Unlock the Secrets of Ancient Alchemy for Chemistry Success!

Welcome back to gcsc Minecraft and chill I hope you’re having a good day so far and if you’ve already watched today’s math or physics videos you already know the drill we are starting at the beginning today with the topics My Hope Is that you’ll gain an understanding of

The bigger picture some of the context for why you have to learn what you have to learn as a foundation for advancing your study of chemistry and honestly science in general and revise some of the core principles of atomic structure to help you absorb the information in a

Different way to hopefully boost your skill in an exam so grab a drink get your revision notes or do whatever else you’re going to do while I chatter away and entertain myself and maybe you with some Minecraft and I’m still working on this building um just figuring this roof

Out um but if you already know it or recognize it uh please comment what you think it is because I’m really interested if anyone can tell what it actually is uh so I’m going to hop about and work on this while I talk about one of my favorite topics Alchemy well I’m

Not actually going to go down fully down that Rabbit Hole uh because it is a huge topic um but I am going to talk a little bit about the history of chemistry metalogy and how that connects to modern chemistry and the stuff that you have to

Know in your exams and the reason I say that is because what interested me in chemistry or in science at all when I was a kid and what gave me a really good understanding of the context behind what I was learning at school that then allowed me to find patterns in what we

Were studying and I I managed to do that quite quickly and easily and so I performed extremely well in my chemistry exams and that consistently strong performance carried on um all the way through to University um until I got really ill and then everything went wrong but that’s a story for another

Time um until that point chemistry was consistently my best scoring subject and what started all of that is the fact that I like Andrea from Andrea’s fashion Galaxy please check her out um like she says we are Shameless mag Pi drawn to All Things shiny glittery sparkly to to

Decorate our nests and I was and I still am now an avid Crystal collector I love gemstones rocks glittery things from the earth of all kinds love them uh my pens are glittery my makeup when I wear it is glittery and if I’m wearing anything other than black it’s probably going to

Be something very bright shiny or sparkly um and although there were sort of other pieces of the story along the way that led to me doing a geoscience degree it was really this interesting and crystals that really started it all off and I and I didn’t start to

Understand rocks properly until I got to University but that’s also another another video where will’ll talk about rocks uh if you’re interested um what’s important here is that this interesting crystals in um what magical properties natural materials minerals and elements had that that gave them this sort of really gorgeous crystallin form and

Sparkliness and also like every other curs of child reference not intended from my millennial generation we all read and enjoyed um that turf’s book series that involved a a search for a certain philosopher stone and that is what piqued my interest in alchemy and I sustained that interest I

Started reading and I learned about astrology Samaria and Mesopotamia Egypt medieval Arabian Scholars ancient China and indigenous American healers herbalists Wise Women I learned about paganism and the wheel of the year I learned about magical practices all over the world natural magic and eventually that led me to the the GRE Roman Cults

That woried um goddesses hecy among them um and other deities but hecy is the one that stuck with me um thanks to by the Vampire Slayer in part but um the the metaphor and symbology used with within Alchemy for the the philosophical and spiritual quest for enlightenment self-healing and wholeness within the

Universe and how that pertained to some specific ritual processes in purifying minerals and metals that was like I was like what my mind was blown so back to the point thank goodness um like I said this is a really big topic for me so I’m

Going to I’m going to try to keep it rained in or this video will be hours long um and I’m like touching really really briefly on a lot of very deep and context heavy stuff so anyway suddenly before I knew it in my own time as a

Hobby like I said I was reading about people from hundreds and hundreds of years ago if not thousands who are using distillation evaporation crystallization and filtration boiling and smelting and grinding stuff to combine powders and liquids and purifying certain rocks and metals to obtain different kinds of

Metals and and all of that and I could in the diagrams in the old pictures if you’ve ever seen any of them um you can recognize the equipment that they’re using and the processes that are being described in these uh ancient documents they are literally what you learn in

