Interesting facts about chemists and their discoveries. Interesting facts about chemistry

For many, weekdays are almost monotonous: home, work, home... And often this makes people depressed, because there is a lack of some variety, events, adventures, something interesting! But in fact, millions of events and various interesting phenomena happen around us every day, to which we do not pay attention not only because we are inattentive, but because the human eye simply does not see it.

For example, various chemical processes are constantly taking place around us. It is an illusion that chemistry is something complex and incomprehensible. In fact, chemistry is a part of our life, without which human life would not only be much more boring, but completely impossible.

Amazing facts about chemistry:

1. A soap bubble is the thinnest matter that the human eye can see. A soap bubble bursts in 0.001 seconds. Moreover, if you inflate a bubble at -15 C o, it will freeze upon contact with the surface, and at -25 C o, it will freeze in the air and break upon impact.

2. Ocean waters contain gold. There are 7 milligrams of gold per ton of ocean water.

3. During flight, airplanes use up to 75 tons of oxygen; this amount of oxygen is produced by 30,000 hectares of forest.

4. Iron can be turned into gas at a temperature of 1539 C 0.

5. Every living organism on our planet contains protein, but in different proportions. The human brain is also protein.

6. The lethal dose of methyl alcohol is 30 ml, and the antidote is ethyl alcohol.

7. Metal does not smell. Everyone is familiar with the smell of untreated (not painted) metal; this is the smell, for example, of metal money, railings, old swings, fittings, or just a piece of metal. But this smell is not emitted by the metal itself, it is the result of contact of the metal with an organic substance, for example, with our palm or finger, which produces sweat.

8. Tomatoes are very smart plants, they know how to shout “SOS!” When an insect - such as a caterpillar - begins to chew on a tomato leaf, it releases a chemical with a certain odor that attracts birds.

9. Charles Goodyear is a scientist who accidentally invented rubber that does not melt in the heat and does not break in the cold. He forgot to remove the mixture of sulfur and rubber from the switched on stove, so a process for making rubber was invented, which was called vulcanization.

10. About 100 thousand chemical reactions occur in the human brain every minute.

Chemistry constantly surrounds us. It is not only around us, but also inside our body, and even our thought process is essentially chemistry. So chemistry not only helps us learn a lot of interesting and surprising things, but also benefits us in every sense.

Chemistry is a subject that is known to all schoolchildren. Attitudes towards it vary: some people like to watch how reagents behave during various experiments in the classroom, while for others, on the contrary, chemistry only causes boredom. However, not everyone knows interesting facts about this discipline. Let's look at some of them.

Dancing squid

Chemistry is a subject that finds practical use in various areas of life. One of the interesting facts about chemistry comes from a Japanese dish called “dancing squid.” Its highlight is as follows: freshly caught squid is served to the guest’s table, shortly before pouring soy sauce over it. The squid begins to move its tentacles as if dancing. This effect is due to the fact that in the squid tentacles there is chemical reaction, causing muscles to move.

Skatol

Another interesting fact about chemistry involves a special substance called skatole. This is an organic compound that gives feces its characteristic odor. Its colorless crystals can be found in various essential oils, resins, and are also formed during the decomposition of protein. In small doses, this substance has a pleasant floral aroma. Manufacturers often add it to perfumes, cigarettes, and various food essences. Skatole is even found in food.

Poison in alcohol

And the following interesting fact about chemistry will serve as a warning for those who are prone to drinking alcohol. They may contain a very dangerous substance, which in taste and smell is practically indistinguishable from ethyl alcohol. This is methyl alcohol. Small amounts of it can cause blindness. A dose of 30 ml can cause cardiac arrest. In case of methyl alcohol poisoning, the antidote to it is ethyl alcohol. This is explained by the fact that the binding processes of both alcohols directly depend on the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase. This substance reacts faster with ethanol. As a result of the reaction, the ethanol is exhausted, and most of the methanol remains unbroken, resulting in a smaller amount of poison ending up in the blood.

