2011 international year of chemistry
Global Village (Bari), 5, (19), 11-16 (September 2002)
Giorgio Nebbia nebbia@quipo.it
talk about how chemistry is often present in good a sister company from stormy past. "Chemistry" is a word displeasing to many ears, especially poorly informed, for various reasons, apparently conflicting.
The first is the way the mainstream media talk about things in which the chemical is involved, there lacked nothing but attacks with "chemical weapons" in addition to accidents "chemical" reckless use the "chemistry" in agriculture, etc., to emphasize anything unpleasant associated with the adjective "chemical". There is no doubt that industrial accidents, poisoning of workers in factories, pollution of the environment often occur in chemical plants or handling chemical products and by chemicals. There is no doubt that many factories produce harmful substances, sometimes useless, sometimes obscene as agents of war, those from poison gas and tear gas to incapacitate.
There is no doubt that the discovery of fraud, including toxic substances in water and food, of herbicides in wells are the result of misuse and violent of chemicals and a large popular movement that rightly calls for more severe regolamentazioni nella produzione, nella circolazione e nell'uso di prodotti chimici industriali e commerciali.
Il secondo motivo della dubbia fama della chimica sta nella maniera in cui la corporazione dei produttori chimici reagisce alle critiche di quelli che sono sbrigativamente liquidati come "ecologisti" o "verdi". La risposta messa in circolazione attraverso male orchestrate campagne di stampa è melensa e poco convincente e suscita una reazione di rigetto nell'opinione pubblica. Non basta mobilitare grandi compagnie di pubblicità e pubbliche relazioni per essere credibili e convincenti quando si presenta l'immagine che la chimica è per definizione buona e benefica per l'umanità e che pertanto i fabbricanti di prodotti chimici must be valued and praised as those who spread the good inherent in the chemical industry.
Again the excessive zeal of the apologists often falls into the ridiculous. There is no doubt that the substances in the blood are made up of chemical molecules --- and what else should they be? --- And that the food needed for survival, the drugs that save the lives of people, colors that decorate the fabrics, cosmetics that make nice, clean appearance, are made of chemicals. There is no doubt that chemicals are --- although it is generally handled by non-chemical --- the analysis to recognize the disease.
But it is equally true that the history of recent years is full of incidents of damage health and the environment caused by industrial chemicals and not because these substances are "chemicals" but because they were careless and incompetent producers, transporters, users. And do not serve either the "chemical" or the entrepreneurs with the hearing office made by the willing "scientists" and academics and critics who ridicule their ignorance. These defenses have the taste of things already heard: even the manufacturers of the 1800 British responded to the challenge of those who wanted it reduced the working hours of children and that they were mgliorate improve working conditions in factories mobilizing scientists. It 'was the famous Dr. Andrew Ure, chemical and production, which, pieno di zelo, ha scritto un intero libro, "La filosofia delle manifatture" (una traduzione parziale in italiano e' stata pubblicata nella "Biblioteca dell'economista", seconda serie, volume 3, dall'Unione Tipografico-editrice di Torino nel 1863), per dimostrare come il lavoro nelle filande e nelle miniere fosse giovevole alla salute dei fanciulli, tolti dalla strada e dai suoi vizi, educati a diventare buoni futuri operai ubbidienti e rispettosi dei proprietari.
Il terzo motivo, legato ai due precedenti, del poco buon nome della chimica nell'immaginario popolare, sta nella diffusa ignoranza della chimica. Persone colte e intelligenti, che sanno parlare con competenza di letteratura e musica e arte, "intellettuali", come they say, dare, their ignorance of the strong chemistry, often foolish to make judgments about the failures and flaws of the "chemistry".
There 'no doubt that chemistry is taught little and often badly in high school --- where also about 350 000 students each year are "forced" to take some chemistry course --- on the basis of texts sometimes (often) are modest and boring. What little knowledge stuck to my mind, sometimes without going beyond 'a few phrases, repeated like litanies, are the ideal ground to give birth to distorted ideas and common ground and true nonsense. There is therefore surprising that journalists, parliamentarians, administrators, often educated and careful, straparlano quando si tratta di esprimere dei giudizi sulla chimica.
Si aggiunga che la situazione è scoraggiante benché in Italia esistono decine di migliaia di laureati in chimica, centinaia di professori universitari di discipline chimiche, la cui voce si sente troppo poco e quasi niente, come se ci fosse un pudore nell'intervenire e nel parlare della loro scienza. Salvo poi talvolta intervenire per una apologia della chimica con un eccesso di zelo e quindi poco credibili. Una volta Linus Pauling (premio Nobel per la chimica e poi premio Nobel per la pace) scrisse che bisogna invece imparare a parlare a qualcuno che non siano le proprie provette. La stessa massima società italiana dei chimici, la Società Chimica Italiana, con poche migliaia members, mostly members of the academic world, known magazines, however, a very limited circulation, it is unknown to the public as well not exist.
