Chemistry

If you buy extra virgin olive oil, caveat emptor. Olive oil has been an avenue for corruption for hundreds and perhaps even thousands of years. Some extra virgin olive oil in studies was found to not…

Platinum is used in catalytic converters to transform toxic fumes from a car's engine into more benign gases, to produce high octane gasoline, plastics and synthetic rubbers, and to fight the spread…

President Obama called it a 'Sputnik Moment' and, when you weren't wondering why a guy who is against war uses a lot of military terminology and invokes Ronald Reagan(1), you may have still…

Though table salt, sodium chloride (NaCl), is one of the best-known and most studied chemical compounds known, it still has a few mysteries. Under ambient conditions, it crystallizes in a cubic…

Vodka can make people do strange things - especially if they also have a phone. But it can also do cool things, like demonstrating how to message people using chemical signals when conventional…

You can perform simple qualitative analysis to detect certain metals in various substances using borax bead, and flame tests. The inoculating loop for these tests is very easy to make. You can use 20…

Kudos to Thames and Kosmos for getting their chemistry sets on the shelves at Barnes and Noble. They have these three introductory sets in the store: the “Dangerous Book for Boys Classic Chemistry…

Life grew as a result of natural processes that used Earth's raw materials. Models of life's origins almost always look to minerals for such essential tasks as the synthesis of life's molecular…

Edward Snowden: patriot or traitor? Whatever your opinion of Mr. Snowden, he did give us pause to reflect on our Fourth Amendment rights “of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,…

While driving to my doctor's office to get some persistent Toxicodendron diversilobum (that's poison oak) looked at, I listened to NPR. Just as you would expect of me, my radio stations will all have…