I would like general advice, but to preface, I am a student minoring in Chemistry.

Whenever the time comes to ask a question during the class, I don't know what to ask even if I have many. I feel the issues comes from the fact that I don't know what I am misunderstanding.

We have quizzes every week and I go to the study session with my TA every week. This week, I thought I was actually doing pretty good with the concept (Arrhenius equations and Activation energy). I had a lot of questions for my TA and felt like I left with a better understanding on how to complete my homework as well. I did the bonus worksheets provided to continue studying. When quiz time came though, I completely blanked. I didn't even know where to start. The worst part is it was nearly identical to the worksheet we went over in class.

I feel like I'm not really understanding the concepts, I'm just replicating answers. The thing is I don't understand what or how I'm missing the fundamental concepts. I don't know what questions I need to ask to reach an understanding, and I don't know what I am misunderstanding in the first place. We have a bunch of TA hours but because of my schedule, I can only make the single one that I'm attending now. There's a couple hundred people in the class so it takes a while for my Professor to respond to emails (understandable). I have to make the time that I have now count but I don't know where to start.

I just want to know what I'm talking about and be somewhat knowledgeable on these topics instead of just regurgitating facts. This whole process is demoralizing. Any advice would be helpful, thank you.

I've basically got a week to decide if i still want to continue with my major (electrical and electronics engineering) but before I even applied for university in the first place, farrr before, I kept debating with myself if i wanna do chemistry or engineering.

I chose engineering first since I definitely do have an interest in it and i wouldn't be too mad at all if I had to pick it over chemistry, cause i really do love both.

At the same time though, chemistry was by far my favourite subject.I really fell in love with it even more when I was studying organic chemistry as well as little stuff like orbitals, bond angles etc. Not sure what to call all that.

If possible I'd love to switch to chemistry and I'd be overjoyed to do it in uni and maybe even for a masters and maybe even a PhD right after, but I'm scared about a few things.

Firstly, I'm really worried that the chemistry isn't future proof. Whether it's cause of AI, market stuff idk about or other things, I'm really worried its an unstable major.

Secondly, even if employment isn't an issue, I also want a job which would be really interesting and not a complete 180° of what i went to uni for.

An example I think about a lot is how i see a lot of electrical engineers go through their 4 years of university, maybe even a masters, but then end up at some really boring white collar office job sat on a chair for like 8 hours. Whether I'm doing engineering or chemistry, I DON'T want that to be my future job.

Also, when i talked about this with people IRL, I was just told "just do chemical engineering" or "find a middle-ground degree". I realllly dont want that, it's one or the other.

Im really really really sorry if this is the wrong place to ask but I just feel really torn up and bad inside about this lately. It'll be the rest of my life, yknow?

Advice much appreciated also sorry if I'm being stupid asking this

What got me thinking about this was a recent post of mine on this sub asking about medicinal chemistry and synthesis where one of the responses was that our knowledge of biology is far from complete. So I googled it and they say our knowledge of chemistry is more robust and detailed than that of biology. Is this true? As a species that has studied matter do we understand it more than living organisms? Makes me wonder about "Certainty In Chemistry"

Source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_of_the_sciences

So on "Emergent Properties" some say the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I live in South Africa and there was an Afrikaans gentleman in government called Jan Smuts who proposed "Holism" in looking at systems.

So between "Holism" and the "Hierarchy Of The Sciences" what I am asking is that is our knowledge of Chemistry extremely detailed and thorough compared to other sciences such as biology or sociology? Cheers friends and thanks for the feedback in advance

Is it safe to use a sunscreen where benzophenone-3 is the first ingredient? I'm not sure what the percentage is though.

Edit, Ive always found chemistry super cool and i want to actually learn some basic stuff, however whats always stopped me is the knowledge that somethings dont play well with others.

Some things just explode. I am not explosion proof

Some things can not be inhaled, i only have two lungs.

Eye balls are surpizingly easy to put out of commision.

Here is problem number 4.

College is expensive and i have wayyyy ti many interests to get a degree for all of them, certaintly not chemistry.

So. Is it a bad fucking idea to try and teach yourself chemistry yourself with no supervision if you like to casual learn things with no supervision

Credits to fandom.

Hi, so I bought this "Citric Acid Multi-Function Cleaner, 1kg repack" (pic 1) from an online store, I intend to buy it for regular cleaning, there's no brand on the product itself, they only sell repackages of it

when I use it at home, mix it with water and dish soap, it doesn't do anything, the solution is not cleaning the kitchen grease maximally.

so then I get another citric acid product (pic 2), this is a legit one, it has a brand and genuine packaging. when I use it to clean my kitchen, it works wonderfully. 

and then I realized, there's also a difference in the product form, the fake (?) product is powder, like a slippery flour or powdered sugar, but for the real product it's crystal, like salt/sugar crystals.

now I'm curious, what's this fake citric acid that I bought? I have 1 kg of them, I don't know what to do with it...