Rescue Canaries

Many interesting facts about chemistry are also connected with the animal world. For example, it is a widely known fact among miners that canaries are highly sensitive to the smell of methane gas. This feature was always used in the past by mine workers, who always took small birds underground with them. If the canaries stopped singing, this meant that they should immediately go upstairs.

Discovery of antibiotics

Perhaps one of the most famous facts about chemistry is associated with the discovery of antibiotics by A. Fleming in 1928. The scientist conducted one of his ordinary experiments, which were devoted to the human body’s fight against various bacterial infections. He grew cultures called Staphylococcus in test tubes. A scientist accidentally left a test tube with bacteria unattended for several days. At this time, a whole colony of mold fungi grew in it. After this, A. Fleming was able to isolate a separate active substance - penicillin.

For the first time in human history, these substances were isolated from wheat flour by the Italian scientist Bartolomeo Beccari in 1728. The scientist’s discovery has since been considered the birth of a whole direction in science - protein chemistry. Let's look at some interesting chemistry facts about proteins:

Every living organism on our planet contains these substances. Protein makes up about half the dry weight of each organism. For example, in viruses its content ranges from 50 to 95%. In addition, proteins are one of the four main components of living matter (the other three are nucleic acids, carbohydrates, and fats). They occupy a special place in their biological functions.

About 30% of the proteins in the human body are found in muscle tissue. 20% is found in bones and tendons. Only 10% comes from the skin.
In total, there are about a thousand different proteins in nature. They enable the life of a wide variety of organisms - from protozoa to humans. In total, proteins provide life to two million types of living organisms.
Brain is also a protein. When alcohol enters the body, nerve cells die. This occurs due to the fact that the protein is denatured when interacting with ethyl alcohol.

Six more interesting facts about chemistry

Let us briefly consider a few more facts from this area that will be of interest to both schoolchildren and adults.

Record holder among scientists who devoted their research to the discovery chemical elements, is the Swedish explorer Carl Scheele. He discovered fluorine, chlorine, barium, oxygen, manganese, molybdenum, and tungsten.
The thinnest matter that can be seen by the human eye is a soap bubble. The thickness of tissue paper or, for example, human hair thousands of times greater than the wall thickness soap bubble. Its bursting speed is only 0.001 seconds. For comparison: the speed of a nuclear reaction is 0.000 000 000 000 000 001 sec.
Iron is durable and hard material, however, even it can melt and turn into gas. This happens at a temperature of 1539 0 C.

The next interesting fact about chemistry is related to the size of atoms. It is known that these particles are extremely small in size. For example, hydrogen atoms are so small that even if they were placed one after another in the amount of 100 million, the length of such a chain would not exceed 1 cm.
One ton of ocean water contains only 7 milligrams of gold. However, the total mass of precious metal contained in all waters is quite impressive and amounts to 10 billion tons.
The most modern passenger aircraft use up to 75 tons of oxygen during their operation. The same amount of this substance is produced by 25,000-50,000 hectares of forest during photosynthesis.

The achievements of this science surround people everywhere: from medicines and non-stick frying pans to magically disappearing ink on receipts. Chemistry is difficult for schoolchildren - perhaps it is not interesting? Nothing like this! The article contains the most interesting facts about chemistry and chemists. Find out about Moscow's most famous ghost, how a grumpy wife helped invent rubber and main value Iturup Islands.

Dissolve and mix

Aqua regia is not the drink of monarchs, but a mixture consisting of a quarter nitrogen and three quarters hydrochloric acid. This rich carrot-colored liquid dissolves even difficult-to-etch metals such as gold and platinum.

Acid "Royal vodka"

In 1940, aqua regia saved the Nobel medals of two German physicists: James Frank and Max von Laue from destruction. The Nazis forbade accepting this award because it was given to an irreconcilable opponent of National Socialist ideas, Karl von Ossietzky. Chemists at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen threw the medals into a bottle of aqua regia and even placed the container in a prominent place.

The awards disappeared without a trace. Abwehr officers walked by and did not notice anything. After the war, the gold was recovered from the acid and the medals were recast.

Disappearing Spoon

“There is no spoon,” said Neo from the movie “The Matrix,” while waiting to be received by the prophetess. But even he would be surprised if the prophetess served gallium cutlery with tea and cookies.