School today and in the labs in your practical lessons and that just made it so much more interesting to me and I I needed to know more about it and I relished every opportunity that we got the buns and burner out and the measuring cylinders and the chicle

Flasks and doing all sorts um mostly setting fire to metal powders was really fun I enjoyed that uh seeing all the different colored fire um and that’s cool right because these techniques of separating uh mixtures and materials um check out my shorts this week I have one about which techniques are needed for

What thing um these processes were used to create tinctures and healing oils and obtaining chemical resources for medicines and metals for tools that we need today just like they were hundreds of years ago the the principles are sound we have not needed to change these techniques that much in you know over a

Thousand years that’s really impressive um considering all of the technological advancement that’s happened um in the last thousand years so smelting purifying liquids and powders investigating the material properties of the natural world and the resources around us is not new for Humanity um and while I am absolutely no

Archaeologist or Anthropologist I will leave that to uh mini minute man check him out um apparently this is the uh the podcasty episode where I’m just going to be linking you to all sorts of other YouTubers that I watch but um anyway um go watch him if you’re interested in

Archaeology um what I’m interested in is the fact that new evidence is being found all the time that is pushing the dates that humans are thought to have been using uh copper for example or creating metallic tools or like more complicated metalogy um there you know it’s it’s a

Really really ancient thing that humans have been doing um currently um we have found evidence that humans were using gold as long as about 42,000 years ago and the oldest examples of copper being used have been found in Iraq um from around 10,000 700 years ago and that’s

Incredible that’s over like imagine all of the advancements that happened in the last 1,000 years of humanity imagine 10 and a half or just over 10 and a half thousand years of smelting metal the tools jewelry money weapons and we’ve been doing it for that long and I’m now

Doing a PhD looking at how depleted uranium metal corrodes in different environmental and storage conditions so we are still learning about this stuff and that is Bonkers and I love it I love metalogy and the history around it is so incredibly rich and tells such a a fundamental story of humanity um side

Not that’s kind of why I like Minecraft I like the uh the natural resources and tools and building part of it but anyway uh I digress so over all of this time um we’ve been categorizing different materials based on their properties their uses for us and the processing

That are required to concentrate it for those specific uses and that and recording that knowledge was important for beginning a more rigorous and a more intergenerationally transferable knowledge right so a lot of very very very valuable human knowledge has been passed in oral Traditions through musics and stories and what happened with well

The development of modern science as we know it now is is that um ancient Scholars particularly um Indian and Islamic and Egyptian Scholars they were so brilliant and fantastic because they were doing consistent reputable experiments they were writing them down and they were exchanging this knowledge amongst other early ancient scientists

And Scholars around the world freely and these processes of what paved the way for the advanced you know metalogy science that we do in chemistry today in chemistry and physics um the boundaries between the subjects are obviously quite fluid and not as as rigid as one might think

But anyway so that’s what kind of brought us very very broadly and shallowly to modern chemistry and one of the first things you learn in chemistry the first topic is you start off with a periodic table of the elements and you start off about learning about atoms and

The the story I I feel like the the story of chemistry has already given enough credit um because that’s not where the story started we’ve only known about um atoms and atomic structure for well the last H 100ish years right um before that the periodic table of

Elements was arranged in terms of weight and this at the time was a very sensible and logical way of categorizing the different elements um because remember the the thing that we were primarily interested in for chemistry was developing the the the metals particularly but all the elements into

Tools into soap processing soap or beer or wine or medicine the the the weight wasn’t as important as the unique properties of each of the elements and the behaviors that they exhibited um and that’s still what modern chemistry is it’s understanding the behavior of the elements according to the model that we

Have that utilizes our understanding of electrons to explain the phenomena and the properties and the behavior that we see so while weight does give us some critical insight into the underlying structures of of every individual element it was the properties being grouped together that gave away how

Important the mass making of the nucleus and the behavior being explained by the electrons surrounding the nucleus are and that’s that’s the the Brilliance of menal of that um he left gaps in this more modern version of the periodic table um knowing that the the weights and the properties were

