It’s in your house; it’s in your car; it’s everywhere. But sometimes you can’t see it. What is this mystery? It’s chemistry! But it’s not a mystery to the campus chapter of American Chemical Society. National Chemistry Week was held Oct. 22-28.

The theme this year was ‘Your Home — It’s All Built on Chemistry.’ This week had a lot of purposes.

“It is to share the excitement of chemistry, show that it is all around you and increase awareness,” said Deanna Jones, a senior from Sioux Falls, S.D., who is in charge of public relations for ACS.

Chemistry Week is an opportunity to share the excitement with others, said Brian Anderson, a senior from Wilmington, Ohio.

“Chemistry has always fascinated me and understanding the way that the world works. It was a chance to have kids find applications to what they are learning in school,” Anderson said.

Chemistry students were excited about the events that took place during National Chemistry Week.

“National Chemistry Week is cool because people that like chemistry go out of their way to perform exciting experiments like exploding hydrogen balloons and making model volcanoes erupt,” said Ben Steinmetz, a junior from Rigby, Idaho.

During this week, students go to high schools, elementary schools and middle schools to do demonstrations and talk to kids about chemistry. They didn’t explode hydrogen balloons or make model volcanoes erupt, but they did blow off a methanol cannon.

“One kid at the elementary school said ‘I’ve been waiting all year for you to come back!’ They were really excited. The middle school and high school kids remembered us from last year and asked us questions,” Jones said.

The kids were not the only ones anticipating the experiments.

“I always look forward to going out into the community. It’s not really a service, but it’s a wonderful chance to go out and use chemistry hands on,” Anderson said.

The demonstrations were to show that chemistry is found in the household.

“One demo had to do with making polymers. Teflon is a polymer; all plastics are polymers. There is gold in telephones, silver in photograph stuff and in jewelry and tungsten in light bulbs,” Jones said.

ACS puts on many events throughout the year. Their monthly meetings held on Thursday are open to all.

“ACS is one of the biggest professional science societies in the country. It’s not a bunch of geeks. We’re just trying to apply what we learn in class so that we can get better jobs and get into grad school,” Anderson said.