You don't need a blast furnace to melt this metal. It is enough to heat it to 28 degrees, and it will flow. Even in your hands, gallium melts like ice cream, let alone boiling water!

The Glowing Monk and the Hound of the Baskervilles

The face of the Hound of the Baskervilles from the story was smeared with phosphorus for criminal purposes. A Soviet academician Semyon Volfkovich, who zealously studied this element, simply neglected safety precautions. As a result, his suit and shoes became saturated with phosphorus gas.

Walking home through Moscow at night, Volfkovich emitted a mystical glow. Each time, the scientist was followed at a respectful distance by amazed people, to whom the “luminous monk” inspired both horror and curiosity.

Chemistry and ghosts

The Canterville Ghost and the many ghosts that inhabit Hogwarts are not entirely fictional. Until now, thousands of inhabitants of ancient houses and castles complain about mournful voices and mysterious steps in the dark, cannot sleep properly and are even selling their mansions.

The culprit of the nightmares has been found: it turned out to be carbon monoxide. The outdated heating design in homes of past centuries releases it into rooms in such quantities that it causes auditory and visual hallucinations.

Is it possible to walk on water

It is possible if it is not pure water, but a mixture of it with starch. If you pour such a starch suspension into a swimming pool, it will behave like a liquid. But as soon as you hit its surface sharply or even jump on it, it instantly thickens under your feet and then spreads out again. A fast running person literally makes a solid path for himself on liquid.

The fact is that the viscosity of a starch suspension depends not only on temperature, but also on the use of force. Cream behaves in the same way, thickening when whipped. But ketchup, on the contrary, deigns to flow only after hitting the bottle.

Record holders of the periodic table

The created table of elements is the alpha and omega of chemical science. There is a lot of interesting things in it, let’s look for the most unusual specimens in its cells:

astatine is the rarest element found in nature: there is less than 1 g of it on the entire planet;
rhenium is the rarest metal: to obtain 1 kg of rhenium, 2000 tons of ore are processed; a deposit of this metal was discovered on the island of Iturup, which, among others, the Japanese dispute with Russia;

californium - the high cost of this radioactive element has no equal: for 1 g of the substance you will have to pay 27 million dollars;
tungsten is a record holder for refractoriness: the temperature to melt it has to be raised above 3400 degrees;

gold is a champion in malleability: from 1 g of gold a jeweler can draw a wire over 2 km long;
nitrogen – the atmosphere consists of 78% nitrogen, but it is not used by any living organism except nitrogen-fixing bacteria;
hydrogen – The Universe belongs to hydrogen, which makes up 90% of it.

How a broken flask served the aircraft industry

The French artist and chemist Edouard Benedictus in 1903 became the author of an invention that saved more than one life. That day he was conducting experiments with nitrocellulose and carelessly dropped the flask. The glass cracked, but the bottle retained its shape. However, Benedictus was so annoyed that he simply threw it away.

In the evening, the scientist witnessed a car accident. The windshield, shattered into sharp fragments, disfigured the face of the surviving driver. And a broken flask appeared before the chemist’s eyes... It was carefully removed from the trash can and served for science. This is how humanity received triplex - a material for vehicle windows, glass canopies and doors.

A grumpy wife and the birth of rubber

American chemist Charles Goodyear tried for many years to improve the properties of rubber by mixing it with various substances to no avail. The scientist's wife was dissatisfied with his work, since his invention did not bring money, and the stench in the house was quite noticeable. Goodyear was nervous and began to hide his experiences from his wife, but did not lose hope.

Once he mixed rubber with sulfur, but again nothing came of this venture. Hearing Mrs. Goodyear's steps, the scientist threw the mixture onto the hot coals of the stove, trying to pretend that he had not done anything like that. After listening to his wife's next lecture and waiting for her to leave, the inventor took out of the stove exactly what he had wanted to see for many years - vulcanized rubber.

The art of naming

The tiny Swedish town of Ytterby is mentioned four times in periodic table. The names of the elements ytterbium, yttrium, erbium and terbium are derived from this toponym. All of them were found as part of an unusually heavy mineral, which is mined in the vicinity of the town.