Two separate but important connected features and that there was this bigger picture and that neither weight nor the properties alone were enough to sort of explain everything that we see so to to really understand this think about why you learn about the differences between the three extr exem

Groups in the periodic table so groups 1 7 and 8 or zero whichever you want to call it considering why the properties in these groups are different to each other regardless of what the relative atomic masses or weights are teaches you to understand these foundational principles of chemistry it teaches you

To look at the periodic table and see not just a chaotic cluster of boxes arranged randomly on a piece of paper but it’s a map to understand natural resources and that map has been built by considering the different repeated patterns in behavior um and and those properties and behaviors that

We’ve observed because of what we’re actually using elements for um but why so thinking that’s sort of how it came to be now think about why from a scientific perspective why is matter why are the elements what they are why do we have three prot and

Electrons in lithium why do we have 20 in calcium and about 35 in chlorine why do those specific numbers cause such a radical difference in their properties why do we label them as different things and how do we know that that forms predictable compounds and these are all the important questions

That you’ll be considering and studying if you want to master the discipline of chemistry and know how to do things like take a random Rock and turn into a vital ingredient in our LIF saving medicine when you combine it with the right distilled oil from the right plant right

Or how to mine and extract the correct ore and make it the perfect tool that makes the comfiest and coziest wooden chair and how do we do that in a way that doesn’t completely destroy the environment you know that it’s this like wild thing to me a wild property of nature that the

Elements are just a sequence of counting up protons and electrons in various balls of mass and theyve got really weird names and they look like just dull gray blobs most of them in their Elemental form but put them in through a few chemical reactions and you get

Something as as perfect and beautiful as an amethyst Crystal and what like isn’t that mind-blowing to you we’re just counting really from one up to about 103 or little bit more um and we get these distinct clusters and properties because of the nature of electron orbitals or the electron shells that group these

Elements together and the names are just slightly more convenient labels than just referring to each element as a number so think about that right that it’s about the electron orbitals it’s about the shells so we then might to start consider the interesting numbers why are twos and eights the important natural

Numbers from an atomic perspective um if you ever get to a level where you start to study quantum chemistry you’ll learn why that’s the case it’s about stability squares and circles Quantum spin uh balancing each other out and immediately we’re back to to talking about maths and geometry and Alchemy and that’s just

Like straight up magic to me but regardless if you can see how every property of every material is arising because of the number of protons and electrons which are always going to be the same in order to conserve the electrical charge around the nucleus and keep it atom balanced then you’ll see

That each individual element is just a labeled form of of counting protons and electrons and like it doesn’t sound like I’m saying anything profound but if you really understand that you you understand chemistry and I I say that and I truly believe it because no matter how advanced the chemistry that you’re

Studying will get it’s always going to come down to conserving energy charge or mass and abiding by the rules of electron orbitals and stability and that’s why a lot of the other later topics in chemistry you have to balance reactions you have to predict the compounds or products that are going

To form when you mix certain reactants together you have to know the patterns and properties of certain groups or what happens when certain groups mix together they have characteristic reactions like acids and bases are always going to make a salt and water but equally you need to know what happens when group seven

Halogens react with alkaline metals from groups 1 and two because they also have characteristic reactions um so if you understand their position in the periodic table and what that means and how they’re either trying to empty or fill an electron shell and their respective reactivities based on their

Positions within the group chemistry is a total piece of cake from that point forwards um like I I’ve said in a million of my shorts at this point if you’ve seen them um the periodic table is the key to understanding this and next week uh in my gcsc Minecraft and

Chill video I’ll be talking about the properties and Trends so if you found this vaguely interesting at all you will definitely enjoy that video so tune in next week um but I think for today that’s going to do so thank you for watching whatever you do be kind to

Yourself because our words are spells have a lovely rest of your week I’ll see you next time y by