The History of Chemistry
Episodes
187 episodes
184: Alles ist Chemie (Conclusion)
I conclude this series, touching on why I ran this podcast. I give eleven overarching goals for the podcast. I also go far back into my own past, and an event which eventually led to me speaking to you about chemistry. Finally I send you off wi...
183: New World Coming
I give a brief history of finding planets around other stars, including discovery by gravitational wobbling, dimming as the planet crosses in front of its star, and even seeing an actual planetary image by blocking the star's glare. I discuss w...
182: It's Life, Jim, But Not As We Know It
We take an imaginary trip around our Solar System to hear the history of chemical attempts to find life, starting in the late 1950s. Among our stops on the tour include Venus, Mars, Europa, and Titan. Included in the tour are temperature measur...
181: A Work in Progress
In which we bring research into molecular machines up to date. We discuss fuels, specifically what chemists think are the best kinds of fuels to power these little molecules. We discuss what makes a molecular machine different from a regular-si...
180: Farm to Market
Instead of just digging in the ground to extract minerals, over the past half-century scientists have begun to explore agriculture of hyperaccumulating plants to pull elements--including heavy metals--out of the topsoil. We explore the recent h...
179: This Episode is Meta
The History of Chemistry is itself an academic discipline, and in this episode we explore the history of chemical history. We start with chemist Thomas Thomson, and work our way forward in time, through the various books on the subject, the fou...
178: Honors and Awards
In which we explore the various honors and awards available to chemists, starting in high school with the International Chemistry Olympiad, founded during the Cold War; college with Phi Lambda Upsilon; and a variety of awards given to chemists ...
177: Greek Salad
In this episode we run through the Greek alphabet and see the history behind each symbol as used in chemistry, from alpha for alpha particles to omega as in omega-fatty acids. We encounter a couple of Greek letters not used as chemical symbols ...
176: Inside Information
While outdoor solar cells make big news, there is a quiet revolution also for solar cells that make do with far less illumination, indoor lighting. We discuss requirements for such photovoltaic cells, matching their sensitivity to various kinds...
175: It's All Fun and Games Until...
Chemistry can be fun, too, so we explore some of historical satirical art about chemistry, humor based on nonsensical molecular structures, actual compounds with funny chemical names, and even compounds with humorous molecular structures. We di...
174: Just Add Water
Water, the most important chemical for us, deserves its own episode describing the history of how chemists understand it. We start with pre-Enlightenment views of water as an element, then as a compound, then how electricity affected our unders...
173: Midnight Blue
We start with a 1927 patent awarded to George Washington Carver, an agricultural chemist, for a locally-sourced Prussian blue. We learn a bit about Carver's life, education, and hobby of painting which may have led to the patent. We examine the...
172: A Life of Its Own
In which we discuss the history of scientists attempting to determine a half-life of a specific radioactive isotope of samarium, and why that determination is so important for other branches of science. We learn of the poor quality of the obser...
171: Talk Dirty to Me
This is a brief history of how chemists understand the way liquids wet things. The first glimpse was by Francis Hauksbee in the early 1700s, and how water rises in narrow tubes. Through the 18th century, natural philosophers described surface t...
170: A Clean Break
In which we talk about the history of fractals and how they relate to chemistry. There is a brief overview of what a fractal is and how it developed in mathematics. Then we talk of how fractals apply to chemistry, including surface reactions, d...
169: A Bone to Pick
It's an ancient story, but fossils have been with us since time immemorial. In this episode, we hear about the history of chemists and their interpretation of fossils. Scientists first began considering fossils as evidence of past life in the 1...
168: Chill Out
Refrigeration always has been closely intertwined with chemistry. In this episode we explore the history of refrigerants, from the first hints of artificial cooling in the mid-1700s, through the invention of the first practical refrigerator 8 d...
167: A Sound Idea
Magnetic tape was an integral part of the new, growing recording industry. Herein we talk about the chemical history of magnetic recording, from the first idea in 1888, onward. We encounter Poulsen, Pfleumer, Stille, Nagai, Mullin, and an array...
166: The Dagwood
Here we talk about supersized sandwich compounds and their history, beginning with ferrocene in the 1950s. We go from single-decker to double-, triple, and quadruple-decker sandwich compounds through the 1970s and 1980s, a variety of "breads" a...
165: Building Blocks
Herein we examine the cubical hydrocarbon, cubane, and its role in chemical history. We talk of difficulties in synthesis, possible uses as an explosive, its use as an isostere to benzene in medicinal compounds, and polymers of cubane. Patreon ...
164: Mirror, Mirror
In which we talk about how chirality, or handedness, has diffused through chemistry since its discovery in the 19th century, starting with Louis Pasteur. We look at work by Arnaldo Piutti and Emile Fischer. We discuss not only organic compounds...
163: Basic Fuel
In which we talk about the history of using ammonia, the nitrogen analog of methane, as a fuel. We start two centuries ago with Goldsworthy Gurney, move to the mid-19th century when horseless carriages began to appear in Europe. World War II sp...
162: The Game of Life
Here we talk about how chemists historically have viewed the way life began: as chemicals self-organizing. The earliest serious chemical views began in the 1870s, with synthesis of proteins. Ideas through the decades included warm ponds, auto-c...