In the book The Martian, Mark Watney survives on Mars due to the chemistry concept involving physical, chemical and nuclear changes, examples include him burning rocket fuel to make water and maximizing the use of his oxygenator and water reclaimer. Despite there being some other concepts that aided Mark in his survival, the way he understood physical, chemical and nuclear changes greatly increased his chances of living. To break it down, a physical change is any change in matter that involves a substance going from one state to another. A chemical change is when the substance is changed from its initial make up. Then, a nuclear change is when the nuclei can break apart to from a different element all together. With that being said, it is a …show more content…
He succeeds not only because he is a brilliant astronaut, but because he understood the chemistry concepts necessary to keep him alive. If there had to be a choice between which concept was most important to his survival it would be quite clear. Mark Watney survives on Mars due to the chemistry concept involving physical, chemical and nuclear changes, examples include him burning rocket fuel to make water and maximizing the use of his oxygenator and water reclaimer. Mark knows that he has three needs, which are food, water and oxygen. Since he is on Mars, he is depleted those resources everyday until he figures out how to turn his waste into useable resources. He understands how chemical and physical changes work which allow him to use the machines in the Hab such as the oxygenator and the water reclaimer to take waste compounds and turn them into useful ones like water and oxygen. In addition, Mark even figured out how to make water by changing the structure of the compound hydrazine, which happens to the MAV’s rocket fuel, into water. Even though there are other chemistry concepts that Mark used to help him survive, none of them had as big of an impact on his survival as the concept of physical, chemical and nuclear changes