Chemistry

From Scientists recreate what may be life’s first spark Credit: Wikimedia Commons, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleobase#mediaviewer/File:DNA_chemical_structure.svg How did life originate? This puzzle has been studied by scientists for hundreds of…

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical compound that has been used in the production of plastics, including cell phones, contact lenses, and food storage containers, for over 50 years. Scientists have recently shown that the BPA found on cash register receipts…

Click here for more information from Seeding Labs’ website, and click here to register. More about Seeding Labs: Seeding Labs invests in exceptional scientists in developing countries who have limited resources, but limitless potential. They…

Presented by Mike Goldman, Joey Goodknight, and Tansu Daylan What do the interior of an atom, the bottom of a volcanic caldera, and the center of the sun have in common? Mike will begin with an introduction to quantum mechanics, which explores its…

Two groups of researchers have recently reported a new light-powered method in which readily available chemical building blocks are coupled to produce useful complex molecules that cannot be easily found or made. Because these metal-catalyzed reactions…

Figure 1. Electron flow in Photosystem II. Plants take electrons from water to store energy from the sun. Whether it is the oxygen that we breathe or animals that we eat, our lives are made possible by photosynthesis.  Photosynthesis is the process that…

-- Measuring, or what Richard Feynman called "quantitative observation" in his Lectures on Physics, is one of the defining features of science. Some scientists, most notably Steven Hawking, even believe that science is nothing but measuring – if…

The US chemical industry makes a wide variety of consumer products, or at least the chemicals that coat, color, and clean them. This includes things you use every day but never think about, like the coating on paper that makes it smooth, the dye in your…

Scientists have shown that resveratrol and resveratrol-like molecules may prolong life, but how might they do this?

Prof. Whitesides is a prolific chemist with a long and distinguished career spanning almost five decades. Over the years he has published more than a 1000 scientific articles and has won multitudes of awards, including the Priestley Medal (2007), the…