A new school year has started, meaning a whole new slew of teacher as I enter my junior year. I had some teachers from previous years, and others are completely new. One of those teachers is my college-credit-level chemistry teacher, whom, for the sake of the article, I will call Ms. O. As we are all learning about each other, Ms. O. asks us all what we want to major in for college. She did this so that she could later make a point. After this activity, she asked us to do something.
She requested that everyone pull out a piece of paper and write down three things that are not controlled by chemistry. She eliminated the options of God and souls, as religion is not allowed to be discussed in school (not necessarily something I agree with). Some kids stated various things. One person used magic. Ms. O. said that all magic is chemistry (because magic isn't truly real). It is all just chemical reactions causing normally unnatural things to happen. My three were as follows:
-An idea
-A wish
-A word
Ms. O. said that an idea is caused by the chemical reactions happening within our brain. She said that a wish is started by an idea. She said that the word chemistry is a word, henceforth relating the two. A few more answers went around. As she was explaining why magic is chemistry, she mentioned the time and pointed at the clock. I stared at it for a bit, and then I had a question of my own. I raised my hand, as she called on me.
"What does time have to do with chemistry?" I asked curiously.
After only a brief, normal pause, she looked at me and replied. "Are you really asking that? You don't know?" The room burst into conversation for a brief moment. But then she moved onto other topics. Her point was that everything comes back to chemistry, and that chemistry is the center of science. But she never answered my question. What DOES time have to do with chemistry?
I asked a number of other students. Some were honors students and some were not. Their immediate answer was that chemistry "takes time" or "happens over time". I pointed out that it means that chemistry is in need of time, not the other way around. Of course this is the abstract kind of thing my mind would think about.
At lunch I asked my friend Connor the question, since I know that he also has an abstract view of philosophy. Something to note is that he is an agnostic, and I am a christian. Because of this, our views differ slightly. Off the bat, he used the same starting excuse as everyone else. I shot him down by saying that time doesn't need chemistry, chemistry needs time. His next point was involving half-life, the operation in which the radioactive material in an object becomes halved over time. I repeated my statement, saying that that is a product in chemistry caused by time. Even if half-life didn't exist, time would still tick on. He thought about it, then he stated that our galaxy is kept in time by the rotation of the Earth. And since the sun and gravity causes this, he stated that the hydrogen and chemicals in the sun keep time involved with chemistry. This was a good point. I pointed out that the rotation of the Earth is merely a bar of how we keep track of time. Even if the Earth did not move, there would still be time. I said that as long as anything is living, there is time. He said that if the Earth weren't moving, we wouldn't be sustainable to live. Then I re-thought my answer and said that as long as anything moves, time is passing.
Time allows for change. He and I, although differing on our views of the beginning of the universe, both agreed that at one point the universe had to come from somewhere. At one point it was not here. Change cannot happen without time passing. If time did not allow for change, then the universe would not be here. Why? Simple logic. At one point there was nothing, and then there was something. That is a change. If there was no time before that, then the change could never have taken place.
Now at this point, it's obvious that are views differ on how nothing became something. But that is another debate for another day. I told him that before the universe, there was no chemistry. Chemicals didn't exist because there was nothing. Yet, in order for the change from nothing to something to occur, there had to be time. So this proved that time is entirely self-reliant. I asked him the question again, and we both came to a conclusion
We simply don't know. In my opinion, only God can define what time truly is. In his opinion, time is an unknown force. Either way, since humans can't understand, define, or change time, we cannot answer the question of what chemistry has to do with it. This is the same reason we cannot invent time travel yet. At the end, it was a very interesting question that brought up a level of higher thinking between the both of us.
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