Book 2: Still deciding which one

Choices are:

Periodic Tales by Hugh Aldersey Williams

The Violinist's Thumb by Sam Kean

Napoleon's Buttons:  17 Molecules that Changed History by Penny LeCouteur and ...

Four Laws that Drive the Universe by Peter Atkins

The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager

Faraday, Maxwell and the Electromagnetic Field

Started First Pass Edits and Format Cleanup of 30B Lab Manual

I started cleaning up the word files of the 30B lab manual units from the OCR'd odf files.  Just finished 12.1 and 12.2.  Now starting on 13.1.

30A Lab Manual Progress

Finished cleaning up and doing first pass revisions today up to 10.2!

Atkins' What is Chemistry, Chapter 7: Its Future

In this last chapter, Atkins describes briefly what, in his opinion, are the most notable future endeavors of chemists (note that this book was written in 2013).

First and foremost, he highlights chemists' continuous efforts toward discovering new elements, albeit many of them short-lived and "utterly useless" in his parlance.  He did note that perhaps this is getting us closer to the hypothetical island of stability, long theorized to exist by many prominent nuclear chemists and physicists.

Next is in the field of miniaturization, particularly in the realm of being able to synthesize small, nanoscale small, functional molecules that can be controlled for various applications.  From the theoretical point of view and in the interest of pure research, chemists are also able to assemble small clusters of molecules to distill the most fundamental properties that are often obscured by macroscopic bulk samples.  For instance he notes that to study the ice-like properties of water, one needs only assemble 275 water molecules and to observe a true ice structure 465 molecules.  Related to this is also the ability of chemists to slow down a very minute sample of molecules even down to the attosecond scale in order to study their properties and motion.   The ability to prepare a layer of graphene has also been instrumental in their ability to study its electrical and structural properties for very promising uses.  Many of these will have applications in the miniaturization of hardware material for computational technology.

Catalysis is another field that is working hard to investigate and produce even more efficient and widely available catalysts especially in the realm of energy production and elimination or mitigation if pollutants in the process.

Photochemistry is another big field where chemists are trying to find more and more ways to harness the sun's energy not just as a direct source of energy but also as another mode by which chemical reactions can be optimized.  A very mundane example given of an application of this is in self-cleaning windows that make use of titanium dioxide that breaks down chemically any organic dirt upon exposure to sunlight.

Closer to the field of biochemistry are the subfields of proteomics and genomics where protein synthesis, folding, and properties are being studied to shed light on biological processes important in the design and synthesis for medicinal applications.

Lastly, of course, Atkins points out that the future of chemistry is still the business of doing for the sake of doing science and acquisition of knowledge, regardless of any promising application or not.  As he notes toward the end, "Fundamental research is absolutely vital to this endeavor, for it leads to unforeseen discoveries, unforeseen understanding, and unforeseen applications of extraordinary brilliance."

30A Lab Manual Progress

Now in the middle of Unit 8 in cleaning up OCR files.  Skipped Units 3 and 5.

Atkins' What is Chemistry Chapter 6: Its Achievements

In the other half of this chapter, Atkins makes mention of the more nefarious contributions of chemistry to society.

Chemical warfare whether intentional or accidental as in the numerous instances of chemical plant explosions.  He particularly highlighted the accident in Bhopal, India caused by water getting into a storage of methyl isocyanate resulting in the release of a toxic gas that killed thousands of people and injured hundreds of thousands of people.

Next is the invention of explosives, compounds that react or decompose producing gases and lots of heat at rapid rates causing "destructive and impulsive shock".  Nitroglycerin was highlighted as a molecule that contains both oxidizer and fuel which accelerates the reaction even more amplifying the shock produced.

Environmental degradation either through waste and effluent release by chemical processes or the removal of natural resources or introduction of synthetic chemicals to the environment is a ubiquitous by product of all of these achievements.  Chemists in both academia and industry have crafted green chemistry principles which prescribe the various ways that chemical processes can be made more environmentally benign for economical and social reasons, both.  "Chemistry is the only solution to the problem it causes in the environment, be it in air, water, or earth."

Atkins' What Is Chemistry Chapter 6: Its Achievements

In this chapter, Atkins summarizes the major achievements and contributions of chemistry to society.  He starts with water, its sanitation and purification through reverse osmosis.  The discovery of using chlorine derived through electrolysis as a sterilizing agent was highlighted.

