Word: nitrogen
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Nitroparaffms. Last spring Chemist Henry Bohn Hass of Purdue announced production of two new explosives, "nibglycerol trinitrate" and "nibglycol dinitrate," by combining steam, nitrogen from air, methane and ethane from natural gas (TIME, April 17). Now dozens of other nitroparaffins similarly formed are available for making plastics, dyes, textiles, cosmetics, floor waxes, rubber...
Aeroembolism. After rapid ascent to high altitudes a pilot may be attacked by sickness similar to the dread staggers, bends, or caisson disease of divers. Cause of "aeroembolism" is formation of nitrogen bubbles in the blood and spinal fluid. Symptoms are neuritis, joint pains, a heavy red rash, burning and stabbing pain in the lungs, a weird tingling "like a small compact colony of ants rushing madly over the surface of the body." For aeroembolism, only thing to do is come down in a hurry...
...amount of gelatin in the ordinary dessert, he pointed out, is probably less than one tenth of an ounce. No one knows the exact chemical formula of gelatin; it is a complex protein containing carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen...
...chemical element which have different weights are called isotopes. Isotopes are Chemist Urey's special ty. He won a Nobel Prize for discovering deuterium, the heavy isotope of hydrogen which makes "heavy water" (TIME, Nov. 26, 1934). Later, one of the Urey crews produced large quantities of heavy nitrogen (TIME, Sept. 20, 1937). Nitrogen is present in all proteins. Heavy nitrogen atoms can be distinguished from the common kind by mass spectrographic means, but in protein reactions they run along with their lighter fellows, and so serve as "tagged atoms" or chemical spies to show where the nitrogen goes...
...Electric laboratories, Irving Langmuir was told by the director not to bother with practical applications, but to find out what he could about what went on inside the bulb of an incandescent lamp. Thereafter Langmuir spent three years "investigating facts," discovered some-for example, that a bulb filled with nitrogen or argon works better than an evacuated bulb-which now save electricity consumers several million dollars...