Nature of Chemistry

Chemistry is traditionally divided into five branches, each covering a different slice of the subject. Organic chemistry studies the properties and reactions of carbon-containing compounds. Inorganic chemistry covers essentially everything that isn't organic — i.e., all substances that don't fall under carbon compounds. Physical chemistry investigates the fundamental principles underlying chemistry itself: the properties of matter at the level of atoms, molecules, electrons, energy, and the dynamics between them — and because of this, it supplies the basic conceptual framework that the other branches build on. The remaining two branches are biochemistry, which studies the chemical processes that occur within living organisms, and analytic …