Word: methyl
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...finished product. Some drove souped-up Ford sedans with the tops chopped, i.e., lowered, others built bullet-shaped racers from aircraft tanks, called them "Lakesters" for the dry lakes they race on. The engines gleamed like platinum; for fuel some burned an explosive mixture of methyl alcohol and nitromethane. "Fuel?" snorted an oil-company observer. "It belongs in the class with dynamite...
...When he ran short of cheap "sugarhead" moonshine to fill a big order consigned to Atlanta's Negro slums, 360-lb. Bootlegger John R. ("Fat") Hardy whipped up a substitute. Police said that he bought a 54-gallon drum of poisonous methyl alcohol, often used for hot-rod fuel, and mixed it with well water, peach flavoring, regular moonshine and a "beading oil" calculated to make it foam when shaken. Seventyseven gallons were delivered. Within hours Atlanta's Grady Negro Clinic began to fill with men & women who panted, frothed at the mouth and writhed in horrible convulsions...
...dangerous to be allowed off the reservation. But it is inviting industrial scientists to send samples to be exposed to their radiation. Their hot blasts of gamma rays may prove to have valuable industrial properties. They can start or speed up chemical reactions, turn certain liquids (e.g., methyl methacrylate) into solid plastics. Their most valuable application may be in food processing, for their gamma rays reportedly kill microorganisms without heating the food material or making it radioactive...
Woodward started out with orthoto-luidine, an oily liquid extracted from coal tar, whose molecule has one six-carbon ring and one methyl (CH3) group. Step by step he attached more atoms, carefully choosing his reactions so that the atoms would fall in the proper places. After some 20 laboratory steps, his 22 Ibs. of original raw materials were reduced to 1/28 oz. of a genuine steroid. The compound's molecule has the steroid nucleus with an oxygen atom attached at one end and a carbome-thoxy (C02CH3) group at the other...
...chamber in operation, the felt under its cover is saturated with methyl (wood) alcohol. The alcohol vapor diffuses downward, becoming colder as it approaches the dry ice at the bottom. At some point in its downward motion it makes the air supersaturated. In this sensitive layer, cosmic rays or other fast-moving atomic particles leave trails that show up in a flashlight beam as brilliant white streaks...