She has taught science courses at the high school, college, and graduate levels. Chemistry happens in the world around baking ammonia replacement, not just in a lab. Look for signs of a reaction. Chemical reactions often involve color changes, temperature changes, gas production, or precipitant formation.

Simple examples of everyday reactions include digestion, combustion, and cooking. Anaerobic respiration is a set of chemical reactions that allows cells to gain energy from complex molecules without oxygen. Every time you strike a match, burn a candle, build a fire, or light a grill, you see the combustion reaction. Combustion combines energetic molecules with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide and water. Over time, iron develops a red, flaky coating called rust. This is an example of an oxidation reaction. These reactions seem simple in practice but often consist of multiple steps.

Thousands of chemical reactions take place during digestion. As soon as you put food in your mouth, an enzyme in your saliva called amylase starts to break down sugars and other carbohydrates into simpler forms your body can absorb. Sodium chloride isn’t the only salt that can be formed. Cooking uses heat to cause chemical changes in food.

For example, when you hard boil an egg, the hydrogen sulfide produced by heating the egg white can react with iron from the egg yolk to form a grayish-green ring around the yolk. Examples of Chemical Reactions in Everyday Life. What are the Differences Between Acids and Bases? What Are the Products of Photosynthesis? We independently review everything we recommend.

When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. After our longtime top pick was discontinued in 2022, we researched new mats to test for this guide. No cat owner wants to step on the sandy mess that cats leave behind after they use the kitty commode. A cat litter mat helps corral that kicked-up litter. Most litter mats are okay, some are good, and none of them can stop every teensy grain of litter from reaching your floors. I’m a lifelong pet parent, and I have several years of experience volunteering at animal shelters. A close-up of a cat stepping out of a litter box onto a mat.

As your cat walks out of the litter box, a mat will help stop them from tracking litter through your house. A cat litter mat is for anyone who has a cat litter box—that is, everyone who has a cat. These textured mats act like a doormat: Even the best-behaved cat tracks litter granules out of the litter box, and a good litter mat catches most of those bits before they spread throughout your house. Some cats also just make a mess out of doing their business: missing the litter box entirely, coughing up hairballs, or sprinting out of the litter box and sending litter flying. A litter mat is an easily cleaned surface to help limit these disasters, so they don’t happen on your floor.

Even the best-behaved cat tracks litter granules out of the litter box, and a good litter mat catches most of those bits before they spread throughout your house. A good cat litter mat helps contain messes, and it’s definitely better than having your litter box on a bare floor. But we found only small differences in how much litter they trapped. So think about what other characteristics—easy to clean, comfortable for paws, aesthetics—matter most to you before purchasing a mat. Cleaning a gunky litter mat is probably the last thing any cat owner wants to do after giving the litter box a good scrubbing. But you have to do it to prevent your pet from spreading bacteria as it walks on the mat and then, for instance, hops on your pillow. We’ve found that it’s easiest to run a dirty mat under a hose or a bathtub faucet to remove gunky messes.

The ASPCA recommends cleaning a litter box and litter mat every week with warm water and unscented soap. A close-up up of litter mats showing different textures. The textures of cat litter mats vary, and we look for mats that are comfy under kitty paws and easy to clean. Beyond, Chewy, and Walmart, among others.

We noted their price, materials, and design, and we narrowed the group down to our contenders based on long-term positive owner reviews. As Wirecutter’s pets writer, I’ve been testing our picks for five years with my own cat, and I used that data to inform this guide. In 2022, I compared the performance of Wirecutter’s picks against new contenders by rotating their use every few days over two weeks. I paid attention to their litter-trapping capabilities, how easy they were to clean, and their comfort, traction, and durability.