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What is a day like for a chemist?

All through high school, my favorite science subject was chemistry. If I do decide to go into chemistry in college,I would want to know what a chemist does day by day and how they help out the community. #chemistry

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Sam’s Answer

I have worked as a chemist and now run a lab. I love working in a lab. I am specifically in quality control, not exactly what TV show a lab to be. We analyze samples of our product before they are shipped out to our customers to ensure they are safe and meet specification expectations.
For the day to day, as a chemist I would keep our instruments running which is more like a mechanic that I thought it would be. I made sure that our results are accurate. I validated the methods to show that no matter who analyzed a sample they would get similar results. It is a challenging job. And though I was working with the same instruments and samples day to day, wasn't tedious. There are always knew issues and challenges to solve.

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Stefanie’s Answer

I'm an analytical chemist (PhD) and I work in a clinical research lab. My group studies diabetes and I develop analytical methods for them. This means that my colleagues want to know how much of a particular substance is in a patient's blood or urine, and I come up with ways to measure it.
This kind of work can be very challenging and time-consuming. I have to make sure that we are actually measuring the right molecule and not something that's just similar to it. We also have to find ways to get rid of substances that interfere with the analysis, and make sure that we can actually detect small amounts of our compound. Getting it right feels like solving a puzzle! It's very important that I know as much as possible about the methods and instruments I am using, so it's a great job for someone who always wants to know how things work. It's never boring!
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