Word: molecular
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...other explorers, Du Pont's chemists often discover not what they had set out to find but something far more intriguing. One notable case is the company's new anti-virus drug, Symmetrel, which derives from a compound of organic chemicals that has a uniquely diamond-shaped molecular structure and is called adamantane. First formulated by a pair of Yugoslav scientists in 1941, adaman-tane had long been a laboratory curiosity around the world-because of its unusual structure-when Du Pont asked its men to search out uses...
...Chemists call a fat saturated if each carbon atom along the molecular chain has hydrogen atoms attached. It is monounsaturated if one carbon atom is free of the hydrogen bonds; it is polyunsaturated if two or more are free. *Amid a plethora of diet books, a new edition of Jolliffe's Reduce and Stay Reduced on the Prudent Diet (Simon & Schuster; $4.95) is the biggest seller...
...what scientists sometimes call "the restless universe" are a few unchallenged constants that have become the bench marks of basic research. Among them are absolute zero, which represents cold so intense that there is no molecular movement, and the speed of light, which was written into Einstein's age-shaking equation, E = mc2. Constant too is the decay of radioactive materials at rates that cannot be altered by heat, cold, pressure, magnetism, or any other influence.*Such reliability means that ancient tombs can be dated by the decay of carbon 14; the age of the earth's most...
...that willow tea eased the agues of malaria. By 1840, chemists isolated salicylic acid and thought they had a wonder drug, only to have physicians drop it quickly because it had too many harmful side effects. In 1853, Charles Frédéric Gerhardt did a bit of molecular manipulation in his Strasbourg laboratory and made acetylsalicylic acid (C9HSO4). Having found it, he failed utterly to appreciate its value, and put it on the shelf...
...main reason for the rescue is a new kind of rayon developed by the industry. It is made just like the old fiber -by squeezing wood pulp through a device that looks like a shower head to form filaments-but its molecular structure has been changed through the use of new chemicals in the manufacturing process. Whereas the old rayon shrank in the rain and often broke up in the family washing machine, the new fiber is stronger and shrinkproof, while retaining the absorbent qualities of the old fiber. Nowadays it is usually blended with a cheap grade of cotton...