Chemistry
17 articles-
Carbon, It’s Elementary, Dear Reader
A selection of illustrations from the new book Carbon, One Atom’s Odyssey. -
We’re More of Ourselves When We’re in Tune with Others
Music reminds us why going solo goes against our better nature. -
Why We Need More Intellectually Promiscuous Scientists
When Thomas Steitz, Ada Yonath, and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their research, in 2009, they acknowledged a debt. Without the work of two of the Physics Laureates that year, the chemists would have lacked the CCD detectors, or high-quality imaging hardware, they used to model and image ribosomes, […] -
Authenticity in the Age of the Fake
As science blurs the real and unreal, we are learning to distinguish them in new ways. -
When Dating Algorithms Can Watch You Blush
The next generation of dating algorithms will use real-life interactions.
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Why Fireworks Displays Can’t Include a Perfect Red, White, and Blue
“Mother Nature can be a handful when she wants to be,” says John Conkling, the former technical director of the American Pyrotechnics Association and a professor emeritus of chemistry at Washington College. Except he used a stronger, more colorful word than “handful.” When it comes to fireworks, “she just doesn’t want to give you that […]
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The Executioner We Can’t Live Without
You’re dead meat without special molecules that kill rotten proteins.
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Whiskey Can’t Hide Its Age Either
Anxious distillers are trying to make bourbon old before its time.
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Teen MacGyver Invents Battery to Save the Planet
14-year-old creates eco-battery with aluminum foil, old guitar strings, and club soda.
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Why Is the Merger Called Mayonnaise Loved—& Hated—so Deeply?
While a strong trend in the culinary arts has been to let individual, natural ingredients shine through, one food has quietly come to dominate the retail market by merging a group of incongruous ingredients together. Mayonnaise, that familiar white goop hiding in your sandwich and coleslaw, is officially the most valuable condiment in the nation. […] -
Should Science Save Modern Art?
Keeping Father Time at bay is more than a question of chemistry. -
How Animals Use Smell to Send Coded Messages
Dad was back. He played a little with the children, rubbed a few heads with his own, clawed at a wooden post, and then, standing erect with tail straight up, he backed towards a tree, sprayed, and left. The kids scampered over. They stood on their hind legs and carefully examined the spray—the family smell. […] -
One Big Question Not Answered by Today’s Nobel Winners
Earlier today three US-based researchers shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their research on vesicles, special structures that ferry all kinds of molecules around biological cells, and are fundamental to those cells’ functioning. Their findings provide some key background for our understanding of life—information that will fill textbooks for decades—though they lack […] -
Seven Molecules’ Claim to Fame
These infinitesimal celebrities shape us and our world.