Interesting use of carbon

Hi, I just had to share this with you all -- I stumbled onto it this morning. There is a company that creates diamonds from a lock of hair or cremation remains of people, for their loved ones. "The LifeGem ® is a certified, high-quality diamond created from the carbon of your loved one as a memorial to their unique life." The carbon just keeps on going around in different forms...I wonder what Primo Levi would think of this? The website is lifegem.com if you want to check it out.

Review of links on Green Chemistry

Well, my review of the first link re: the sustainability of Asia Pacific economic growth is that it took a half hour to download (but ok, I needed to do laundry and vacuum anyway) and then I discovered I needed to download iwork software in order to read it. So I was pretty put off by that, and I wasn't about to download the software because my laundry and hoovering were already done! So, that link gets low marks due to inaccessability.

Then I tried the Green Chemistry in your Classroom, and that one loaded fine, but it didn't say anything. I'm wondering what are running clock and alarm reactions, and which is greener and why? Nothing was explained.

So, at least the Atom Economy link was instructive. And accessible. I learned how to calculate the mass of a compound, and how to calculate theoretical yield, and atom economy. Although I'm still wondering how you figure out the actual yield. Do you have to just try the process and then weigh what you get at the end?

Atom Economy

Atom Economy

I was excited to find a practical application for knowing the mass of an element! I like things to be practical. So I saw how calculating the mass of benzene and of phenol, then allows you to figure out the percentage yield, and also the percentage atom economy. I was interested to read the part about how yield is only part of the story, that you also have to take into account the reactants, and what is left over from them that then might have to get thrown away somewhere. When I was in the little window about figuring out the yield, before reading the other part, I was confused, thinking "ok, I see how they calculated the mass of benzene, and I see how they calculated the mass of phenol, but what about these other things in here? Well, part of it is water, but what about the sodium-sulphur-oxygen thingie in the middle, what's that and what happens with it? Why aren't we calculating its mass too?" And then I read the other part, called "the problem with yield" which was saying exactly that, and I find it really disturbing that this is a new idea, the concept of setting up your chemistry to not make so much waste that you then have to dispose of, when I, not really knowing jack about chemistry, looked at this equation and said "yeah, but what do we do with this other stuff??" Wouldn't you think that actual chemists would have asked that too, at least a hundred years ago? I'm pretty sure we're talking about a lot of people who were smarter than me...

But in the "better late than never" category, it is encouraging to see that ibuprofen is now being produced with an atom economy close to twice what it used to be. It seems to me that the companies making stuff should have their chemists calculating yield and atom economy, to find the best process, and then NOT use a "deliberate excess of reactants" which the web site says that many processes do.

I shouldn't be so harsh, I know I'm not as efficient and economical as I could be either....yes, I put trash out at the curb every week...

Catalyst of the Week

Catalyst of the Week

I need a catalyst for my internet connection, but
failing that, my catalyst of the week is Platinum.
It's a transition metal, atomic number 78, abbreviated
Pt. It's name comes from the Spanish word for silver,
platina. It is sometimes found in deposits of
gold-bearing sands, even around here, in the western
US -- possibly even in Nevada City, where I used to
live, which is an old gold mining town. It's a soft,
dense, ductile metal that is very resistant to
corrosion, used to make jewelry, wire, electrical
contacts and laboratory vessels, and also to coat
missile nose cones, jet engine fuel nozzles and other
devices that must operate reliably for long periods of
time at high temperatures. Platinum resistance wires
are used in high temperature electric furnaces. It's
melting point is 3215.1 degrees F. (Must be that
extra .1 degree that makes it so useful in furnaces,
huh? : ) )

All this, and it is also widely used as a catalyst.
It will convert methyl alcohol vapors (CH4O -- how do
you get the keyboard to write the 4 in that down low?)
into formaldehyde (CH2O) on contact, glowing red hot
in the process. This effect is used to make small
hand warmers. And I love those things. They're these
little packets, and you shake them and they get warm
and last for hours. Absolutely delightful.

It's also used in cataytic converters, combining
carbon monoxide and unburned fuel from a car's exhaust
with oxygen from the air, forming carbon dioxide and
water vapor. And platinum is used as a catalyst in
fuel cells that combine hydrogen and oxygen to produce
electricity and water.

Pretty AND practical!

The Molecular Structures of Different Forms of Carbon

The Molecular Structures of Different Forms of Carbon

Well, I have to say I am pretty fascinated with the
different structures of carbon. All these years I
have known that we are "carbon life forms" because I
watched Star Trek as a child, but I didn't actually
know anything about it. So diamonds, (my birthstone,
by the way, and a good way of getting my attention on
chemistry) are made of carbon too -- carbon atoms
covalently bonded in a kind of diamond shaped
structure. It's a little hard to see in the black and
white picture in our handout, I bet there is a nice
3-D color depiction of it on the internet somewhere,
but I'm afraid I'm way too frustrated with the
internet at this moment to try to find one. But it
looks like 2 diamond shapes intersecting, one vertical
and one horizontal, making a 3-D diamond. Which makes
me wonder, are diamonds, the stone, named for this
shape or is the shape named for the stone, and how did
whoever was naming them know way back then that
diamond stones have a diamond shaped molecular
structure?? That fascinates me, like the compound
responsible for the scent of roses having a similar
name to the compound in chocolate and in our brains
when we're in love. It makes it seem like chemistry
is really a very intuitive science.

Anyway, silicon and germanium also have this
structure, but people probably weren't so familiar
with those back when diamonds were getting their name.
Graphite, on the other hand, is also carbon atoms,
covalently bonded, but in a plane so they stack up and
slip over each other, instead of being hard like a
diamond, graphite is soft and slippery. If you look
at just one plane of the diamond structure though, it
does look similar to the graphite, with balls some of
which have 6 lines going off them -- is that
"hexagonal symmetry"? But the diamond has these
straight lines running all the way through it in
several directions, and the graphite makes these happy
little sun shapes without the lines connecting between
the atoms into straight lines. When using stones for
energetic purposes, diamonds are considered a very
powerful energy conductor, and these straight lines in
the molecular structure seem to support that idea.

The buckyballs are really a fascinating idea, I'm
curious what this is like as a substance? I mean when
you get a bunch of them together, so you can see them
without a microscope, then what is it like? And how
do the spheres connect with each other? Or do they?
Maybe you can only have one bucky ball, and just
admire it in the microscope. Looking at the structure
of diamond and graphite, there are little lines at the
edges, just waiting to bond with other carbon atoms in
the same way, but the bucky ball looks quite self
contained. The Fullerene looks like it could keep
having more added and get big enough to see though.

I seem to have a lot more questions than answers in
this assignment, but here's one more -- I'm wondering
what carbon's molecular structure looks like in our bodies.