Do you have to be good at chemistry to be a scientist?

Question

What field of science is good for someone who hates chemistry? I am most interested in biology.

Answer 1

If you REALLY hate chemistry, I would suggesd you'd rather concentrate on "non-molecular" fields, such as Botany, Zoology, Marine Biology, etc, as all other subjects need quite a lot of chemistry.
Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Genetics, Immunology, etc... all these topics are based on the chemistry of reactions that happen at cellular levels. Besides, if you work in a lab, you will have to be familiar with chemistry and chemical principles even in you just want to make a simple solution.
I see it with my Diploma students (mostly from Medicine), they are all struggling with the same things (concentration, molarity, normality, etc...).

Chemistry can be fun, though, if you pass the block!

Answer 2

Im a genetics scientist, and I have only used a small amount of my chemistry. But the part I did use was essential to my work.

Most of the time in biology one is either using or modifying an established protocol that although it relies on chemistry, is often quite different from the "chemistry" classes.

In understanding a biological pathway that involves chemistry the needed knowledge can be quite narrow. One may only need to know a small number of reactions that directly are involved in the process of interest.

On the other hand a good chemistry background can often help to tell you why an experiment did not work, or help you develop a new innovation in a protocol.

One reason many people don't like chemistry is that it appears to be memorizing a million different reactions. Most of the time they realize any one specific formula is very unlikely to be useful. For most scientists they only relly need to remember the reactions that are involved in their questions or protocols they work with, this makes the chemistry easier and more interesting.

Answer 3

I'm a biomedical scientist. While I use chemistry every day, i wouldn't call it very tough stuff. Mostly we use it in the lab. We work with pH and molarity very much. Honestly I think a high school level of chemistry is enough to get by doing biomedical research. I've had alot of biochem (and chem) courses, while i know the theory, these courses are not helpful for virtually all aspects of biology. Possible exception being hard core enzymatic biochemistry, which very few people do nowadays. As long as you can calculate molarity, i wouldn't sweat the lack of chem knowledge. But...chemists make alot more money and they got jobs easier (but can't claim to be curing cancer, whereas we can)

Answer 4

You don't, but it helps. Most scientific disciplines involve at least some chemistry, and biology is no exception. The hot topic in biology these days is DNA analysis, and you will definitely need to know some chemistry to do it.

Answer 5

i have self assurance the subsequent: it might want to probably change right into a regulation as quickly because it really is tested by a pair of experiments. what percentage felony rules are you attentive to in chemistry - or technological know-how as a rule. i recognize of in elementary words some. We although discuss atomic theory, etc. So that's extremely unique for a theory to become a regulation even after that's been tested ( I hesitate to apply the word confirmed) by technique of way of diverse assessments . We proceed to apply words comparable to hypothesis ( Avagadro), theory - Archimedes and Le Chetellier, and prevent classifying some ingredient as a regulation - inspite of if we use it to do intricate analyses and make investments tremendous sums of money bases on the non- rules.

Answer 6

There was a saying in the university chemistry department that "biologists are chemists that didn't cut it". I'm sure that it was just interdisciplinary rivalry. For most biology, there's a lot of chemistry. That means a lot of math too.

Answer 7

i hate chemistry too and i'm a bio major.

you will have to take two years of chemistry. one year general chemistry and one year organic chemistry.

it's part of biology. just tough it out...

Answer 8

you could also try population genetics, evolution and ecology, anatomy and physiology, etc.