Student supplement
NOVEMBER 2007 • VOLUME 44 • NUMBER 6
In-flight
polymers
Using plastics
will save fuel
ISSN 0013-1350
A-level report
Hydrogen storage
AS/A2 chemistry specifications
–what’s new for 2008?
Fuel cell-powered cars –
have gas, will travel
Issue 107 november 2007
Non-stick chewing gum
Our streets are littered with black
marks caused by people who
irresponsibly dispose of their
chewed gum. Clearing up this mess
can cost local councils more than
£90 000 per year. Now UK scientists
have developed a chewing gum
which is easily removed from
pavements, and it tastes great too.
Speaking at the recent BA Festival
of Science, in York, Bristol chemist
and chief scientific officer of
Revolymer Professor Terence
Cosgrove said that the gum’s low
adhesion property is thanks to a
special ingredient – a new type of
polymer. The long-chain molecule
comprises two different types of
monomer, one of which is
hydrophobic (oil-loving) and the
other hydrophilic (water-loving).
Thanks to its affinity for oil, the
polymer mixes easily with the other
ingredients needed to make
chewing gum. In Revolymer‘s Clean
In tests carried out on the streets of
Bristol and North Wales Revolymer’s
Clean Gum disappeared within 24
hours while other commercial gums
remained stuck to paving slabs for at
least eight days. Further studies
showed that when left in rain water
for several weeks the new gum
breaks down into a fine white
powder while regular gum remains a
lump of plastic. The gum is also easy
Gum it makes up some 10 per cent of to remove from table surfaces, some
the mix, substituting for some of the shoes and even hair, with washing.
stickier components used in regular
Revolymer has developed mint
gum. But it is the polymer’s waterand lemon flavoured versions of its
loving nature that gives the gum its
Clean Gum, both of which have
non-stick property. When the gum is performed well in taste tests.
chewed, the hydrophilic parts of the Cosgrove and his colleagues expect
polymer attract water in saliva, which to find out in December whether
forms a film around the gum. This
their polymer has passed EU health
film acts as a lubricant. ‘You always
and safety tests and been accepted
get a film of water around our gum
as a food additive. If it does, non-stick
and that is one of the reasons it is
gum could be on sale in early 2008.
easy to remove and in some cases
But for now if you like gum: chew it,
does not stick at all’, says Cosgrove.
wrap it, and bin it. n
jupiterimages
Did you know?
If you are under 16 and have a burning question
which relates to molecules you can submit it to
the annual Molecular Frontiers Inquiry Prize, and
you might win an iPod or laptop computer for
your trouble.
Run by the Molecular Frontiers Foundation, the
competition aims to stimulate your natural
curiosity and propensity to ask profound
questions that may lead to new directions in
scientific research and breakthrough
technologies. On hand to help you find an answer
to your question is a global network of scientists
who will guide you to accurate online resources
as well as help you understand the science.
Each year in May a panel of leading scientists,
including Nobel laureates, meet in Sweden to
judge the entries received. The 20 girls and 20
boys who ask the best questions will receive a
medal, certificate and a mobile device.
To submit your questions visit Moleclues
(www.moleclues.org) – an online community for
under 18s interested in the molecular sciences.
IN THIS
ISSUE
Smart
houses
Energy-saving ideas for
green, clean living
A day in the
life of…
Daniel Ford,
research chemist
On-screen
chemistry
Can an inflated tyre save
Bond down under?
Plus…
Q&A
Go for gold!
Webwatch
Prize puzzles
Editor
Kathryn Roberts
Assistant editor
James Berressem
Design and layout
Dale Dawson
Infochem is a supplement to Education
in Chemistry and is published
bi‑monthly by the Royal Society of
Chemistry, Burlington House,
Piccadilly, London W1J 0BA, UK.
020-7437 8656, e-mail: [email protected]
www.rsc.org/Education/EiC/index.asp
© The Royal Society of Chemistry, 2007
Published in January and alternate
months. ISSN: 1752-0533
Issue 107 november 2007
You may copy this page for use within schools
Smart energy h
Issue 107 november 2007
In Europe, homes and businesses use more energy than any other sector, including
transport. Heating, lighting and power appliances – from computers and gaming
consoles to white goods – are inefficient to the extent that valuable energy is being
wasted. What can we do to smarten up our homes?
