. They can work in any part of chemistry, not just the world of chemistry in living things (like the above examples). They often spend many years in school getting their Ph.D. before they begin their own research.
FORENSICS EXPERT
These scientists work with law enforcement officials. They go to scenes of the crime, gather clues, bring them back to their labs and analyze them. An example might be a murder scene where someone tracked mud all over the carpet. The forensics expert could come and take a sample of the mud, analyze the elements and then compare it to a database of mud around the city. That might help the police figure out where the mud came from and lead them to the killer.
HAZARDOUS MATERIALS EXPERT
Here's another time where you might work with law enforcement. These folks have information on thousands of types of chemicals and how they react with people, fire and the air. When there is a spill or exposure somewhere they come and work with fire fighters to evacuate people, tell them it's okay or maybe help tell them how to contain the unidentified chemicals. They work with huge databases of chemical information.
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