I was looking at a wikipedia page about a particular chemical and it said something to the effect of “this was originally extracted from a fungus, but can now be made synthetically”. What does that actually mean? I can conceptualise the process of extracting chemicals from organic materials, but when something is created synthetically the chemists do…what exactly?
In: Chemistry
take a bunch of reagents (starting material that’s similar to the final product) and mix them/sometimes subject them to specific conditions, the reagents will arrange themselves to match the end product’s exact chemical makeup. I’m a chem student so that’s probably a terrible way to explain it, someone will do a better job LOL
Latest Answers