Tag: Chemistry

Sciency Words: Hydrogen

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 4 Comments

Hello, friends!  Welcome to Sciency Words, a special series here on Planet Pailly where we talk about the definitions and etymologies of scientific names and terms.  In today’s episode of Sciency Words, we’re talking about:

HYDROGEN

I want to start this with a personal story.  Imagine me, twenty years ago, fresh out of college with a degree in television and film production.  One of my first jobs was working for a company that made educational cartoons for children.  At one point, I ended up being assigned to a two minute animated music video about water.  The name of the video: “Water Can Never Be New.”

Now I’m no scientist.  I cannot call myself an expert (I’m just very enthusiastic about this subject).  And twenty years ago, I was even less of an expert than I am today.  Still, even way back then, I had a nagging suspicion that this “Water Can Never Be New” video was a lie.  Which brings me to the subject of today’s post: hydrogen.

Definition of hydrogen: Hydrogen is the very first element on the periodic table of elements.  Typically, hydrogen atoms consist of one proton orbited by one electron.  Molecular hydrogen consists of two hydrogen atoms bonded to each other.  Under Earth-like temperatures and Earth-like atmospheric pressure, hydrogen is a gas.  It’s also rather rare here on Earth; elsewhere in the universe, it’s extremely common.  In fact, hydrogen is by far the most common, most abundant chemical element in the universe.

Etymology of hydrogen: Hydrogen was first discovered in 1671 by British natural philosopher Robert Boyle.  Boyle referred to this new kind of air he discovered as “inflammable air,” because of how easily he could light it on fire.  Over a century later, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier found that burning “inflammable air” somehow produced water vapor as a byproduct.  Thus, Lavoisier changed the name of “inflammable air” to hydrogen, from two Greek words meaning “water” and “creation.”

It’s hard to imagine today just how much the discovery of hydrogen must have rocked the world of science (a.k.a. natural philosophy) back in the 17th and 18th Centuries.  Up until that point, the Aristotelian view of world had prevailed.  According to Aristotle, four elements—fire, earth, air, and water—were the fundamental building blocks of nature.  Then Robert Boyle comes along with a new kind of air (can we really call air a fundamental element if there are different kinds of it?), and Lavoisier subsequently demonstrates that you can use this new kind of air to make water (is water really a fundamental element if you can make it out of other stuff?).

Today, we know more about what happens when you light hydrogen gas on fire.  The heat energy from the flame causes hydrogen to react with oxygen, producing H2O molecules.  Water, in other words.  New water.  And, in fact, many chemical reactions involving hydrogen and oxygen-containing compounds will produce water molecules as a byproduct.  Due to the energy involved in these reactions, this new water may be too hot to form a liquid, but water vapor is still water (and it will condense into a liquid eventually, once it has time to cool off).

Of course, hydrogen does much more than help make new water molecules.  Hydrogen is the fuel that keeps the Sun shining.  It’s a necessary component in the organic compounds that make life as we know it possible, and hydrogen ions play an important role in acid-base chemistry (not counting Lewis acids and bases).  Given the wide variety of jobs that hydrogen does, you may wonder why we stick to using a name that means, simply, “water generator.”

But the discovery of hydrogen and its water generating ability helped upend some deeply entrenched and woefully inaccurate scientific ideas.  The name seems appropriate to me as a way to honor that moment in the history of science when the old Aristotelian view of nature really started to crumble.  It’s a shame more people don’t know about this story.  Maybe somebody should make an educational cartoon for children about it.

Today’s Blog Post is 100% Chemical Free!

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 6 Comments

A few years back, I was on a wine tour in New Jersey.  It was a delightful adventure!  At one point, however, a very lovely vineyard owner told our tour group: “We don’t put any chemicals on our plants.”

I had to bite my tongue.  What I really, really, really wanted to say was: “Oh?  Not even H2O?”

Whenever I’m told something is “chemical free,” I am legitimately unsure what that means.  I know chemical free is supposed to mean free of artificial chemicals, or free of dangerous chemicals, or something to that effect.  But which chemicals do you consider dangerous? Which chemicals do you consider artificial?

Let me put it to you this way.  If you’re saying you don’t put any chemicals on your plants, then you obviously don’t consider water to be a chemical.  What about fertilizers?  Fertilizers are packed with sulfates and phosphates and nitrates.  I guess those don’t count as chemicals either.  So just how many chemicals do not count as chemicals?