T
wenty-five per cent of the UK’s
total electricity is used to
power lighting and appliances
in the home. If we do nothing
this figure is predicted to rise
by 20 per cent by 2020 as the number of
electrical products in our homes grows. This is
unacceptable. The UK, along with the rest of
Europe, is committed to tackling climate
change by reducing CO2 emissions by 60 per
cent by 2050 – 85 per cent of which is caused
by burning fossil fuels for energy. And with
gas and oil reserves dwindling, Europe is faced
with the challenge of reducing any future
dependence on imported fuels and being
able to deliver secure, clean and affordable
energy. Against this scenario the concept of
the Smart Energy Home (SEH) was born.
A collaborative effort
In August 2006 SusChem announced that
from 2009 at least four ‘Smart Energy Homes’
would be built in major cities of Europe.
(SusChem is a consortium of European
chemical companies coming together to
collaborate with construction and
biotechnology companies, as well as major
European professional bodies such as the
Royal Society of Chemistry and the German
Chemical Society. The aim of such
collaboration is to exploit chemistry and
chemical engineering research and bring
sustainable products onto the market. )
alfred pasieka/science photo library
Burning down the house…
You may copy this page for use within schools
homes
The Smart Energy Home initiative will bring
together several technologies that together will
eliminate the net use of energy in the home –
any energy that is used in the house will be
taken from something that gives energy. The
major input from chemists will be in innovative
materials for construction and insulation,
lighting, windows, smart coatings and surfaces,
and lower energy-consuming appliances.
Nanofoams
basf 2007; istockphoto
Novel insulating materials are being developed
by BASF chemists and physicists. They are
currently focusing on polymer foams with pore
sizes in the nanometre range – nanofoams.
Heat transfer through porous materials
occurs through convection, conduction and
radiation. Over the past 50 years BASF
research scientists, by understanding the
mechanisms of heat flow, have found that
reducing the pore size of polymer foams to
micrometres and incorporating certain
additives eliminate heat loss through
these materials by convection and
radiation. Dr Elmar Kessenich, BASF
chemist, told InfoChem, ‘the amount of
radiation passing through an optically
opaque medium, defined by the Beer–
Lambert Law, is inversely related to the
number of scattering centres in the medium,
the effectiveness of the scatter, and the
thickness of the sample. Because increasing
the density of the foam would also increase
the heat transfer by conduction, the best
option for reducing radiative heat transfer is
by modifying the effectiveness of scattering in
the foam by adding strongly scattering
particles’. The addition of graphite to
polystyrene foam, for example, led to the
material Neopor. In comparison to a standard
polystyrene foam of the same density, the
thermal conductivity of Neopor is 25 per cent
lower, which translates to a reduction in raw
material usage of up to 50 per cent.
Insulating nanopores
Not just
bricks and
mortar
The Smart Energy Homes
will demonstrate and test a
variety of smart materials,
new technologies and
processes for the home.
Renewable and clean
energy sources, sensors
to manage energy usage,
innovative design, waste
management and
recycling systems, green
consumables and energysaving appliances will all
feature in the houses.
More recently, the BASF researchers have
been investigating how they could reduce the
thermal conductivity from these insulating
foams even further. The answer came with the
development of nanofoams – ie foams with
pore diameters of up to several hundred
nanometres. ‘This is approaching the mean
free path of the molecules making up the air’,
explains Kessenich – ‘ie the distance travelled
before the molecule collides with another
molecule. When the average pore size of a
foam approaches the mean free path of the
gas in the pores, there are essentially more
gas–wall collisions than gas–gas collisions,
and heat transfer by conduction through the
pore is significantly decreased’. Nanofoams,
just a few centimetres thick, could achieve the
same level of insulation as a 50 cm-thick
standard insulation foam.
