Diamonds might purportedly be ‘a girl’s best friend’, but they’re also quite interesting from a chemical perspective. You could be forgiven for thinking that there’s not a whole lot to them; after all, they’re simply one of the possible forms of carbon, formed at high pressure beneath the Earth’s surface. However, there are a number of factors that can affect their appearance, and several of these are rooted in chemistry.
Electric guitars, on the face of it, might not seem to have much to do with chemistry. However, the materials that make them up are carefully chosen for their chemical properties, without which they simply wouldn’t function. In this graphic, we take a look at some of these materials, and their typical compositions.
Silly putty (or science putty, as it’s sometimes referred to) is an odd material. Stretch it slowly and it happily deforms, and can be molded very easily. However, pull it apart with enough force and it’ll snap clean in two. It flows imperceptibly slowly, as if it were a thick liquid, but when rolled up into a ball will bounce if thrown at a hard surface. A closer look at the chemicals that make up silly putty can help us explain this strange behaviour.
Superglue is an incredibly useful invention, allowing us to repair all manner of objects. However, it nearly wasn’t invented at all! Here’s a quick look at the story of superglue, and, more importantly, the chemistry that allows it to do its job.
For objects that essentially look like thin plastic films, there’s a surprising amount of chemistry behind contact lenses. This chemistry is designed to maximise comfort whilst they are being worn, and as such it’s also been constantly evolving and improving. Today’s post takes a look at some of the chemicals they have been composed of over the years, as well as what’s in contact lens cleaning solution.
Regular readers will spot that today’s post is a bit of a twist on an old post from the site’s archives, which looked at the elements present in a smartphone and the roles that they play. In this updated version, I wanted to highlight which elements in your smartphone will actually get recycled at the end of its lifetime – and which we could be doing a better job at salvaging and re-using!