Labeling a product “chemical free” creates a vague space in which some chemicals are chemicals and some aren’t.  I feel like there’s enough vaguery there that all sorts of things could be called chemical free.  Now I’m sure that that New Jersey vineyard owner had no nefarious intentions; but I’m equally sure that someone, somewhere—perhaps someone on the top floor of a skyscraper—is chuckling over how gullible the consumers of “chemical free” products can be.

Sciency Words: Asparagine

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 7 Comments

Welcome to another episode of Sciency Words, a special series here on Planet Pailly where we take a closer look at the defintions and etymologies of science or science-related terms so we can expand our scientific vocabularies together.  Today’s term is:

ASPARAGINE

Asparagus is my favorite vegetable.  Some people may not believe me when I say that, but it’s true.  It has a unique, hard-to-describe flavor that really makes my mouth water.  It’s also a pricier vegetable than most, so it’s something I’ve come to associate with special occasions.

But aside from the taste, part of the reason I like asparagus is that it’s played an interesting and important role in the history of science.  Several chemicals were first discovered in asparagus and have been named in asparagus’s honor, the most noteworthy being asparagine (chemical formula C4H8N2O3).

One fateful day in 1806, two French chemists—Louis Nocolas Vauqueline and Pierre Jean Robiquet—were performing experiments on asparagus juice when they managed to isolate a new and unusual chemical. Vauqueline and Robiquet named their discovery asparagine.  Little did they know they’d just discovered the first of twenty fundamental building blocks for life on Earth.  Asparagine was the first known amino acid.

This very random illustration was inspired by Google auto-suggesting “asparagus disco” while I was typing the words “asparagine discovery.”

Asparagine is considered a non-essential amino acid, which I feel is a misleading term.  Asparagine is essential in the sense that you need it to stay alive, but it is not essential that you get it in your diet.  Your body can make it out of other things.

I guess that’s fortunate for those of you who don’t like asparagus as much as I do.

P.S.: I have long been under the impression that asparagine is responsible for making pee smell funny after you eat asparagus.  Apparently that’s not correct.  That smell is more likely caused by a sulfur-containing compound called asparagusic acid.

Harry Potter and the Sciency Words of Molecular Dissociation

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 4 Comments

Okay, I’m going to try something a little different for this week’s episode of Sciency Words.

I’ve been a huge fan of the Harry Potter novels for a long time now.  Learning new and interesting scientific terms, as we do here on Sciency Words, can feel a little like learning new magical spells.  Sometimes scientific terms even sound a little like the kinds of spells they might teach at Hogwarts.

So today, we’re going to discuss the magical art of molecular dissociation, and we’re going to learn three spells which can cause the dissociation of molecules to occur.  In other words, we’re going to learn three ways to break molecules apart.  Ready?

Photolysis is one of the very first “magical spells” I leanred, and I think it’s a really good one to know about.  “Photo” comes from the Greek word for light, so photolysis is the breaking of chemical bonds using light.

Typically this is done using higher energy wavelengths of light, like the Sun’s ultraviolet rays.  As an artist, it’s important for me to know how to cast shield charms against photolysis, because photolysis can (and will) destroy the chemical pigments in my art work, causing the colors to fade.

As you might have guessed, electrolysis is when you break chemical bonds with electricity.  You may have assumed astronauts are muggles.  You can be forgiven for that assumption, but astronauts definitely know how to perform at least this much magic.

And in the not-so-distant future, space explorers on the Moon and Mars and out in the asteroid belt will probably use electrolysis to split water molecules into hydrogen (useful as rocket fuel) and oxygen (useful for breathing and also as rocket fuel).

“Pyro” means fire, so pyrolysis is the breaking of chemical bonds using heat.  This is probably the most common and most obvious of these molecular dissociation spells—what do you think Bunsen burners are for?—but for some reason I don’t see this term being used very often.

In fact the first time I ever saw the word in print was in this paper about the Curiosity rover on Mars.  I guess Mars rovers have magical powers too, because Curiosity cast pyrolysis on a weird sample it had collected in order to figure out what the sample was made of.  Turned out it was made of complex organic compounds, the kind of compounds that may (or may not) be associated with Martian life.

* * *

Of course there are still so many more scientific terms… I mean magical spells to learn.  I’m hoping I’ll find another of these molecular dissociation spells that fits the photolysis, electrolysis, pyrolysis pattern.  If I do, I promise to draw someone in Slytherin colors performing the spell.