Miners from Norway still worship the mountain spirit Kobold, who has the power to fill up the mines or let people go alive. When smelting silver ores in former times, poisoning often occurred, which was also attributed to the harmfulness of the mountain spirit. The metal extracted from this ore was named cobalt in his honor, although arsenic oxide was to blame for the poisonings.

The sonorous name “Amkar” of the Perm football club misleads everyone who is not familiar with the history of its creation. But this name, like a charade, consists of the first syllables of the words “ammonia” and “urea”. This is explained simply: the company that created the club produces mineral fertilizers.

A small additive – completely different properties

The German mortar "Big Bertha", created for the destruction of forts and fortresses, had a serious drawback - the legendary Krupp steel barrel was deformed from overheating. To correct the situation, it was necessary to alloy the steel with molybdenum. The largest deposit at that time was discovered in the US state of Colorado. By cunning, persuasion and even, as they say, almost by raider seizure, the path of molybdenum was paved to Germany.

German mortar "Big Bertha"

The Lego constructor is one of the favorite children's toys. And the smaller its details, the more interesting it is to tinker with it. However, there is a danger that, after playing too much, the child will swallow the construction element. The game creators thought about this and added harmless barium sulfate to the plastic. Now the swallowed part is detected using x-rays.

Chemists joke

Most scientists are so tired of amateurish horror stories about GMOs that in response, chemists began to send out calls for a complete and irrevocable ban on dihydrogen monoxide. They write that this is dangerous connection leads to corrosion of metals and deterioration of most other materials; it is part of acid rain and discharges from enterprises. A person into whose body dihydrogen monoxide enters inevitably dies, sometimes even after a minute.

In 2007, things came to a real curiosity: having received from voters an angry description of the terrible poison that is everywhere added to food, one New Zealand MP addressed a request to the government, demanding a complete ban on such “chemicals.” But we were talking about water.

Chemistry is our life. We ourselves consist of “dihydrogen monoxide” and tens of thousands of other substances that constantly interact with each other, giving birth to new compounds. And how many more wonderful discoveries and inventions await enthusiastic people in burnt-out robes - we’ll find out when we start using them.

Like imperfect knowledge in English helped discover one of the sugar substitutes?

One of the most effective sugar substitutes, sucralose, was discovered by accident. Professor Leslie Hugh of King's College London instructed his student Shashikant Phadnis to test the substance trichlorosucrose obtained in the laboratory. The student knew English at a level that was far from perfect and instead of “test” he heard “taste”, immediately tasting the substance and finding it very sweet.

Which car part was invented by accident?

Unbreakable glass was invented by accident. In 1903, French chemist Edouard Benedictus accidentally dropped a flask filled with nitrocellulose. The glass cracked, but did not shatter into small pieces. Having realized what was going on, Benedictus made the first modern windshields to reduce the number of victims of car accidents.

What was the profession of the man whom Muscovites called the luminous monk in legends?

Academician Semyon Volfkovich was among the first Soviet chemists to conduct experiments with phosphorus. At that time, the necessary precautions had not yet been taken, and phosphorus gas soaked into clothing during work. When Wolfkovich returned home through the dark streets, his clothes emitted a bluish glow, and sparks shot out from under his shoes. Each time a crowd gathered behind him and mistook the scientist for an otherworldly creature, which led to the spread of rumors throughout Moscow about the “luminous monk.”

How did Mendeleev discover the periodic law?

There is a widespread legend that the idea of the periodic table of chemical elements came to Mendeleev in a dream. One day he was asked if this was true, to which the scientist replied: “I’ve been thinking about it for maybe twenty years, but you think: I sat there and suddenly... it’s ready.”

Which famous physicist was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry?

Ernest Rutherford's research was primarily in the field of physics and once stated that "all sciences can be divided into two groups - physics and stamp collecting." However, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry, which came as a surprise to both him and other scientists. Subsequently, he noticed that of all the transformations that he was able to observe, “the most unexpected was his own transformation from a physicist to a chemist.”

