I looked out the airplane window and then at my 20-month-old, who had no idea that after enjoying the warmth of Florida for two weeks, we were about to enter the frozen tundra of Montreal. “Get...
A fascinating story is told by the guide on a tour of perhaps the most famous champagne house in the world. Moet et Chandon in Reims is the producer of Dom Perignon, the king of bubblies. The...
Let’s start at the very beginning. As pure water is cooled to 0oC, it begins to form ice. This simply means that the H2O molecules which were randomly scurrying about in the liquid state now assume...
Our current methods for decaffeinating coffee are far from ideal. There are a few different methods, all with their own nuanced details, but they all shake out to using some kind of solvent to...
Introduced in 1979, the Papermate Erasermate offered something that, up until then, had been science fiction: an erasable pen. While correction fluids and tape were a well-established solution to...
Say acetone, and what comes to a chemist’s mind? Washing laboratory glassware is a good bet. Actually, the prime use of acetone is to produce polymethyl methacrylate, better known as Plexiglas....
Every year upwards of 25 million birds are killed in Canada due to collisions with buildings, communication towers, wind turbines, and as a result of being tangled into marine gillnets. From window...
It is an annual tradition. The third week in October is designated as “National Chemistry Week” by the American Chemical Society with a goal of raising the public’s awareness of the value of...
Certain concepts simply irk me. They are often needlessly complicated and their meaning gets distorted in an attempt to make them understandable.
Take, for example, the idea of a Mitochondrial Eve.
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