Here at Project Brainstorm, we would like to believe we're not only providing quality entertainment, we're also contributing something useful to the world. This is hard, of course, because as yet we have done no such thing. That is, ironically enough, until now. If there remains a hunger for knowledge, then we will broaden, if not horizons, then at least waistbands. Today, class, we present Chemistry... Explained.

Chemistry, if we are going to be exact, is a sort of science. It is the study of what things are made of. Many centuries ago, chemistry was called alchemy, and was only taught in grammar schools. Alchemists, famously, tried to turn lead into gold. No-one was successful and they all died poor and from lead poisoning. A smaller group attempted to turn water into wine, with similar consequences, casting doubt on the validity of a similar experiment documented in a early, now defunct, scientific journal, called the Gospel of St. Luke (Monthly). They also died poor of dehydration, but completely sober.

Knowing what things are made of is very important. Knowing what things the things that everything is made of is made of is also very important. The things that everything is made of are called elements. All of the everything in the Universe is made up of bits of elements. There are just over one hundred elements, though some of the latter ones are highly suspicious. It seems unlikely that someone would discover an element that just happened to have the same name as an eminent scientist of the time. Mendelevium, for instance, has the exact same properties of tin, it just happens to be coated in red dots.

Elements are made up of atoms. An element has only one sort of atom. Anything that has more than one sort of atom is not an element. Atoms used to resemble a plum pudding, but nowadays they resemble an onion. At the centre of the onion is a nucleus, made up of protons and neutrons, which are very, very small positively charge and neutrally charged particles. Around the nucleus are electrons, which orbit in a circle. There are different layers of orbits, very much like an onion, if an onion were actually an atom. To imagine what size these things are, imagine you are at a football stadium. If the atom is the size of the average supporter's head, the electrons are like his tiny, tiny brain, rattling away inside, unable to do anything but direct imaginative swearwords at the referee. The plum pudding image was a very lazy way of imagining atoms. It is likely someone one day who was researching this decided that it probably didn't matter what an atom looked like, so we might as well just stick all the bits in there and call it a breakthrough.

We reckon that the bits that make up an atom are actually made up of smaller bits, which are, likely as not, made up of even smaller bits. At this point, of course, it all gets a bit silly.

All of the elements, even the dubious ones, are arranged in the Periodic Table, in order of the amount of electrons they have, and in case of disagreement, their height. Strangely, all elements in one column have very similar properties. For example, in column one, called Group I by some radical thinkers, they all explode in water. Lithium will only explode you a little bit, potassium will explode you a fair amount, and caesium will blow you out of your fucking trainers. At the other end of the table are the Inert Gases, which is a word. They are very unreactive. They do not react to heat, light, sound, or mild racial slurring. Hydrogen is traditionally depicted separate from the table, not really having any of the properties of any other group. In that respect, it is very much like the boy with Tourette's: you think someone should spend some time with him, but you'd rather it was someone else. Hydrogen, however, is found in even the most remote part of the universe, whereas the boy with Tourette's will die alone.

We are also interested in the properties of a material, be it an element or a compound of elements. One of the most simple is the melting point and the boiling point. There is also a freezing point, a condensation point, a vanishing point, a viewpoint, a good point (which shares similar characteristics of a point well made), and some pockets of academia argue there may be hardly any point. Many other properties of materials rely on the way the atoms form combine together. Metals, which are often hard and shiny, form together by donating their electrons to a "sea" of electrons that "flows" all the way "around" the "metal". Donations are made weekly or monthly. This arrangement gives metals their distinct properties: the electron sea allows a metal to conduct electricity. Of course, so can carbon, which is not a metal, but nobody really knows why. It also makes metals hard, solid and unforgiving in a combat environment. Except, of course, mercury, which is a metal, but is not a solid, though still makes a reasonable weapon a close range.

There is not enough time, space or inclination in the article to discuss, at great length, chemical reactions, but some words can be shared. The particular words are Always, Wear, and Safety Goggles. If you do not, you simply do not look the part, and nothing you say will ever be taken seriously. A chemical reaction is one where two or more or less chemical substances are forced to collide in such a way that the bonds that hold them together break down and new bonds form, creating a new chemical, or several new chemicals. As an example, consider the famous example of the reaction between sodium trioxidicalciate and carbon phosphordynitrate, two useless and entirely real chemical compounds. However, when heated together, the particles become excited by the prospect of the change. The outcome is the white powdery carbon nitroxiate, used by vegans to poison farmyard animals so they can not be slaughtered for meat, and clear pink liquid sodium calcidyphosphate, found in plastic cups by the side of a dentist's chair. Any keen chemist may want to have the previous experiment written out in letters. They will note, after, that that is exactly what has already happened.

Chemistry is a much broader subject than I could possibly fit into one article, and once inside, it is deceptively spacious. If you want to find out more, there are a number of textbooks and websites, but very few of them are actually about chemistry.