Sentences of chemistry

A chemical equation is a statement in formulas that expresses the identities and quantities of the substances involved in a chemical or physical change. Equations are the sentences of chemistry, just as chemical formulas are the words and atomic symbols the letters. The left side of an equation shows the amount of each substance present before the change, and the right side shows the amounts present afterward. For an equation to depict these amounts accurately, it must be balanced that is, the same number of each type of atom must appear on both sides of the equation. This requirement follows directly from the mass laws and the atomic theory ... 

Actually, chemists have always had the benefits of chemistry for society in mind. This was clearly illustrated by Giacomo Ciamician (Trieste, 1857 Bologna, 1922) in the following futuristic sentence published almost one hundred years ago Science, 36, 385 (1912)) ... 

Select a chemistry journal, and jot down its title. Select five research articles from the journal, and read the first sentence of each article. Based only on the first sentence, identify the general topic of each paper. Summarize the topic in a word or two. Repeat this exercise for a second journal. Did you run across any articles in which the general topic is not identified in the first sentence Explain. 

Another common theme that authors use to establish importance involves environmental impacts. For example, an environmental slant is used in the first sentence of the cyclodextrin article (P3, exercise 6.7), where the study of cyclo-dextrins is justified based on their role in soil remediation. The importance of work that benefits air or water quality and/or promotes green chemistry can also be stressed. Work is also viewed as important if it has cross-disciplinary applications. For example, in the Introduction section of the tetrazole article, the authors stress the importance of tetrazoles in coordination chemistry, medicinal chemistry, and in various materials science applications and point out their role as useful intermediates in the preparation of substituted tetrazoles ... 

The following passages comprise the first several sentences of two articles from the same issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Make a list of the present tense and present perfect verb constructions used in each passage. Which construction do the authors seem to prefer ... 

Venel follows Rouelles view that it is fixed fire. Peculiarly, however, although Jean-Claude Guedons careful and extensive study of chemistry in the Encyclopedie has identified twenty-one references to the article Phlo-gistique, the article itself, in volume XII, consists in its entirety of only one sentence It is the same as elementary fire. It is obvious that a larger and more elaborate article was once planned but, for reasons now unknown, abandoned. 

The first sentence of Hammett s influential book, Physical Organic Chemistry, states, A major part of the job of the chemist is the prediction and control of the course of chemical reactions [3a]. Hammett then explains that one approach is the application of broadly ranging principles, but another involves bit-by-bit development of empirical generalizations, aided by theories of approximate validity whenever they seem either to rationalize a useful empirical conclusion or to suggest interesting lines of experimental investigation . 

Returning to the introductory sentence of this section, it may be noted that hypervalent silicon hydrides have been prepared as anions in the gas phase and their ion chemistry has been investigated by Squires and co-workers [238]. Thus, the synthetic methods for the precursor anions are known and it is perhaps only a question of time for pentavalent silicon radicals to be generated by NRMS as transient species in the gas phase. 

The field of chemistry is much broader than the field of any language. In Italian we have about 160,000 words, whereas at least 5 million types of molecules can be found in Nature and about 15 million types of artificial molecules have been synthesized by chemists. Leonardo da Vinci did not know chemistry nevertheless, his sentence Where nature finishes producing its species, there man begins with natural things to make with the aid of this nature an infinite number of species [3] is quite appropriate to comment the outstanding development of chemistry. Chemists, indeed, started as explorers of Nature, but very soon they also became inventors and today they continue to play such dual role. As a consequence, chemistry is at the same time a book that we can read and a collection of white sheets that we can write on. A large part of the book has not yet been read (undiscovered natural molecules and processes) and the number of white sheets to be written on (artificial molecules and processes) is endless. 

In Chapter 5 we will go over chemical formulas, which are really the words that make up the language of chemistry. The elemental symbols, which are shown on the Periodic Table of Elements, are the letters that make up the (words) chemical formulas. Chemical formulas combine in chemical equations to form the sentences in the language of chemistry. Before you can be expected to correctly write the chemical equations (sentences) or the chemical formulas (words), you must make sure that you are using the elemental symbols (letters) correctly. 

A sentence in an introductory chemistry textbook reads, Dioxygen reacts with itself to form trioxygen, ozone, according to the following equation, 3O2 2O3. As a smdent of chemistry, what would you write to criticize this sentence ... 

The revolution in chemistry was complete modern chemistry dates from the publication of Lavoisier s great classic, the Trade elementaire de Chimie,in Paris in 1789. From this work, which ranks with Newton s Principia as one of the greatest of all scientific books, we may quote one sentence that particularly reveals its author s method, and which embodies his fondness for mathematical precision, his determination to give priority to experimental evidence, and his mistrust of ideas I have imposed upon myself, as a law, never to advance but from what is known to what is unknown, never to form any conclusion which is not an immediate consequence necessarily flowing from observation and experiments and always to arrange the facts and the conclusions which are drawn from them, in such an order as to render it most easy for beginners in the study of chemistry to thoroughly understand them. ... 

In short, chemists must stabilize a specific domain of application of the whole complex in order to determine a quantity of a particular type of body within certain limits imposed by standards of normalization and laws. The sentence all things being equal encompasses the co-adaptation and the channeling of multifarious fluctuations which, in turn, leads to the very possibility of making holistic inferences as regards the performance of the whole complex within the normative framework of a quality control process. The ceteris paribus clause is not illusory in the domain of chemistry but refers to a new type of nomological machine, to use Nancy Cartwright s turn of phrase, that is... 

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