Smart lighting
Lighting is another area where there are huge
savings to be made. Too many homes still use
incandescent bulbs, which produce light by
passing an electric current through a thin
tungsten filament. These bulbs are inefficient
– 95 per cent of the energy is lost as heat.
Energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs, which
contain mercury, are more efficient by up to
25 per cent and last longer. However, within
the next few years we should see a revolution
in the way we light up our homes. Look out for
OLEDs – organic light-emitting diodes.
Already used in some displays, OLEDs
comprise an ‘emissive layer’ together with other
conductive organic layers attached to a metal
cathode (eg aluminium or calcium) on one side
and a transparent anode (eg indium–tin oxide)
Issue 107 november 2007
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»
“The Smart Energy Home
will eliminate the net use
of energy in the home”
Issue 107 november 2007
»
on the other side. The emissive and conductive
layers are thin films of semiconducting organic
metal complexes, such as an iridium atom
attached to pyridine (C5H5N) ligands. When a
voltage is applied across the OLED the cathode
gives electrons to the emissive layer and the anode
withdraws electrons from the conductive layer,
leaving holes for the electrons to move into. Holes
and electrons combine to form ‘excitons’. If the
exciton represents an excited state of the emitter, it
can lose energy and relax to its ground state and
emit light of a specific wavelength, depending on
the energy levels of the molecule.
So far chemists have been able to produce
green, red and blue light from OLEDs using
fluorescent materials, and green and red light
from more efficient phosphorescent materials.
The challenge remains to produce a quality dark
blue light, so that the combination of the three
colours produces a strong white light that is at
least as efficient as a fluorescent source.
Kessenich expects the first commercial OLED
product for specialised and decorative lighting
to come on the market by 2010, though a
prototype is likely to be used in the Smart Energy
Homes. Bulbs and tubes will make way for aerial
lighting, which could be put on foils and
wrapped around various objects around the
homes or, if they can be made transparent, put
on windows.
Thermally-efficient
windows
Smart glass!
Thermally-efficient triple-glazing is likely to be
used for the Smart Energy Homes. One product,
developed by the glass manufacturer, Scott, has
an interior pane, made of an insulating plastic,
which is coated with a transparent nanolayer of
metal. The interior and exterior glass is separated
with a non-conductive spacer, and the space is
filled with krypton. The metal layer is connected
to a power supply. The insulated glass keeps
cold air out but lets sunlight (infrared radiation)
through. When the power is switched on
infrared heat is radiated into the room via the
conductive metal. Large windows could provide
enough heat to warm a room without the need
for additional heating. In the future solar panels
(which use photovoltaic cells to convert
sunlight into electricity) on the roof of the Smart
Energy Home could be used as the power
source during the day for the windows, one step
closer to the ‘zero energy’ home.
In the longer-term lies the possibility of
intelligent-coated glass. For example,
thermochromic coatings, being developed by
chemists at University College, London, operate
on a phase change that occurs in vanadium oxide
(VO2). Such coatings change the insulating and
reflective properties of glass with temperature,
making them potentially more efficient if the
weather changes.
Intelligent coatings, specifically self-cleaning
coatings, will be used on the facade of the houses,
as well as more durable building materials that
use less energy in their manufacturing process.
Proctor and Gamble recently announced a new
detergent that cleans at 20 °C, so people living in
the energy-saving houses will be able to wash
their clothes using less detergent, less water and
less energy. Smart Energy Homes should be
coming to your neighbourhood soon.
Kathryn Roberts
volker steger/science photo library
Diamond in crust
A recent study of some of the oldest known rocks on Earth by geochemist
Martina Menneken and her colleagues of the Westfälische Wilhelms
University of Münster, in Germany, could rewrite the history of the planet.
The researchers investigated 1000 zircon (zirconium silicate, ZrSiO4) crystals
from the Jack Hills region of Western Australia. These zircons were thought
to have formed several hundred million years after the Earth was formed.
However, Menneken’s work suggests that these zircons might be older still.
Zircon crystals have survived unchanged throughout the ages,
preserving information on how the Earth evolved during its early
lifetime. Analysis of trace elements and their isotopes in these crystals
provide an accurate measure of the material’s age, source etc.
