Welcome to Applied Chemistry: Part 2. In this unit, we will venture into the inner life of, well, life. We will take a look at how life functions on the smallest scale, creating the tiny yet hyper-efficient molecular machines that are your cells. As we will learn, cells are the smallest unit that can be defined as alive, and something happening inside of a cell is ultimately responsible for everything that happens in life on a larger scale. We really can’t talk about the functioning of a cell without paying homage to the molecules that make them up—the smaller, not alive, little workhorses that are really responsible for all of life—so we will spend a significant amount of time talking about biochemistry. It is my goal that this will really help you to understand what you’re made of, how you function, and how this fits into the bigger scheme of life on Earth. We will also zoom out—way out—and try to answer one of the biggest questions in the universe: What does it mean to be alive?

So, dust off your thinking brain (made of cells) and get ready to understand, well, you a little bit better.