An essential primer on humanity’s ongoing quest to understand the secrets of life
Today, PFAS are pervasive in soil, dust and drinking water around the world. Studies suggest they’re in 98% of Americans’ bodies, where they’ve been associated with serious health problems. There are now over 9,000 types of PFAS.
Their stories are not just an important reminder of the difficulties faced by women in science; they are illustrations of how prejudices and bias can force talented individuals out of research to the detriment of us all.
Harvey Washington Wiley, a do-gooder farm boy who trained as chemist, worried that preservatives might be harming the public. The trials' shocking results led to the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and eventually to the creation of the FDA.
Imagine an atom as a tiny nucleus immersed in a giant diffuse cloud that is its electrons. When two atoms get close together, each one’s electron cloud pushes the other’s around, and sometimes the two atoms start to behave as a molecule. But experts still can’t describe this process in detail.
The Racist Eugenics Roots of Anti-Immigrant Policy. Steely Dan | Do It Again. Antifa: Antagonists of the Alt-Right. The Mastermind Behind Trump's Travel Ban. How Coffee Affects Your Brain.
How much coffee is too much? Can something that you like so much actually be good for you?
Avogadro's number is sort of like a bridge. It bridges chemistry and atomic physics. In chemistry we measure bulk properties like mass, pressure, volume, temperature. However, when we consider these things from an atomic perspective we look at individual atoms and the momentum, velocity of these particles. Avogadro's number connects these two ideas and allows us to explore atomic-level things by measuring macroscopic level quantities. It’s a big deal.
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