Sciency Words: Aromatic

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 2 Comments

Today’s post is part of a special series here on Planet Pailly called Sciency Words.  Each week, we take a closer look at an interesting science or science-related term to help us expand our scientific vocabularies together. Today’s term is:

AROMATIC

At some point when I was a little kid, I discovered that gasoline doesn’t smell terrible.  In fact, it has an almost sweet aroma to it.  I got in a lot of trouble for this because, for obvious reasons, my parents didn’t want me sniffing gas fumes.  But still, that subtly sweet smell is there, and it’s caused by a chemical known as benzene.

Apparently I’m not the only person to take note of benzene’s smell.  German chemist Augustus Wilhelm Hofmann is credited with the first usage of the word “aromatic” to describe benzene, along with a whole host of other sweet-smelling chemicals.

Hofmann seems to have realized not only that these chemicals smelled similar but also that they had similar chemical compositions.  “Of this series,” Hofmann wrote in 1855, “few members are at present known, but the group of aromatic acids is itself very imperfect and limited.”  In other words, Hofmann predicted the existence of more “aromatic” chemicals that should fit the pattern.

And more chemicals of this series were later discovered, and we now know what they really have in common: a flattened, ring-like chemical structure, as pictured below:

As an adult, I know better than to sniff gasoline, and as an artist I know better than to sniff my art supplies.  But the xylene used as a solvent in some pens and markers does have that same vaguely sweet aroma as benzene. However, not all of the chemicals we call “aromatic” smell so nice, or smell at all.  It’s the flattened, ring-like structure that defines aromaticity today.  The odor is no longer considered relevant.

You might be wondering then why we still call these chemicals aromatic, if their aromas aren’t important.  This seems to be another case of scientists naming something before they really understood it.  The same thing happened with the word organic.  The term was used so often in scientific literature and became so deeply ingrained in the scientific lexicon that we’re now unable to change it.

The ring-like structures in aromatic chemicals are incredibly strong and unlikely to break apart during chemical reactions. That makes them really good structural components for the large, complex molecules that make life possible here on Earth—and may have once made life possible on Mars.  But we’ll talk more about that next week!

Molecular Monday: Carbon vs. Silicon

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 4 Comments

I recently completed a certain long anticipated manuscript, and I’m currently in the process of rewriting and revising it. Editing this thing has me thinking about a certain line from Macbeth, which I’ll paraphrase as: I have walked so deep into blood that, should I go no farther, returning will be as tedious as continuing onward.

That’s morbid, I know.  What do you expect?  It’s Shakespeare!  But simply replace the word blood with red ink, and I think you’ll understand how the editing is going for me.

Anyway, I’ve waded so far into that “red ink” that I haven’t had much time for research; so for today’s episode of Molecular Monday I thought we’d take a look back at one of my older posts.  A very old post, from all the way back in 2011, long before I really knew what I was talking about with regard to organic chemistry.

And yet despite my ignorance and inexperience, I think I still got the general idea right with this one.  Also, this post includes one of my very first attempts at science illustration, so I hope you’ll enjoy that!

CARBON vs. SILICON

It’s often suggested that the aliens from the Aliens movies, sometimes referred to as xenomorphs, are silicon based rather than carbon based like us.  There are a lot of silicon based aliens in science fiction, but no one knows if such a thing is really possible.

Carbon and silicon have one thing in common: they both have four bonding sites, meaning they can bond with up to four other atoms when making a molecule.  Other than that, they’re completely different.  Silicon is a metalloid; carbon is a nonmetal.  Carbon is much lighter and more flexible, and it’s ten times more abundant in the universe.

If the idea of silicon based life is simply to replace carbon atoms with silicon, it wouldn’t work.  Take breathing for example.  We breath oxygen in, and exhale carbon dioxide.  When a silicon based alien breaths in oxygen, it will have a hard time exhaling silicon dioxide; silicon dioxide is better known as quartz crystal.

I don’t remember any xenomorphs hacking up quartz crystals in the movies, but maybe they use silicon for something else.  Carbon has to be part of their biochemistry anyway, or they wouldn’t be able to grow inside human hosts.

Humans are not only carbon based.  We also depend on oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur.  Not only that, but we need traces of iron, sodium, potassium, etc as well.  So maybe the xenomorphs can be carbon based and silicon based at the same time.

Molecular Monday: Dihydrogen Monoxide

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 9 Comments

Welcome to another episode of Molecular Mondays, a special biweekly series here on Planet Pailly where we take a closer look at the atoms and molecules that make up our physical universe, both in reality and in science fiction.

I had a really bad time in high school chemistry.  That was the closest I ever came to failing a class, and the experience sort of traumatized me. But there was one lesson from my high school chemistry class that I did learn well.  It involved a chemical with the very scary sounding name dihydrogen monoxide.

