Word: carbon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...most popular detergent now in use, say Esso chemists, is TBS (tetra propylbenzene sulfonate). It forms the basis of just about every washday product on supermarket shelves-including Tide, Fab and Rinso Blue. Its complex molecule has many branches, and it contains a benzene ring of six closely bonded carbon atoms. This sort of thing is uncommon in nature, and bacteria find it unpalatable. So Esso chemists set out to make a molecule of a long, unbranched chain of carbon atoms, rather like a natural fat. That, they figured, would be something bacteria could get their teeth into, destroying...
...pens could write in any language, but after World War II, under his son Kenneth, the company was slow to read some handwriting on the wall. It consisted of one word: ballpoints. "The ballpoint pen," said Kenneth Parker at the time, "is the only pen that makes eight carbon copies without an original." Parker finally got into ballpoints in 1954 after developing what it considered a good point. Luckily, it was shored up meantime by the success of the "51," which was introduced in 1941 and is still the world's bestselling pen in the over-$5 category (total...
Adenine is an undistinguished-looking chemical with a molecule made of two ordinary carbon-nitrogen rings. But to biochemists, it is one of the keys of life. It takes part in the formation of a long list of vital substances, and it is one of the five "bases" that are built into DNA and RNA, the magic nucleic acids that control the reproduction and heredity of all living organisms. Since the first life probably appeared on earth when chemicals already dissolved in sea water formed a giant molecule that had the power to reproduce itself, it is likely that this...
...Ponnamperuma allowed the electron beam to squirt through his model earth for 45 minutes. Then, with the aid of radioactive carbon 14, he made an extremely delicate analysis of the tube's contents. One of the chemicals that had been formed by the electron bombardment was indeed adenine...
...fluctuations in temperature. Special filters allow only a very narrow band of the infrared, between eight and 14 microns, to fall on the thermistor. The filter rejects the shorter infrared waves omitted by the sun and reflected by the moon. The earth's atmosphere, where water vapor, ozone and carbon dioxide absorb other portions of the infrared, also acts as a sort of filter. However, one can easily derive the temperature of the moon from the intensity of infrared radiation in the band transmitted between eight and 14 microns...