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Chemistry Project

Chemistry Our Life, Our Future


Akrit Mahapatra XII A Roll No. 6

Introduction
The International Year of Chemistry 2011 (IYC 2011) is a worldwide celebration of the achievements of chemistry and its contributions to the well-being of humankind. Under the unifying theme Chemistryour life, our future, IYC 2011 will offer a range of interactive, entertaining, and educational activities for all ages. The Year of Chemistry is intended to reach across the globe, with opportunities for public participation at the local, regional, and national level. The goals of IYC2011 are to increase the public appreciation of chemistry in meeting world needs, to encourage interest in chemistry among young people, and to generate enthusiasm for the creative future of chemistry. The year 2011 will coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize awarded to Madame Marie Curiean opportunity to celebrate the contributions of women to science. The year will also be the 100th anniversary of the founding of the International Association of Chemical Societies, providing a chance to highlight the benefits of international scientific collaboration. IYC 2011 events will emphasize that chemistry is a creative science essential for sustainability and improvements to our way of life. Activities, such as lectures, exhibits, and hands-on experiments, will explore how chemical research is critical for solving our most vexing global problems involving food, water, health, energy, transportation, and more. In addition, the Year of Chemistry will help enhance international cooperation by serving as a focal point or information source for activities by national chemical societies, educational institutions, industry, governmental, and non-governmental organizations

CHEMISTRY OUR LIFE, OUR FUTURE


We hardly ever think of how much chemical invention and innovations tend to determine our everyday life: these achievements determine the quality and quantity of the foodstuff we have and the various methods of transportation; in addition, the warmth of our home and the speed of our recovery from illnesses also depend on the achievements of chemical research and development.

Along with the above, chemistry also lays the foundations of our future life by providing us with alternative, long-term solutions for energy management, environment protection, and the protection of our globe. The great innovations introduced in a wide range of research areas have had a powerful effect on our present as well as our future. The chemical industry comprises the companies that produce industrial chemicals. Central to the modern world economy, it converts raw materials (oil, natural gas, air, water, metals, and minerals) into more than 70,000 different products. The chemical industry represents an important economic activity. The global top 50 chemical producers in 2004 had sales of 587 billion US dollars with a profit margin of 8.1% and research and development spending of 2.1% of total chemical sales.

What would we do without chemists?


Today, chemistry is a huge field that includes people doing research in agriculture, medicine, physics, biology and engineering. From fertilizers to plastics to space suits, chemists have created tons of synthetic substances. Even the silicon chip that powers your computers and iPhones goes through a chemical process. There are many different kinds of chemists.

Organic chemists study compounds of carbon. Atoms of this element form large numbers of natural and synthetic substances.

Biochemists study the chemistry of the living world. Processes in our bodies and photosynthesis are examples. Inorganic chemists are interested in all elements, but particularly in metals. Physical chemists study the structures of materials, and chemical reactions. Theoretical chemists use mathematics and computational techniques to explain chemical behaviour. Analytical chemists develop tests to find out the composition of chemicals and materials. They discover new compounds

So, the next time you have a bacterial infection, thank the chemists who produced drugs such as amoxicillin!

Achievements of Chemistry
Energy and Transportation
Chemists and chemical engineers have made several major contributions to energy and transportation, which allow us to power the lives we want to lead on land and in space. In the 19th century people heated their homes with wood or coal, used kerosene lanterns or candles for illumination, and travelled by railroad, steamboat, horse or on foot. As demands for energy in the last two centuries have significantly increased, chemists and chemical engineers have developed and improved new power sources, liquid fuels, batteries, and novel energy-conversion technologies. Advances in chemistry have also revolutionised transportation, contributing new and improved materials to automobiles, airplanes, space vehicles, and roadways. By extracting metals, minerals, and motor fuels from natural resources and by creating entirely new materials, the achievements of chemists and chemical engineers have brought mankind a completely new way of life.

Medicine
Chemistry is a huge part of medicine, both as a diagnostic and treatment tool. Chemistry departments in hospital medical labs analyze blood, urine, etc. for proteins, sugars (glucose in the urine is a sign of diabetes), and other metabolic and inorganic substances. Electrolyte tests are a routine blood analysis, testing things like potassium and sodium. Most medications are involved with inhibiting a specific enzyme or the expression of a gene. Blocking an enzyme's active site requires a specifically designed "blocker" to disable the enzyme's function. Since enzymes are proteins, their functions differ based on shape and inhibitor drugs must be customized for each target enzyme. This requires

chemistry! While the concept of RNA interference (RNAi) is more on the biological side, the engineering of chemicals to inhibit the translation of mRNA into an amino acid sequence by ribosomes requires chemistry. In RNAi, a designed piece of double-stranded RNA literally chops up mRNA to prevent it from undergoing translation.

