The Basic Stuff

So what are acids and bases Vinegar is actually a dilute solution of acetic acid in water, about a 5 percent solution, but it rather nicely displays the characteristic properties of acids they are sour, they turn purple-cabbage indicator red or pink, and they react with bases to form water. A solution of sodium bicarbonate nicely displays several of the characteristics of basic solutions it tastes bitter, it turns purple-cabbage indicator blue, and it reacts with acids to form water. The last property, listed for both acid and base, the ability to react with each other, is really the defining property because acid-base reactions, like redox reactions, occur in tandem one substance acts as an acid and one substance acts as a base. Acid neutralizes base and base neutralizes acid. 

Many examples of acid-base reactions can be found in cooking, such as the soda-sour cream reaction in Little Men. In addition, the unfortunate result of acid rain (the formation of which we will discuss later) is that the acid in the rain reacts with the carbonates found in limestone and marble, which causes the deterioration of statues, some of which had managed to survive without corrosion for thousands of years before the advent of the industrial age. (But before one completely condemns the industrial age, it should be remembered that the bacteria of Black Death, smallpox, and syphilis also managed to survive for thousands of years before modem technology brought them to bay.) This ability of acid rain to dissolve marble brings up another property common to all acids and bases they are corrosive. 

The corrosive property is addressed in the quotation from the story Daddy Long Legs given in the introduction and repeated here for convenience. 

The joke is that base neutralizes acid, so the chemistry student supposes that an application of base will reverse the effects of the acid and restore the destroyed material of the apron. It is interesting to note that readers in the early 1900s were supposed to understand the joke without explanation—and that first-year chemistry students in the early 1900s were 

Now add a drop of baking soda solution (the liquid over the undissolved solid) to one of the samples of water and one of the samples of milk. If you have managed to obtain some eyedroppers, these work best, but if not, you can dip a straw in the solution and cover the end with your finger to capture a drop. Stir the solutions. The baking soda-water solution should turn a shocking pink, but the milk should stay pale yellow. 

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In other words, atoms are the basic stuff of nature, the primary and most foundational, and all of matter was built up of these primordial germs. The suggestion that the structure of atoms was hard (since they were indivisible) implied that atoms could not fill all space and there had to be regions that did not contain atoms. This would be like filling a jar with marbles. Where Aristotle and Plato objected to the very idea of a void, the Epicureans were comfortable with the idea, and it provided an easier way to describe motion. Since the void could not oppose motion, atoms were free to move about, while a universe filled with matter suggested that motion was unnecessarily complicated or might even be impossible. Lucretius went on to say ... 

In modern chemistry we credit some one hundred elements—and counting— with being the basic stuff from which all matter is formed, but there was no reason for this to be the first assumption, and it was not. The initial thrust of the philosophical effort was to discover the one basic stuff of nature— the primal substance, the material from which all else is formed. This effort began for the Greeks around 600 bce, on the Aegean shores of Asia Minor, in the Ionian city-state of Miletos, with the first of the Ionian philosophers, Thales. 

Besides using computers to help in their research, what are the possible interests of physicists in computers and computational processes Even this question could lead to different routes. Researchers could, for instance, attack on the material science side, studying the physical properties of bulk semiconductor materials, the basic stuff from which chips are made of, or studying the magnetic materials, the basic stuff hard-discs are built from. One could take the route of the so-called nanoscience and nanotechnology and exploit the ultimate limits of miniaturization of computer components, down to the molecular size. Yet, we can take an entirely different route, and ask for very fundamental questions about computers and about computation. One could ask, for instance, what is the minimum amount of energy and time necessary to flip a bit of information, or whether it is possible to perform computation without any energy expenditure at all. Or still, what is the limit... 

Basic chemical element The original and still present meaning of element or principle in chemistry is the basic sub-stance behind chemical stuffs, only implicitly defined through a conservation law in chemical reactions. 

Now, the question of prime matter in Aristotle is a vexed one, both interpretively and philosophically. The main interpretive difficulties concern whether Aristode accepted the existence of prime matter as something distinct from the basic elements and mixtures thereof. In the last fifty years, this question has received a great deal of attention.1 In particular, the textual evidence pertinent to it has been thoroughly discussed and assessed, so much so, it seems to me, that little independent progress on the issue is to be had by scrutinizing Aristodes texts. The philosophical difficulties, on the other hand, concern the coherence of the concept of prime matter. Traditionally, prime matter is supposed to be some kind of stuff that in itself is absolutely formless. But what, really, could such a stuff be ... 

Of course, we haven t explained precisely what we mean by viscoelasticity yet and we won t for a while. We are going to approach the subject in the conventional way, first by looking at the elastic properties of polymer solids, then the rheological properties of polymer melts. This will remind you of some basic stuff you should know, but may have forgot, or, if you ve been really sneaky, managed to avoid altogether. 

Today, however, most students in chemistry labs might quickly and appropriately wonder if it s safe to put this stuff into the sink or trash can and that is an appropriate concern. This section will introduce the basic principles of how to process wastes generated in academic labs. Section 8.3.4 will extend this discussion considerably by presenting the guidelines for processing wastes from research labs and industrial labs. 

But now is the time to focus everyone, including ourselves, on doing our work carefully and doing it right. Reinforce even the basics, the most obvious, commonsense stuff. Remember, tuimel vision can cause us to miss even the fundamentals. How many times have you heard an injured worker in an accident review acknowledge, I knew better than that... I just got distracted... took a shortcut... lost focus... ... 

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