The Catalyst

The simple question behind The Catalyst is: If pushing doesn’t work, could there be a different, better way?

This concept actually comes from chemistry, a completely different scientific domain. Creating change in chemistry is often difficult. If you think about plant matter turning into diamonds or carbon turning into something else, it takes thousands of years for this change to occur. For this reason, chemists often add a substance that makes change happen faster and easier. These substances are called catalysts.

What’s most interesting about catalysts is how they help change happen. They don’t increase the temperature. They don’t increase the pressure. They don’t push harder. What they do is lower the barriers to change. They make the same amount of change happen not by pushing but by reducing barriers, making it easier for change to occur. Scientists working with catalysts have won multiple Nobel prizes in chemistry. We use catalysts in everything today, from our contact lenses to how we clean our cars.