Extreme Achievements in Chemistry


Five experiments that pushed the boundaries of chemistry: carborane superacids, tetrahedrane, alkalide, sextuple bonds, and noble gas compounds.

Most research in chemistry is done with specific goals and applications in mind, like developing new pharmaceuticals or ways of detecting hidden explosives. But some research is done just to see what is possible. Here are five achievements that push the boundaries of chemistry.

Carborane Superacids
The strength of an acid is typically measured by how willing it is to donate a hydrogen ion. Scientists at the University of California, Riverside managed to create an acid so powerful that it can protonate pure hydrocarbons, allowing nonpolar molecules to be dissolved in a polar solvent. This incredible acidity comes from the extremely stable carborane cluster, CB11. This stability means that not only is it a strong acid, but it isn't eager to react with anything else, making it relatively inert in solution. It could prove useful in research by allowing chemists to study protonated hydrocarbons like C6H7+, which are normally only seen as very short-lived transition states.

Tetrahedrane
Another class of compounds that chemists are interested in are the platonic hydrocarbons. These are hydrocarbons based on the platonic solids, polyhedrons in which each face is the same regular polygon. Molecules based on the octahedron and icosahedron are both impossible for geometrical reasons, but cubane and dodecahedrane were rather easily synthesized.

Tetrahedrane presents more of a problem. The angles in a tetrahedron are 60 degrees each, but carbon atoms prefer to form bonds 109.5 degrees apart. That places an incredible strain on all the bonds, making it unstable. But scientists have managed to create versions of it that have very bulky substituents (such as the -Si(CH3)3 group) at each corner.

Because these groups would bump into each other if the molecule ever broke open, they help keep it stable.

Alkalides
One of the first things any chemistry student learns is that the alkali metals always form ions with a +1 charge. But some chemists have managed to create compounds with negatively charged alkali metal ions, called alkalides. Because these ions are so eager to give up their electrons, they have to be protected from the cations in the compound. This is done by hiding the cations inside of molecular cages, where lone pairs on atoms like nitrogen or oxygen can hold them in place. Similar techniques can be used to make electrides, where the anion isn't even an atom, but a bare electron.

Sextuple Bond
If you've studied organic chemistry, you know that carbon atoms can form up to three bonds with each other. But some metal atoms, with more electrons and more orbitals to put them in, can form even more. By blasting tungsten and molybdenum atoms with lasers at very low temperatures, scientists managed to create dimers (W2 and Mo2), which could have as many as six bonds between them, based on theoretical calculations and measurements of the bond length.

Noble Gas Compounds


Noble gases are called noble because like royalty, they don't like to mingle outside of their group by forming compounds. For a long time, scientists assumed that this was always the case, but in 1962 Neil Bartlett reacted xenon gas with platinum hexafluoride, a very powerful oxidizer, to create the first ever noble gas compound, XePtF6. The trick is that even though their full octets make them stable, the larger noble gases don't hold onto their valence electrons as strongly, allowing them to be donated. Since then, xenon has been shown to form thousands of different compounds, which tend to be useful as powerful oxidizing or fluoridating agents with only inert by-products. Krypton and radon also form some compounds with fluorine and oxygen, and in 2002 researchers in Helsinki created the first argon compound, HArF. While it's true that these research projects were originally done purely for theoretical interest, many of them have potential applications. For

instance, the highly strained bonds of cubane and tetrahedrane give them a very high energy density for use in rocket fuel, while xenon compounds can be used as oxidizing agents that produce only inert gases as byproducts.

Summary
Chemistry is the scientific study of interaction of chemical substances that are constituted of atoms or the subatomic particles: protons, electrons and neutrons. Atoms combine to produce molecules or crystals. Chemistry is sometimes called "the central science" because it connects the other natural sciences such as astronomy, physics, material science, biology and geology. The genesis of chemistry can be traced to certain practices, known as alchemy, which had been practiced for several millennia in various parts of the world, particularly the Middle East. Even the most impractical experiments can provide useful information about the fundamental forces that rule chemistry, so if you want to pursue a career in chemistry, don't be afraid to push the limits! As it may change the future of human race.

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