Reporting their work in the journal Nature, the researchers used a
sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe to analyse the ratio of lead
and uranium isotopes in the zircon grains, which pointed to their
samples being ca 4250–3000 million years old. Using Raman
spectroscopy, an analytical technique which uses laser light to probe a
material’s composition and structure, the researchers were surprised to
find tiny diamond inclusions in each sample.
The Earth formed some 4500 million years ago and scientists believe
that it took the next 500 million years for the Earth to cool enough for
rock to form. But such conditions would not have supported the
formation of diamond in the team’s oldest zircon samples. Diamond
forms only at high pressures, eg at the site of a meteorite impact or by
the deep burial of rock in the Earth’s crust. Although unsure of how the
diamonds were formed, the researchers suggest that the Earth was a
lot quieter and cooler sooner than previously thought. n
You may copy this page for use within schools
Jonathan Hare asks…
under water: can you survive
by breathing in air from a car tyre?
In A view to kill, James Bond (Roger Moore) is
knocked-out and pushed into a Silver Cloud
Rolls-Royce. Hoping to drown Bond, the
villains push the car into a lake. As the water
pours into the car, he gains consciousness
but instead of swimming up to the surface,
where he will be seen, he stays under the
water. He opens a car-tyre valve and
breathes the air bubbles saving his life. Is this
really possible?
To get a rough idea of the volume of a
lung-full of air, we can blow into a balloon.
We find it fills roughly halfway and that an
inflated car tyre contains the equivalent of
roughly 30 half-balloons or breathes. But is
this the same under water?
When the valve is opened air rushes out
until the pressure inside the car tyre is the
same as that outside. Atmospheric air
pressure is the result of the weight of air
above us in the atmosphere. When we go
under water the weight of water adds more
pressure. The weight of a column of the
Earth’s atmosphere going straight up 50 km
or so is about the same as a similar column of
water just 10 m deep.
If we go down deep enough the pressure
caused by the water will eventually be about
the same as that in the car tyre (ignoring how
the tyre itself collapses under the water
pressure). If we now open the valve no air will
come out. If we assume that the car goes
down just a few metres then the pressure
won’t be as great as this but less air will come
out of the tyre than it would if it was on the
surface. Let’s say that we now have the
equivalent of 20 or so lung-fulls of air.
The air that comes out will be compressed
by the water pressure but our lungs still
require the same volume of air to breathe
comfortably. The 20 lung-fulls will probably
reduce down still further to about 15 lungfulls (almost half the available air we would
have had opening up the valve on the
surface).
In the film we see that much of the air is
bubbling away. If we say that half gets lost
then that leaves Bond with about seven lungfulls of air. If one lung-full allows him to stay
under water for ca 30 seconds then we have a
007 – one step ahead of the villains
total of ca three minutes of air. He also has
another three tyres on the car so,
theoretically, he could be down there for 10
minutes or so. However, not all air is
breathable. Car tyres contain iron
reinforcement strips which will oxidise over
time, so there may be less oxygen in the car
tyre than expected.
In the Hollywood Science TV series we did
this experiment. We found we could breathe
in air bubbles under water which displaced
any water which also came in. When our
heads were down each gulp of air pushed
any water to the front of our mouths and we
could swallow it. We found that we could stay
under quite comfortably for as long as there
was air – amazing!
Dr Jonathan Hare, The CSC Centre, Chemistry
Department, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9ET
(www.creative-science.org.uk/TV.html)
webwatch
danjaq/eon/ua/the kobal collection
Emma Woodley, RSC assistant education manager, takes a look at some websites of interest to students
Forensics
http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/
Exhibitions/Myst/en/index.html
You have arrived at a crime scene
where there appears to have been a
break-in and a man is dead. In this
interactive game, you will use your
deductive skills and forensic
knowledge to piece together the
evidence you need to identify the
murderer. The database and
timeline sections are also useful
sources of information about
forensic science. n
The poisoned needle
http://antoine.frostburg.edu/
chem/senese/101/features/
domoic.shtml
This website is for sixthformers
wanting to extend their knowledge.