Unlike other national chemical societies and in particular that of America, the American Chemical Society, which publishes a weekly newspaper, the well known Chemical and Engineering News that it mobilizes its members speak in local television, which organizes national days of chemistry, Chemistry Olympiad, which induces the government to print commemorative stamps of chemistry and chemists, and so on.
This situation means that in Italy there are very few journals in chemistry, with limited movement, no a truly informative and popular character, which are only a few or very few popular books on chemistry, whose knowledge for the general public are handled by the brief encounter in high school, with school texts. There is in Italy a good dictionary or a good encyclopedia of popular chemistry. And 'natural enough that even the translators of foreign newspaper articles storpino chemical names, which becomes silicon silicone, which becomes iodine iodine, carbohydrates that become hydrocarbons, and so on.
But never like this when a chemical culture is crucial for protecting the health of citizens and also to give new breath to a feeble industry. Never before at this time the chemical problems are central for the economy and progress. Just read the Official Journal of the European Communities or officials of the Italian Republic to see that more and more often there are whole files, the real volumes, full of chemical information, formulas, synonyms, proposals for unification, full of standardized methods of analysis to recognize the purity of the substances, to defeat the fraud, to reveal pollution. The symbol of the CAS Chemical Abstracts Service is also used in the texts of the law now goes where the number, initials and the name of the substances that enter the medicines, cosmetics, pesticides, and so on.
than ever at this time the survival of the civilian industrial countries depends on strengthening public services and environmental monitoring products, services that require chemical methods of inquiry practiced by chemists. With all the talk is of European unity, we must realize that we can be if they demonstrate a truly European public and private companies have advanced technologies and in this progress has an important role in chemistry and chemists have. Never before at this time we would need a degree in chemical preparations, proud of their culture and their skill and ability, knowing the role they can play in civil society.
With all due respect to the other natural sciences and experimental chemistry is perhaps the only one that offers the welding between the laws Fundamental matter and the application of these laws to daily life, the metabolism of food to the beauty of the colors of butterfly wings or flower petals, the major flows of materials that form the basis of the economy.
Chemistry is the science of accounting fact of nature. The balance of chemical reactions is no budget "cheap" it, by definition, must be in balance, everything there 'on the left to find a formula must be right: the subject must always find it all. And now here we find the differences between the accounts of nature and that "economic monetary union". Even economists are the accounts of money: the money spent must be equal a quelli guadagnati. Ma le "cose" materiali che sono descritte con gli scambi monetari sono soltanto una piccola parte di quelle che interessano la vita reale.
Nel bilancio di una fabbrica, per esempio, la contabilità monetaria tiene conto soltanto delle materie che si comprano e si vendono. Se pensiamo ad una fabbrica di acciaio contano il minerale di ferro e il carbone, che si ottengono in cambio di soldi, ma nella contabilità monetaria non figura l'ossigeno che si ottiene gratis nell'aria che serve per bruciare parzialmente il carbone trasformandolo in ossido di carbonio che riduce gli ossidi di ferro in ferro e ghisa. La ghisa e l'acciaio e l'energia entrano nella contabilità economica perché si comprano e si vendono, ma nella reaction are formed --- a trivial and obvious thing for a chemist --- dust and carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide and slag which are not included in economic accounting because they are thrown into the air or in a landfill. Except one day realize that people complain about the fumes that are "things" and materials that need to measure the quantity and chemical composition, and that we must filter out and kill or collect
not to pollute the air or soil.
The ecological context was actually born by the attention given to the adverse effects of all the things that chemistry has always known --- the ones that are left and right of each formula --- but that the traditional economy and practical stage have long ignored. Hence the great importance and relevance of educational value accounting chemistry. A minimum of attention
chemical may suggest to those who use those chemical laboratories that have the sink or the toilet that the mass of materials --- food debris, soapy solutions, excrement --- coming out of our daily life does not disappear but ends up in sewers and then into the sewage treatment works and into rivers and the sea. The accounts and the household ecology of the ecosystem, are as important as the ecology of the factory or the city.
Another important aspect of the educational value of the chemical is in the habit to think in three dimensions. All things are in three dimensions, but we are used to draw up a sheet on a plane. The chemical knowledge continuously offers the opportunity to help you imagine, to think and "see" the bodies in space. The water molecule-two academic or HOH, has all its quirks, which are essential for life, just the fact that each molecule binds in the space not only to other water molecules, but to all bodies to which closer and it comes in contact.
