Chemistry news, research and opinions | Chemistry World
Opinion. Yvonne Perrie: ‘Good research culture is about being able to learn and fail without judgment’. The drug delivery expert and multidisciplinary researcher on the importance of learning from failure and how a summer in a margarine factory influenced her career. News.
The complex chemistry of making paper
Apr 4, 2023 · Making paper. At a chemical level, paper is made of cellulose fibres pressed and bound together by hydrogen bonds, but it’s the crucial pulping step that accounts for paper’s unusual strength. As the wood is beaten into a pulp, the individual cellulose fibres separate and form a suspension within the water. A complex network of hydrogen ...
Explainer: Why is mixing cleaning chemicals such a bad idea?
Apr 23, 2020 · Chlorine gas is toxic, forms acids on contact with wet surfaces, such as home plumbing but also living tissue, such as the lungs. Heating or contact with metals can also cause bleach to decompose via a different route. 2NaOCl → O 2 + 2NaCl. Mixing hypochlorite with ammonia would see the breakdown of the hypochlorite to generate hypochlorous ...
Explainer: The chemistry of farts | News | Chemistry World
Dec 21, 2016 · Consequently, De Lacy Costello and his colleagues have moved beyond the most common gases to studying volatile compounds released from faeces in very low concentrations. 6 Initially, they mimicked conditions in the large intestine by mixing faeces and nutrient medium in a container. They absorbed volatile chemicals onto plastic fibres above the mixture or pumped …
Not just batteries: The chemistry of electric cars
Apr 24, 2022 · The internal combustion engine is not dead, but it may be beginning to die. One of the few bold steps taken at the November 2021 Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow, UK, was a declaration on phasing out sales of petrol and diesel cars by 2040 in all markets and by 2035 in leading ones: many European countries have set earlier dates, with the UK opting for 2030.
There’s something about boron | Feature | Chemistry World
Apr 8, 2019 · Small-molecule boron chemistry has really come into vogue in the last 10 or 15 years. But over the past decade, boron chemistry has been steadily subverted. A string of boron compounds in exotic bonding states have turned the element’s behaviour on its head. Boron can be coaxed into become a strong nucleophile, a Lewis base, an electron donor.
Explainer: The science of alkyl nitrites aka poppers
Sep 16, 2021 · Inhaling alkyl nitrites feels like becoming instantly drunk according to some users, although the effect lasts for only a few minutes. Also known as poppers, these chemicals have been taken recreationally since the 1960s. Although they are sold openly, usually in small brown bottles with enticing brand names such as ‘liquid gold’, their ...
Magnesium oxide | Podcast | Chemistry World
Magnesium oxide is a compound of a metal with a non-metal, so – as you would expect – it is held together with ionic bonds. It has the same structure as NaCl but because it is made of Mg 2+ and O 2 – ions, rather than the singly charged Na + and Cl – ions, there is a much stronger attraction between the ions.
What it takes to make a new element | Feature | Chemistry World
Nov 30, 2016 · Results of fusion reactions were decreasing sharply as the atomic number grew higher. The cause was the high excitation energy (40–50MeV), which increased the chance of the element breaking up. To create new elements, the excitation energy needed to be minimal, or …
The quantum dot story | Feature | Chemistry World
Oct 11, 2023 · Quantum properties. Given their name in 1986 by physicist Mark Reed, quantum dots are nanometre-size crystals with semiconducting properties made of combinations of transition metals and non-metal or metalloid elements, most commonly cadmium selenide and cadmium telluride. As they are so small – just 2–10nm in diameter – a quantum dot’s ...