What are you doing this evening?
What will you be doing this weekend?

Whatever you have planned, you can be sure it will involve lots of things produced by the chemical industry, things we all take for granted. Shopping or swimming, gardening or golfing, painting the bedroom or playing with the children, baking a cake or watching a movie, chemistry will be on hand, helping to make our world more colourful, more efficient, more reliable and much safer - and saving us money.

After a hard day … you may simply want to sink into an armchair, sip a drink and watch television.

It may seem a far cry from chemistry, but look around you. The chair in which you are sitting will be filled with fire-resistant foam and covered with a fabric that has been dyed with fade-resistant colours and treated with a stain repellent coating. The fabric itself may be Dacron or Dralon

or another man-made fibre. Beneath your feet will be a carpet, similarly treated, and made wholly or in part from similar hard-wearing fibres.

The room will probably be decorated with acrylic paints and vinyl wall covering. It may be lit with long-life bulbs in which some of the chemicals are the same as those in the screen of your television set. This, along with the video and CD player, will be housed in a safe and durable plastic frame. Yet other forms of plastics are used for the cabling and plugs that supply the electricity. Your video tapes, audio tapes and CDs are made almost entirely from polymers.

Indeed the hardware and software of the digital revolution will continue to rely on advances in chemical technology, such as purer silicon, finer metallic inks for printing integrated circuits and luminous plastics for flat-screen displays.

As you are unwinding you may sip a beer or cola, each of which rely on chemistry for their containers and the quality of the drinks themselves. Meanwhile the air of the room may be pleasantly relaxing thanks to synthetic fragrances, also formulated by industrial chemists. And when you come down to earth again the household cleaning and polishing will be made easier thanks to the chemistry of detergents and waxes.

Leisure time

The weekend is often the time we become most aware of one type of plastic: the plastic of credit cards. These colourful rectangles, usually of PVC but sometimes of a biodegradable plastic invented by British chemists, make spending so easy (too easy sometimes). Smart cards are the same size and shape but are designed to carry lots more information, helping to defeat thieves and, perhaps, save lives through the use of essential medical data encoded in the chip.

Saturday night is the time to go out with your family or friends - to enjoy a meal at a restaurant, a drink in a pub or a dance at the club. At all these venues, too, are wonderful new plastics, paints, fabrics, flooring and colourful lighting; and all are made with the help of chemicals.

Of course chemistry will be the last thing on your mind as you get ready to go out, but it is there as you shower and shampoo your hair, and it is there as you put on your clean dress. The softness and fresh smell of clean clothes rely on some rather clever chemistry. And it does not stop there. Perfumes and cosmetics, too, are designed and made by chemists. By the time you are ready to go out you should be feeling good and looking good. You may even have changed the colour of your eyes with disposable, tinted contact lenses made mainly from purified water and acrylic resin.

As you drive your car you are literally surrounded by the products of the chemical industry: the seats, the carpeting, the plastic control switches and the many safety features, such as the padded dashboard and steering wheel, the seat belts and the airbags. Under the bonnet are wires and ducting, hoses and seals, gaskets and a battery, brake fluid and antifreeze, all made from chemicals that have been tested to give reliable service and endure extreme conditions.

The list is endless: tyres, bumpers, noise insulation, fuel tank (made from shock-resistant polymer), the fuel itself, the lubricants and the catalytic converter; all are produced by chemists and chemical engineers or have their performance enhanced by chemicals. And to finish, the whole vehicle is enclosed in a chemical coating of paint and corrosion resistant underseal. Little wonder then that today's cars travel further on less petrol, last years longer and are safer for all road users - and much of it is thanks to chemistry.