Category: Chemistry

Work on tiny dots that light up TV screens and help doctors see the blood vessels that feed tumors has earned three scientists the 2023 Nobel Prize in chemistry.   Chemist Moungi Bawendi, chemist Louis Brus and physicist Alexei Ekimov split the prize for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots, the Royal Swedish Academy of […]

Searching for superheavies — Science News, September 8, 1973 Physicists and chemists have been actively searching for superheavy elements, substances with atomic weights and numbers greater than the 105 [elements] now known. Results of two searches are reported … none were found…. Future searches will have to involve direct fusion of heavy nuclei by driving […]

Chemists turned plastic waste into tiny bars of soap

A new “smart rust” could one day help pull pollutants out of waterways, leaving cleaner water behind. Researchers adorned tiny particles of iron oxide, better known as rust, with “sticky” molecules that grab on to estrogen and similar hormones in water samples. A magnet can then remove both the particles and the trapped pollutants from […]

A new material design could reduce pollution where the rubber meets the road. Strategically adding weak points along microscopic chains called polymers actually makes them harder to tear, researchers report in the June 23 Science. Because polymers are used in car tires, the findings could help reduce plastic pollution as tires wear down over time. […]

For photosynthesis, one photon is all it takes. Only a single particle of light is required to spark the first steps of the biological process that converts light into chemical energy, scientists report June 14 in Nature. While scientists have long assumed that the reactions of photosynthesis begin upon the absorption of just one photon, […]

Art historians often wish that Renaissance painters could shell out secrets of the craft. Now, scientists may have cracked one using chemistry and physics. Around the turn of the 15th century in Italy, oil-based paints replaced egg-based tempera paints as the dominant medium. During this transition, artists including Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli also […]

MIT chemist Admir Masic really hoped his experiment wouldn’t explode. Masic and his colleagues were trying to re-create an ancient Roman technique for making concrete, a mix of cement, gravel, sand and water. The researchers suspected that the key was a process called “hot mixing,” in which dry granules of calcium oxide, also called quicklime, […]