All Resource articles – Page 71

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On This Day - Jan 23 : Otto Diels was born

He was awarded the 1950 Nobel Prize in Chemistry alongside his student, Kurt Alder, for the discovery and development of the cycloaddition synthesis known as the Diels-Alder reaction. This reaction is widely used in chemical synthesis.
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Faces of Chemistry – Catalysts

Find out from scientists at Johnson Matthey how catalytic converters reduce harmful emissions produced by vehicles.
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Faces of Chemistry – Hair colourant

Learn about the chemistry of hair dyes from Procter and Gamble scientists.
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Faces of Chemistry – Crop protection

Discover how crop protection products from Syngenta help to increase yield and produce healthier crops.
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Sewage Pollution: A Case Study

A laboratory investigation of sewage pollution based around a case study. Students analyse for various so-called biomarkers in soil samples and assess for likely sources of contamination.
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Open Education Resource Quality Evaluation

This is a quality checklist for evaluators to fill in when assessing if an Open Education Resource is of a high enough quality to share, produced with support from the Higher Education Academy and JISC.
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On This Day - Jun 11 : Carbon dioxide discovered

Black noticed that upon heating, calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) produced a gas that was denser than air and could not sustain fire or animal life. He called this gas ‘fixed air’, but we now know it as carbon dioxide (CO₂).
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On This Day - Oct 27 : Spectroscope was invented

A spectroscope is a prism-based device which separates light into its different wavelengths. Gustav Kirchhoff initially used it to study the spectral “signature” of various chemical elements, allowing the identification of a new element if a new spectrum was observed.
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On This Day - Nov 20 : Francis Aston died

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1922 for his development of the mass spectrograph, a device that separates atoms or molecular fragments of different mass and measures those masses with remarkable accuracy.
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On This Day - Dec 07 : First thermosetting plastic

“Bakelite” (polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolan- hydride) takes its name from its inventor, the Belgian chemist Leo Hendrik Baekeland.
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On This Day - Nov 01 : First hydrogen bomb test

Named “Ivy Mike”, the blast released approximately the same amount of energy as ten million tons of tri-nitro-toluene (TNT). It produced a blinding white fireball stretching 4 km across, and left a huge underwater crater that was almost 2 km wide and 50 m deep.
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On This Day - Oct 26 : Arthur Kornberg died

He shared the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering the mechanism of how deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) replicates in biological systems, and many of the enzymes and building blocks required along the pathway. These findings were fundamental to our understanding of genetics.
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On This Day – Sep 16 : Montreal Protocol

The treaty agreed that the production and consumption of compounds that depleted ozone (O₃) in the stratosphere, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), were to be phased out. The ozone layer is expected to recover by 2050 if agreements are kept.
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On This Day – Sep 14 : Ferid Murad was born

He shared the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Robert F. Furchgott and Louis J. Ignarro for their discoveries involving nitric oxide as a signal molecule for the cardiovascular system. Nitric oxide is a potent vasodilator that causes relaxation of smooth muscle cells.
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On This Day – Sep 01 : Francis William Aston born

Aston developed the mass spectrometer, a device that separates molecular fragments of different mass and measures them with remarkable accuracy. Using the spectrometer, he discovered that neon had two isotopes, ²⁰Ne and ²¹Ne, and was awarded the 1922 Nobel Prize for this work.
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On This Day – Aug 23 : Robert Curl was born

Curl, Richard E. Smalley and Harold Kroto discovered fullerenes, which are Kroto-spherical clusters of carbon atoms. This discovery opened a new branch of chemistry, and all three men were awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry in recognition of their work.
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On This Day – Aug 15 : Mass spectrometer built

The spectrometer used electromagnetic focusing to exploit very slight differences in the mass of isotopes, which affects the separation for the elements or compounds. Aston used this to discover the two isotopes of neon, ²⁰Ne and ²¹Ne. He was awarded the 1922 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work.
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On This Day – Aug 10 : Synthesis of aspirin

Aspirin was one of the first drugs to become commercial available and is still the most widely used drug in the world. Approximately 35,000 metric tonnes are produced and consumed each year – that’s enough to make more than 100 billion aspirin tablets.
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On This Day – Aug 09 : Amedeo Avogadro was born

He was one of the founders of physical chemistry and is most famous for Avogadro’s Law, which states that equal volumes of different gases contain the same number of molecules. In 22.4 litres of any gas at room temperature and pressure there are 6.02214 x 10²³ molecules, known as Avogadro’s number.
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On This Day – Aug 01 : Preparation of oxygen

He used a magnifying glass to focus the sun’s rays on a sample of mercury(ll) oxide (HgO) to discover that heating this compound produced a gas, oxygen (O₂). In this environment a mouse could live four times longer than normal. Theories based on Priestley’s work underpin modern chemistry.