Understand that what we experience in physical exercise is a result of the properties and transformations of matter and energy. We understand the concepts of osmosis and thermochemistry that are listed below. But now we begin to appply them in our thinking about exercise. The development of Gatorade required that the inventors make judgements about the impact of the beverage on the athletes. They must try to sort out the relationship of the beverage to fatigue, eliminating or explaining all other factors or observations.
Chemists look at the world in three distinct ways.
We burn fuel to heat air and the hot air causes a balloon to rise. All of these, the flexibility of an automobile tire, the color of the paint we stir, the effect of the alcohol we drink, are a reflection in the world we see, of the microscopic nature of the unseeable atoms and molecules. Every step of the way, chemists need a symbolic or representative language to indicate and describe both the macro and microscopic. None of these representations is perfect, all have flaws, we must learn to understand wht they mean and apply and analyze their message. Issues like human testing of beverages, product ownership and the role of government regulation challenge us to recognize the link between science and responsible decisions.