Although written for US
undergraduates, many topics will be
familiar. The poisoned needle shows
how chemical separation techniques
are invaluable in solving mysteries.
You will also find stories about more
complex molecules, eg the excellent
Isomer construction set. n
Issue106
107september
november 2007
Issue
You may copy this page for use within schools
Go for gold!
Test yourself with questions from the
International Chemistry Olympiad
Issue 107 november 2007
Looking for answers to chemically
related issues? Why not put them to
InfoChem’s professional chemists…
Q: How do liquid crystal displays produce different
colours on computer screens? (Timothy from Osterley)
Professor Stephen Kelly, University of Hull says: Liquid
jupiterimages/iStockphoto
crystal displays (LCDs) use several methods to generate
colour. The most common one is the use of absorption colour
filters. LCD screens for computer monitors or laptop
computers are made up of many tiny picture elements (pixels).
A laptop computer or a computer monitor will have over two
million colour pixels. White light passing through one of the
pixels is changed into red, green or blue light by selective
absorption of light by the colour filter. The intensity of light
passing through an individual pixel can be controlled by
changing the voltage. So mixing these three colours by
intelligent electronics allows a multitude of other colours to
be created. There are usually 256 shades for each red, green
and blue pixel, so mixing the shades of each of these colour
creates an almost unlimited number of other colours.
Colour can also be generated by the use of a guest dye in a
liquid crystal host mixture. These guest–host LCDs are usually
monochrome or black-on-white displays for clocks, watches, or
large-area displays in airports or train stations. LCDs can also
use destructive interference between rays of light to generate
colours as in some of the first PDA and mobile phone LCDs.
(Liquid crystals are long, thin organic molecules that
move under the action of
an electric field either to
block the passage of light
through an LCD or to
allow the light to be
transmitted in a sort of
light shutter, which
basically is what an LCD is
– an electronic light
Colourful display for PDAs
shutter.)
Send your questions to:
The Editor, Education in Chemistry, the Royal Society of Chemistry,
Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BA or e-mail: [email protected].
All questions published will receive a £10 HMV token.
This question is adapted from Q1 of the 2005 UK Round 1 Chemistry
Olympiad paper.
P
oisonous carbon monoxide may be detected by its
ability to reduce an aqueous solution of palladium(ii)
chloride to black metallic palladium (Pd).
(a) Draw a ‘dot and cross’ structure for carbon monoxide.
(b) Is the bond between the carbon and oxygen in carbon
monoxide best described as a single, double or triple
bond?
(c) Write the equation for the reaction between aqueous
palladium(ii) chloride and carbon monoxide.
In addition to the two most common oxides – carbon
monoxide and carbon dioxide – a few other compounds
may be formed which contain carbon and oxygen only.
Each of these oxides may be prepared by the dehydration
of the appropriate organic acid.
‘Carbon suboxide’ is a foul-smelling gas obtained by fully
dehydrating propan–1,3–dioic acid.
(d) Draw the full structural formula of propan–1,3–dioic
acid.
(e) Write a balanced equation for the formation of carbon
suboxide and water from propan–1,3–dioic acid.
(f) Draw a structure for carbon suboxide.
WEB RESOURCES
To see the 2005 Olympiad paper (and answers!) go to:
www.chemsoc.org/olympiad
To find out more about how to take part in the RSC Olympiad
competitions for UK sixthform students go to:
www.rsc.org/olympiad
Did you know?
‘Hard’ water contains calcium (and often magnesium)
hydrogen carbonate and/or similar salts. Heat hard water
and calcium carbonate precipitates out of solution. This is the
limescale on your kettle’s heating element, which over time
builds up. Products like Calgon contain citrate ions, which
react with the limescale to form calcium citrate, which is
water soluble.
You may copy this page for use within schools
A day in the life of…
research chemist:
Daniel Ford
Daniel Ford has spent the past four years working for
UCB and his current position is research chemist. He
talks to James Berressem about his typical day.
