Coby
moleculeoftheday
Posts by this author
August 25, 2006
Eriochrome Black T is one of those chemicals I mostly remember for its name. It's the kind of CSI-ey name that just rolls off the tongue. It has the unusual property of "complexometric" indication.
It's normally blue, but on binding to calcium or magnesium (the divalent cations largely responsible…
August 24, 2006
You thought I'd make it a whole week without skipping a day, I bet. You were incorrect.
August 23, 2006
I love this one. It's not exactly a molecule. If you've heard of it, you're nodding and smirking, if you haven't, you'll be surprised. Back in the 1960's, people set out trying to make new meat substitutes. Apparently, it was suspected that there would be a worldwide shortage of protein by the 80's…
August 22, 2006
It's hard to overemphasize the effect WW2 had on science. I'm not just talking about atomic bombs or the ensuing cold war. A huge part of WW2 was shortages of just about everything. Textiles were especially susceptible, because their civilian and military uses are ubiquitous, and, at the time, we…
August 20, 2006
Sorry for the short post today, grading and other during-the-academic-year commitments are about to take effect. If you have access, there is a wonderful article in Chemical Reviews ASAP this week:
"The Nose as a Stereochemist. Enantiomers and Odor," by Ronald Bentley. Since it's an ASAP article,…
August 19, 2006
Phenomenally late to the game, I've added a Donors Choose link to the blog. The idea here is that you pick a small microgrant to fund/help fund for a public K-12 classroom somewhere in the States. Requested funding ranges from hundreds to thousands of dollars. I love microfunding efforts like this…
August 18, 2006
There really isn't much to this one - Lead (II) Oxide has the forumula Pb (II) O, or PbO.
I started this entry intending to discuss how it was used in generating so-called "lead crystal." All Swarovski, Baccarat, etc., "crystal" is is regular silicon glass with up to about 20% lead oxide added.…
August 17, 2006
Diacetyl is a unique molecule because it's a simple enough structure that you could expect some biochemical pathways to find their way there via glycolysis or fermentation (sure enough, yeast does. more in a minute), and it has the ineffable aroma of butter
Predictably, certain flavor chemists have…
August 16, 2006
If you take a look at wine bottles today, you'll note that the sealing devices are all over the place. Traditionally, cork was used, and that's still the dominant seal, but you'll also see synthetic foam-type corks, as well as screw-caps. Cork was originally used in wine because it was a relatively…
August 15, 2006
Whew. This one's a little embarassing. One of my favorite things about organic chemistry is just how much it's like Lego. Molecules that seem like indecipherable structures to the uninitiated start looking more and more like a bunch of building blocks. It's been said that organic chemistry is the…
August 10, 2006
I was a little uneasy about writing about this one, since I was worried someone would try and make it. The image for this entry actually went through a few iterations, first, with a detailed explanation of the mechanism. Then, I cut it down to just the stepwise formation of the dimer and trimer.…
August 10, 2006
Calcium carbide is something you don't see much anymore, but before electric light was ubiquitous and cheap, it was some amazingly useful stuff. Calcium carbide is a boring looking compound - I've only ever seen greyish lumps. It eacts like a salt of doubly deprotonated acetylene (C2H2, or here,…
August 8, 2006
Methylene blue is a well-known dye. It is useful as a biological stain, binds to DNA, and can turn your urine blue.. Incredibly, I'm opting to talk about how it's used in time-sensitive DVDs.
Awhile back, a DVD format called Flexplay was introduced. The idea here is that since DVDs are so…
August 8, 2006
Glad to be here. Look for a new molecule soon. In the meantime, a few months worth are located at http://www.moleculeoftheday.com/.