Ethylene, the world's most commonly produced organic compound, is used many types of industries. Farmers and horticulturalists use it as a plant hormone to promote flowering and ripening, especially…

Drugs derived from cinchona bark, known as cinchona alkaloids, have been used in healing from ancient times. The most prominent representative of this group is quinine, a bitter substance contained…

Water has some amazing properties. It is the only natural substance found in all three states — solid, liquid and gas — within the range of natural Earth temperatures. Its solid form is less dense…

Chemical research has traditionally been organized in either experiment-centric or molecule-centric models. This makes sense from the chemist's standpoint. When we think about doing chemistry, we…

Researchers in New Jersey report development of a new type of non-stick material whose ability to shed liquids like water from a duck’s back can be turned on or off simply by flipping an electrical…

What are the defining discoveries and great developments that are shaping the way we use materials and technologies today? Materials Today magazine has compiled a list of the top ten most significant…

This term, the students in my organic chemistry class were presented with an opportunity to do an extra credit assignment using Second Life to represent concepts they learned in the course. When I…

Scientists in France are reporting for the first time that sculptors from the fantastically wealthy ancient Empire of Mali — once the source of almost half the world’s gold — used blood to form the…

The 3-way catalysator of a car apparently works differently from the way chemists had expected. The conversion of carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide takes place not in one single step, but in at…

In a familiar high-school chemistry demonstration, an instructor first uses electricity to split liquid water into its constituent gases, hydrogen and oxygen. Then, by combining the two gases and…