Ludwigshafen (ots) - Just like animals and human beings, plants can get sick. In many cases, the cause is a fungus. Not a mushroom like you see poking up out of the ground in the woods, but a network of branching, filamentary cells that botanists call 'hyphae'. In entertaining episodes our Chemical Reporter answers questions of our Podcast listeners ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - If you glance at yourself in a looking glass and notice that you are beginning to look a little dull around the edges - or have maybe even developed black spots - there is a scientific reason for the phenomenon. A mirror can be robbed of its reflective power by the chemical ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Frozen water can be lots of fun. For example, if you have a pair of skates, you can perform elegant moves on the surface of solid-phase H2O. Or you can roll together the fluffy ice crystals that fall from the sky into a snowman. But drivers like it less. They much prefer water ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - There have been plenty of attempts all over the world to influence the weather with chemical tricks. In Thailand, for example, what is called the 'fon luang', or 'king's rain', is aimed at preventing drought, while what are known as 'hail planes' regularly take to the skies in ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - In the history of our attempts to master chemistry, explorations of fire are certainly among the most ancient experiments ever performed. And although we have controlled it for thousands of years, the magic of fire remains spellbinding. Take sparklers, for example. There's ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Beer has a long history. Experts say humanity has known the alcoholic beverage for more than 5,000 years. When you think about it that adds up to a lot of hangovers, which is why it's a good thing that modern breweries have also figured out how to make beer that doesn't contain ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Hard water - sounds like white and flaky showerheads, encrusted water cookers, or stopped-up pipes. Although the clear water that comes jetting out of the faucet might look soft and innocent, it contains substances that can turn pretty hard. Just let a little water from your ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Sugar and sweetener - both taste sweet, which is just another way of saying that both interact with the 'sweetness' taste receptors on your tongue. But that's about all they have in common. Otherwise, sugar and sweetener don't ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - When the first non-stick cookware arrived on the market back in the mid-1950s, it was an instant hit. The images of fried eggs or pancakes sliding straight out of the pan onto the plate proved irresistible to consumers. As with so many other products, however, the discovery ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - The key to understanding lies in the molecular structure of hair. A single hair is made up of a bundle of fibers. The individual fibers are in turn made up of even smaller threadlike components known as fibrils. And in their turn, fibrils are made up of chains of protein ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Your chewing apparatus has to be pretty stable to be able to cope with all the sustenance we shove into it every day. The outermost layer of a tooth, the enamel, is actually the hardest substance that the human body produces. It consists of a mineral called hydroxylapatite. In ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - It's strange, isn't it? In both cases you're dropping something you want to eat into a pot of boiling water, but what happens to the spud is the exact opposite of what happens to the egg. The secret involves the chemical ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Alcohols are a group of diverse organic compounds, among them ethanol, methanol, propanol and butanol. All alcoholic beverages sold legally must be clearly marked with the percentage of alcohol the drink contains. That ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Carbon dioxide is a naturally-occurring chemical compound containing carbon and oxygen which makes up a minute but significant portion of the earth's atmosphere. It is created when you burn substances that contain carbon - for example, fossil fuels or coal - but is also an end product of respiration in animals. When you breathe, ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - All organisms - plants, animals, human beings - need carbon to survive. In the air, the element can be found in the commonly occurring compound carbon dioxide (CO2). Plants absorb CO2 and turn it into carbohydrates. We in turn absorb these carbohydrates when we eat the plants. ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Lots of products out there capitalize on the antibacterial effects of silver. Everything from cleaning cloths and insoles to washing powder and bandages - they all seem to employ the element in some way. Unfortunately, silver can't really perform miracles. But it can be used ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - In the old days, sponges only came from the sea. For millennia, brave divers risked life and limb to bring them back to the surface. In the age of plastic, however, you don't have to expose yourself to danger to acquire one. As a matter of fact, most modern artificial sponges ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - If you don't keep shaking a container of unhomogenized milk, then the thicker, fatty portions of it separate and float to the top. This is liquid cream, which can be ladled off and beaten to produce a stiff foam - whipped cream. Cream is mostly made up of lipids, water and ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - It doesn't take long after you've polished off a plateful of the delicious vegetable before you are forcefully reminded of it in the restroom. Some people are surprised by the strange odor rising from the bowl after ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - The whole point of the skin of a cherry is to keep that from bursting. The smooth, slippery envelope protects the fruit from falling prey to funguses or microbes, and water usually just slides right off of one. But the rainstorms feared by fruit-growers are a different matter. ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - The very first thing many people do when they stumble out of bed in the morning is pour themselves a cup of coffee. The substance in the hot brew that helps wake you up is well-known all over the world: caffeine. Caffeine doesn't only come from coffee beans. Most of the caffeine ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - As far back as the Middle Ages in Europe, blue has always been a color worn by the nobility. Some kings wore blue cloaks to their crowning ceremonies. The dye was made from a substance that had to be brought all the way from far-off India - indigo, which was made from an ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - If someone is brave enough to bite into a lemon, then you can instantly tell from their expression that it wasn't exactly a pleasant experience. There's a reason why we can perceive the taste of sour. If something is too acidic, then it sends a signal to the brain. In ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Ketchup can be a stubborn condiment. Just when you're ready to bite into a burger, it often refuses to flow. Only when you give the bottle a serious shake or two does it start to move. And there's a reason why. Ketchup isn't ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - All over the world cows, goats, sheep and other mammals are industriously milked every day to provide us with a whole range of dairy products. Children love it, and lots of grown-ups also enjoy a glass of creamy milk every now and again. But you can't let the milk get too hot. ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - The lead of a pencil is made out of the mineral graphite, which is one of the forms - or 'allotropes' - of the element carbon. Diamond is another. It's also made up of pure elemental carbon. But even though both materials ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - If you stretch a rubber band and then release it, it snaps back into its original shape. As you probably know, rubber has elastic properties, which is why its also called an elastomer. However, the natural state of caoutchouc, or raw rubber, is exactly the opposite of elastic. ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - The discovery of fire opened up whole new worlds of taste for stone-age humans. They could start turning those chunks of raw mammoth meat into beautifully browned roast leg of mammoth and were benefiting from an interesting chemical reaction. In 1912, did French chemist Louis ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Over millions of years of evolution, spiders have developed the perfect material for constructing a net: spider silk. Material researchers can get pretty worked up just talking about its properties. It has five times the tensile strength that a steel thread of the same ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - When a shirt gets dirty, you usually just have to chuck it in the washing machine, add a little laundry detergent, and let the combination of water and soap do the rest. But some pieces of clothing are too delicate to put in there. As the name implies, dry-cleaning doesn't use any water - or any soap, for that matter. In ...
