Is a chemical just another word for an element? Is a compound a chemical? How about an enzyme? How about a coenzyme? Is a molecule a chemical?
What is a chemical, and what ISN’T a chemical? And why is that?
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Start with the elements, which are each an atom with a different number of protons. Those are chemicals.
Those atoms can bond by sharing electrons, these form molecules and compounds. These are also chemicals. Each of those is defined by the amounts of each element it contains. They have specific formulas.
So water H2O and salt NaCl are both chemicals, but salt water doesn’t have a specific formula, because you can combine the salt and water in different quantities. So salt water is a solution, a mixture of multiple individual chemicals.
Theres also differences in how molecules and compounds bond. Water is made up of multiple individual water molecules, whereas salt is a continuous structure that can be any size provided it has a 1 to 1 ratio of sodium and chlorine.
My understanding of biology is that enzymes would fit the, ‘single structure of a specific size’ definition of molecules which are chemicals.
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