The carbon chemistry owes its beauty and its appeal to its three-dimensional character of the atoms and molecules, and even if we are forgotten, the discovery of this character was a real cultural revolution. Unfortunately we can not do without, for practical reasons, to write formulas su un piano, ma forse questo stesso limite è un'occasione per ricordare continuamente che le molecole sono sempre tante, tutte insieme e distribuite in tutte le direzioni.
Una intuizione tridimensionale ha risolto problemi di conoscenza fondamentale della vita. Alla fine degli anni quaranta del secolo scorso il chimico americano Linus Pauling ebbe, come sopra ricordato, il premio Nobel per aver "pensato" che le molecole delle proteine fossero disposte ad elica, come si vide sperimentalmente meglio in seguito. Questa intuizione da sola permise di risolvere tutti i misteri del comportamento delle proteine, pietre costitutive fondamentali della vita. Una decina di anni dopo Watson e Crickett ottennero il premio Nobel per aver scoperto la struttura del DNA, a chain of molecules of sugar, phosphoric acid and some "bases (adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine), arranged in a" double helix "in space. The spatial arrangement of thousands of atoms of each molecule of DNA has allowed to explain the functioning of these molecules essential for "manufacture" of each protein, is always the same specification for each part of each living being.
The chemical knowledge allows an explanation of how they are made and how they can be produced things, objects, materials found in nature and everyday life. The chemistry was established with the aim to explain and describe natural phenomena and at the same time, to solve practical problems
: Bleaching and dyeing of textiles, food preservation, leather tanning, the fermentation of bread. Scientific research in chemistry has been originated and had its greatest success in relation to such matters "practical": the Nobel prize to Haber for the discovery of the conditions allowing the synthesis of ammonia, the Nobel Prize for discoveries that have Natta allowed to synthesize polypropylene. Probably a recognition of the importance of the aspects "practical" chemistry would also help the public to recognize in it not only a science closer to everyday life, but rather the first science of life and things that surround us.
Although the chemical helps to understand and explain many aspects of even apparently vulgar life: why certain polluting goods, which is the composition of the waste, one gets the impression that the chemistry of the kitchen and cabinet space and have little dignity in teaching chemistry. The merchandise, for example, which are the chemicals involved in these vulgar aspects of chemistry, chemicals are generally considered second-class.
Better chemical culture would also help many other activities and disciplines. Consider, for example, the cultural gap that exists in Italy in the history of chemistry, history of pharmacy, history of product categories, and compare it with the fact that the professional historian, archaeologist or more have to dealing with chemical problems dealing with evil sometimes superficially, sometimes stammering inaccurate things, with increasing difficulty of meeting with professionals who know chemistry.
There is another lesser known aspect of chemistry. Public opinion, but also average students, chemistry is a science-established, full of certainties, and if something new appears on the horizon you should look for in fabulous horizons of biotechnology and advanced materials, as they say. A wrong impression: the world around us is still full of mystery chemicals, even in more mundane fields. She mentions, for example, starch, lignin and cellulose, the foundation stones of the world vegetale.La cellulose attracts attention paper as an ingredient, starch as an ingredient of bread and pasta, and more recently, the fake "plastic" biodegradable. But we are facing a field full of mysteries. Each plant contains starch, lignin, cellulose, with characters different from others, the composition of these macromolecules has a statistical nature for which you must speak in the plural of starch, cellulose, and so on.
With a little attention and curiosity, it turns out, for example, that the starch from different grains have different qualities, so much so that some (corn) you can make bread and other (like corn) no . The same characterization of grain and its milling products based on starch, protein, fat and ash is a rough approximation. One senses, but they know little, that starch, protein and fat are linked together into "complex" fat-protein, starch and fat, starch and proteins, and their existence may explain the fact that durum wheat has different characters from wheat, although the chemical analysis of the main components are roughly in almost equal quantity. Among the chemical mysteries of bread there is the phenomenon of the recovery, so the stale bread, "old" two or three days, which is heated, the soft elastic recoil as in the freshly baked bread, although this character disappears after a few hours.
Better chemical culture would clarify some "great" mysteries, as the hole in the ozone layer or the greenhouse effect due to changes in atmospheric chemistry, but also enables to understand and explore many other things, food, cosmetics, dye and preparations for waving hair, precautions to take when you have to wash and iron, chemical mechanisms --- --- solar photocells which operate the machines or facsimile transmission, best known as "fax", or "hearts" of computers and mobile phones All objects that are the basis of production and mass consumption. If he knew more, perhaps many dangers and drawbacks and mistakes would be avoided.
I think you could, if desired, really give the chemical a joyous and adventurous image and with it a more courageous life, is rendering a service to society, economy, ecology and chemistry --- and to science itself presentable in polite society without shame.
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