The teacher gave us a handout to read, laying out the case that dihydrogen monoxide (also known as DHMO) is a horrifyingly dangerous chemical that should be banned.  DHMO has been found to be present in cancer cells, and yet it continues to be incorporated into our processed foods.  It’s one of the chemical components of acid rain, and yet we keep putting more of it into our atmosphere.  Inhaling DHMO has caused deaths, the U.S. Navy has conducted weapons tests using DHMO, etc, etc, etc…

My teacher seemed a bit like an aging hippie and probably an environmentalist too, so I thought I understood why he was having us read this.  I had the vague suspicion that I was being scammed somehow, that this article about dihydrogen monoxide might not be telling the whole story.  But when the teacher asked us what should be done, I went along with the crowd and voted to outlaw DHMO.

Everyone in the class voted to outlaw it, except one kid: the stereotypical super smart, super nerdy kid (every class has one, I think).  He just sat there with a big grin on his face.  The teacher, who was also grinning at this point, asked what was so funny, and the smart kid of the class proceeded to explain that “dihydrogen” means two hydrogen atoms, and “monoxide” means one oxygen atom: H20.  We’d just voted to outlaw water.

Going back through everything it said in the handout:

  • DHMO is found in cancer cells… yes, it’s found in all your cells.
  • It’s in processed foods… sure, unless your food’s been dehydrated.
  • It’s in acid rain… because acid rain is still rain.
  • We’re putting it into the atmosphere… yes, everytime we boil water.
  • Inhaling it can kill you… that’s called drowning.
  • The U.S. Navy uses it… obviously!

I guess the lesson I learned that day had more to do with linguistics than chemistry.  Just because something has a scary-sounding name, that does not necessarily mean it’s a scary thing.  People may try to deceive you while hiding the truth in plain sight. This is especially true with science, where you can rely on the science illiteracy of the general public.

So stay skeptical, and whenever you’re confronted with a strange and unfamiliar word, don’t be afraid to ask what that word actually means.

P.S.: High school students aren’t the only ones who’ve fallen for the DHMO hoax.  At least one politician, when confronted with similar facts about this very dangerous chemical, called for outlawing water.

Molecular Monday: Making Rocket Fuel on Mars

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 2 Comments

Today’s post is part of a bi-weekly series here on Planet Pailly called Molecular Mondays, where we take a closer look at the atoms and molecules that make up our physical universe.

As most of you now know, I am on a totally-for-real, not-making-this-up mission to visit the planet Mars. Now if you’re planning a mission to Mars, one of the first things you need to figure out is how to get back to Earth. Unless you’re not planning to come back, which is apparently an option.

But if you do want to come home, you’ll probably need to refill the fuel tanks of your spaceship using only the natural resources Mars provides. Believe it or not, this is surprisingly easy to do using a process called the Sabatier reaction (discovered in the early 20th Century by French chemist Paul Sabatier).

In the Sabatier reaction, hydrogen and carbon dioxide mix together to produce methane, with water being produced as a byproduct. The chemical equation looks like this:

CO2 + 4H2 –> CH4 + 2H2O

Liquid methane makes a decent rocket fuel, but you still need an oxidizer. To get that, all you have to do is zap that byproduct water with electricity, creating oxygen and hydrogen.

2H2O –> 2H2 +O2

Liquid oxygen is pretty much the best oxidizer you can get, and the “waste” hydrogen can be put back to work keeping the Sabatier reaction going.

I first learned about the Sabatier reaction in Robert Zubrin’s book The Case for Mars, coming soon to my recommended reading series. The only problem, according to Zubrin, who was writing in 1996, is hydrogen. Mars’s atmosphere is almost completely CO2, but Mars is severely depleted of hydrogen. Zubrin’s solution in his book is to import hydrogen from Earth (still cheaper than trying to ship rocket fuel to Mars).

But since 1996, we’ve learned that Mars has more water than previously thought, most of it frozen just beneath the planet’s surface. So when I read about the Sabatier reaction again, this time in Elon Musk’s paper “Making Humans a Multi-Planet Species,” published in 2017, the hydrogen problem was no longer a problem. We can get it through the electrolysis of Martian water.

Of course for my own Mars mission, I don’t have to worry much about rocket fuel. My spaceship is fueled by pure imagination! But still, if something were to go wrong with my ship, it’s good to have a backup plan.