What birds helped the miners?

Canaries are very sensitive to the methane content in the air. This feature was once used by miners who, going underground, took with them a cage with a canary. If singing had not been heard for a long time, then it was necessary to go upstairs as quickly as possible.

How was vulcanization discovered?

American Charles Goodyear accidentally discovered a recipe for making rubber that does not soften in the heat and does not become brittle in the cold. He mistakenly heated a mixture of rubber and sulfur on the kitchen stove (according to another version, he left a rubber sample near the stove). This process is called vulcanization.

What creatures are responsible for the color of Bloody Falls in Antarctica?

In Antarctica, the Bloody Falls sometimes emerge from the Taylor Glacier. The water in it contains divalent iron, which, when combined with atmospheric air, oxidizes and forms rust. This gives the waterfall a bloody red color. However, divalent iron does not appear in water just like that - it is produced by bacteria living in a reservoir isolated from the outside world, deep under the ice. These bacteria were able to organize a life cycle in the complete absence of sunlight and oxygen. They process organic residues and “breathe” ferric iron from surrounding rocks.

The Amkar football club from Perm received its name from the abbreviation of two chemical substances - ammonia and urea, since they were the main products of Mineral Fertilizers OJSC, which created the club.

If the viscosity of a liquid depends only on its nature and temperature, such as water, such a liquid is called Newtonian. If the viscosity also depends on the velocity gradient, it is called non-Newtonian. Such liquids, when suddenly applied force, behave like solids. An example is ketchup in a bottle, which will not flow unless you shake the bottle. Another example is a suspension of corn starch in water. If you pour it into a large container, you can literally walk on it if you move your feet quickly and apply enough force to each stroke.

Since the 1990s, there have been frequent calls on websites and mailing lists to ban the use of dihydrogen monoxide. They list the numerous dangers that this substance causes: it is the main component of acid rain, accelerates the corrosion of metals, can cause short circuits, etc. Despite the danger, the substance is actively used as an industrial solvent, additive to food products, at nuclear power plants, and enterprises dump it in huge quantities into rivers and seas. This joke - after all, dihydrogen monoxide is nothing more than water - should teach critical perception of information. In 2007, a New Zealand MP bought into it. He received a similar letter from a constituent and forwarded it to the government, demanding that the dangerous chemical be banned.

Strawberry aldehyde in terms of organic chemistry is not an aldehyde, but an ethyl ether. Also, this substance is not contained in strawberries, but only resembles them in its smell. The substance got its name in the 19th century, when chemical analysis was still not very accurate.

Platinum literally means “silver” in Spanish. This disparaging name given to this metal by the conquistadors is explained by the exceptional refractoriness of platinum, which could not be melted down, did not find use for a long time and was valued half as much as silver. Now on world exchanges, platinum is about 100 times more expensive than silver.

The smell of wet earth that we smell after rain is organic matter geosmin, which is produced by cyanobacteria and actinobacteria living on the surface of the earth.

Many chemical elements are named after countries or other geographical features. Four elements at once - yttrium, ytterbium, terbium and erbium - were named after the Swedish village of Ytterby, near which a large deposit of rare earth metals was discovered.

When cobalt minerals containing arsenic are fired, volatile, toxic arsenic oxide is released. The ore containing these minerals was given the name of the mountain spirit Kobold by the miners. The ancient Norwegians attributed the poisoning of smelters during the melting of silver to the tricks of this evil spirit. The metal cobalt itself was named after him.

Antibiotics were discovered by accident. Alexander Fleming left a test tube containing staphylococcus bacteria unattended for several days. A colony of mold fungi grew in it and began to destroy the bacteria, and then Fleming isolated the active substance - penicillin.

Turkey vultures have a very keen sense of smell; they smell especially well ethanethiol, a gas that is released when animal corpses rot. Artificially produced ethanethiol is added to natural gas, which itself is odorless, so that we can smell gas leaking from an uncovered burner. In sparsely populated areas of the United States, inspection engineers sometimes detect leaks on main pipelines precisely by the circling of turkey vultures, attracted by their familiar smell.