Abstract
What does a chemist do? Fish navigation, functionalized pasta, corpse flowers, and mouse tattoos: Newscripts covers a wide variety of things that a person can get up to with a chemistry degree. So it was ironic that this humble Newscripts writer was stumped by the simple question, “What does a chemist do?” The question came from a group of elementary school kids attending a summer reading camp in Baltimore. What answer wouldn’t assume any prior knowledge of chemistry and would be short and pithy enough to stick in their busy minds? The response they got was that a chemist can do any number of things. But honestly, that’s vague and unhelpful. So we turned to C&EN’s erudite Twitter following in search of a better answer. Here are some of our favorites. @mccomstock: “A chemist pushes atoms around for fun and profit.” @EricAshleyNJ: “Make stuff no one’s ever made before.” @MoniqueWilhelm1:
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