Sciency Words: Island of Stability

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 2 Comments

Today’s post is part of a special series here on Planet Pailly called Sciency Words. Each week, we take a closer look at an interesting science or science-related term to help us expand our scientific vocabularies together. Today’s term is:

ISLAND OF STABILITY

According to Star Trek: Voyager, in the 24th Century there will be 246 elements on the periodic table. In one episode, the Voyager crew discovers element 247, and to their astonishment that element is stable.

Here in the 21st Century, on modern day Earth, there are only 91 naturally occurring elements. Element 43, technetium, and everything above element 92, uranium, have to be produced artificially. And these artificial elements are all unstable. Some of them, especially the really, really high numbered ones, are so unstable that they’re effectively useless.

When an atomic nucleus gets too big, the so-called strong nuclear force is no longer strong enough to hold the whole thing together. You can also run into problems if you don’t have a comfortable balance of protons and neutrons. At that point, when atoms are too big or improperly balanced, they start shedding nuclear particles until they can stabilize themselves. This process is called radioactive decay.

If you want, you can draw a chart with the number of protons in an atom along one axis and the number of neutrons along the other. But charts are boring, so let’s draw a map instead.

Physicist Glenn Seaborg (for whom element 106, seaborgium, is named) was apparently a big fan of maps. I imagine he and J.R.R. Tolkein would have gotten along well. In the 1960’s, Seaborg started referring to groups of atomic isotopes by “geographical” names, and these names have stuck.

On the map above, the landmass stretching up from the bottom left corner represents all the stable and semi-stable isotopes. This “Peninsula of Stability” is surrounded by a “Sea of Instability.” But somewhere out in that sea, according to Seaborg and others, certain very large atoms might theoretically become stable. These atoms would have just the right balance of protons and neutrons to hold themselves together despite their extreme size. These “magically” stable isotopes are represented by the Island of Stability.

Physicists have been trying to find the Island of Stability for decades now, but it seems to be perpetually just over the horizon. It was once predicted that elements 110 and 114 might be stable. They’re not. I remember reading that element 118 might turn out to be stable. It didn’t. Now there’s a prediction about element 120. We’ll have to wait and see about that one.

Also there’s a possibility that we’ve been skirting along the island’s coast, so to speak. Maybe if we just add a few more neutrons to some of the unstable elements we’ve already found, they’ll stabilize. Maybe. More on that in next week’s Molecular Monday post.

Personally, I think Star Trek: Voyager was on to something. My prediction is that the Island of Stability will be found all the way out at element 247, and I recommend the IUPAC name it Janewayium.

Molecular Monday: Boron Isn’t Boring

~ J.S. Pailly ~ 4 Comments

Welcome back to another edition of Molecular Mondays, a special biweekly series here on Planet Pailly combining two of my least favorite things: chemistry and Mondays.

At some point long, long ago, I read a book about the periodic table of the elements. Chapter five was about boron, and what I remember learning was that boron is kind of useless. Certain boron-containing compounds are used in cleaning detergents, and while boron is not particularly toxic to humans, it’s deadly to insects, so it makes a good insecticide.

And that was basically it. Nothing more to know. Time to move on to chapter six: carbon.

So when the news came out that the Curiosity rover had detected boron on the surface of Mars, my initial reaction was “who cares?” But then I read more, and I soon realized that I’d been grossly under-informed about the fifth element from the periodic table.

First off, finding boron on Mars posed a real challenge. The Curiosity rover used an instrument called ChemCam, which basically zaps rock samples with a laser and performs a spectroscopic analysis on the resulting rock vapor.

According to this paper published in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists were looking for two spectral lines, both in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, which are characteristic of boron: 249.75 nm and 249.84 nm. Annoyingly, iron also produces a spectral line at 249.96 nm, so ChemCam can only confirm boron’s presence in samples that have low iron content, which are hard to come by on Mars. Iron oxide is basically everywhere.

But despite this difficulty, boron was detected. Why should I or anyone else care? Because it was detected in veins of sedimentary rock, meaning that at some point long ago when Mars still had lakes and rivers and oceans of liquid water, boron must have been mixed into that water (likely in the form of borate, a compound of boron and oxygen).

Again, why should anyone care? Because some of the fragile molecules necessary for life decompose in open water, but borate can help stabilize those molecules, allowing them to combine to form RNA. Boron itself is not incorporated into our modern DNA, but its presence here on Earth may have helped life get started—and if boron was present on Mars, mixed into ancient Martian waters, it could have helped life get started there too.

Could have. We still don’t know for sure, but as I’ve hinted previously I am planning a little trip to Mars aboard my imaginary spaceship. Stay tuned. I’ll be sure to let you know if I find anything.