He then describes chemistry's contributions to the ability of humans to extract nitrogen from air and phosphorus from minerals in a form that can be used to improve the efficiency of growing food from the earth.  

Next on his list are sources of energy starting from the traditional petroleum based source.  He then mentions that, through chemistry, our ability to harvest the sun's energy has vastly improved, contributing to an increasingly important player in electricity generation, electrochemistry, in batteries in particular.  

Nuclear energy, through fission for now and fusion in the future, was also highlighted albeit with its many challenges despite its great promise.  

A description of human chemical invention of course is not complete without mentioning plastics, another societally important extract from petroleum.  He summarized the importance of plastics in many facets of life but also highlighted the fact that we have been able to conserve natural resources like wood and metal by replacing them whenever possible with plastic.  

Ceramics are also mentioned as a great chemical achievement that has contributed to our ability to use lightweight but strong structural material and also in the realm of superconductive materials.  

Dyes have also played an important role in the history of civilization.  Synthetic dyes have allowed the use of dyes without having to resort to destroying natural sources, like organisms, of different colored dyes or depleting natural minerals.

Chemists are also involved in developing the necessary hardware and infrastructure to support our heavily digitalized world of smart phones and smart gadgets.  A subset of this is the necessary development of material to support the design and construction of increasingly fast and efficient computers, e.g. Molecular and quantum based computing technology where manipulation of molecules and atoms provides the impetus for transfer of digital signals.

While big pharmaceuticals have earned a not so positive reputation, it can not be denied that this chemistry based industry has been the source of many chemical inventions and discoveries that have led to the alleviation of pain through the use of anesthetics and regular pain relievers.  Surgeries can not be possible today without the use of anesthesia.  Chemists in the pharmaceutical industry has also contributed to our knowledge of natural sources of medication either as a primary source or to mimic through synthesis.

Closely allied with this is the contribution of chemical biologists and biochemists in the molecular understanding of life through genomics and proteomics.  "Biology became chemistry half a century ago when the structure if DNA was discovered (in 1953)."

Atkins' What is Chemistry Chapter Five: Its Techniques

Atkins briefly lists the important techniques that have helped propel chemistry to its current stature in terms of analysis and synthesis.  At the very fundamental level, analysis and measurement at the macroscopic level through the use of volumetric and filtration analysis familiar to many introductory and majors level students.  These techniques involve the use of titration, gravimetric and vacuum filtration, distillation, pipetting, and the like.  Then he went on to briefly describe the methods and instrumentation that have allowed chemistry to probe matter at the atomic and molecular level by taking advantage of knowledge about matter and its knteraction with light:spectroscopy.  Spectroscopic techniques involve detecting absorption and emission of different wavelengths of light to probe the structure and quantify small amount of matter.  These techniques include atomic spectroscopy, IR, visible, and UV spectrometry, NMR, and x/ray diffraction.  He also mentions the importance of probing surfaces where many important biological and industrial reactions take place.  These techniques involve atomic force microscopy and scanning tunneling microscopes.  He then went on to emphasize the very important role of computers to model the electronic structure of molecules for studying and designing reactivity and in determining the 3-D structure of proteins and to model their folding processes.  Lastly, in the realm of synthesis, combinatorial chemistry has allowed chemists to increase the efficiency with which molecules can be synthesized and probed for their biological activity for potential pharmaceutical applications.

Atkins' What is Chemistry Chapter 3 Its Energy

Quantity and quality.  Two important aspects of the role of energy in chemistry.  Processes tend toward lower potential energy because energy is released to the surroundings to make the overall change in the entropy of the universe a positive one.  It is always about entropy and the natural direction of spontaneous  change toward energy degradation.

Atkins' What is Chemistry Chapter 4: Its Reactions

I love how Atkins summarized the 4 major fundamental types of chemical reactions: proton transfer, electron transfer through redox, radical reactions, and coordinate bond formation.  Profound.  Reinforced my views that chemical changes are just a series of electron rearrangement.  Organic synthesis, designing molecules is all about manipulating electron rearrangement.  Acids and bases play a role in redox because proton transfer can affect the receptiveness of electron clouds for rearrangement.