UCB is a biopharmaceutical organisation with R&D and
manufacturing sites around the globe. The company develops
treatments for severe diseases such as cancer, epilepsy, rheumatoid
arthritis and Parkinson’s disease. Daniel is one of 20 chemists
working on an R&D project to make new small molecule drugs that
inhibit enzymes (called kinases) which cancer cells need to grow.
Making molecules
Daniel works in a lab optimising lead compounds which have
shown some potency against kinases. At UCB he is encouraged to
be creative and contribute ideas to designing new molecules, rather
than just synthesise compounds in the lab. UCB chemists have
made many new molecules by making slight alterations to the
structure of potential lead compounds in an effort to introduce the
overall properties required for a viable drug, eg increasing its
solubility. Daniel’s efforts continue in this vein and his first port of
call in his search for ideas to modify a lead compound is the
company’s database on molecules and their properties, or
structure–activity relationships.
Before going home Daniel sets up a reaction to run over night. He
records every experiment he does in a lab book, including details
pathway to success
2007–present, research chemist, UCB
2004–07, research associate, UCB, Slough
2003–04, contractor, Pfizer, Sandwich
1999–2003, BSc medicinal chemistry with
year in industry (2.ii), Leeds University
1998–99, project worker, Pfizer, Sandwich
1996–98, chemistry and biology A-levels,
Hind Leys Community College, Shepshed
●
●
●
●
●
●
such as time taken,
reaction conditions etc.
First thing in the
morning Daniel does a
liquid extraction and
clean-up of the
reaction mixture. Next he separates out the reaction products using
solid-phase chromatography. The equipment is computercontrolled so Daniel can pre-programme the run and get on with
other work, such as studying academic journals to learn about
developments in relevant lab technology.
Daniel Ford
State-of-the-art facilities
Many of the reactions require standard chemistry apparatus but
new techniques are used in UCB’s labs. For example, Daniel uses a
special microwave oven to heat reactions which do not take place
when heated by a water or oil bath. He is particularly excited about
using new microfluidic lab-on-a-chip devices. These allow chemists
to do chemical reactions using microscopic volumes of chemicals.
Working on this scale speeds up reactions and lowers chemical
requirements, thus reducing cost, waste and risk.
Daniel must analyse and characterise every compound he makes,
be it an isolated intermediate or a final product. He uses techniques
such as liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry, NMR
spectroscopy and ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography
equipment, another new bit of kit in the lab which accurately
measures the product’s purity – a vital consideration if it is to be
made into a drug.
Back at his desk Daniel carefully inputs data on his latest product
onto the database. He also writes a report which he will present at
the chemistry team’s fortnightly meeting. The project team,
including biologists and pharmacologists, meet once a month. This
is an opportunity for Daniel to find out if any of his compounds have
progressed through the screening programme.
The thrill of research
Daniel enjoys the hands-on aspect of chemistry and doing
pioneering research – making molecules no one has made before is
a thrill for him. And to work to a goal which one day might ease the
suffering of many cancer patients is particularly rewarding. n
Issue 107 november 2007
You may copy this page for use within schools
£50 of HMV tokens to be won!
Issue 107 november 2007
Prize wordsearch no. 36
Students are invited to find the 35 words/expressions associated with
astronomical observations hidden in this grid. Words read in any
direction, but are always in a straight line. Some letters may be used
more than once. When all the words are found, the unused letters, read
in order, will spell a further six-letter word. Please send your answers to
the Editor at the usual address to arrive no later than Friday 7 December.
First correct answer out of the editor’s hat will receive a £10 HMV token.
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atomic hydrogen
aurora borealis
big bang
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hubble telescope
infrared radiation
interstellar
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lithium
mars
molecular
hydrogen
molecule exchange
molecules
neutral atoms
nuclei
observations
photodissociation
photon
planets
pluto
recombination
saturn
spectra
star
sun
supernovae
technique
uranus
universe
water
September PRIZE WORDSEARCH No. 35 winner
The winner was Eleanor Smith of Ysgol Brynhyfryd, Ruthin, Denbighshire.
The 10-letter word was spermicide.
UCaNdO No. 13
UCaNdO, supplied by University of Southampton chemist Dr
Jeremy Hinks, is Benchtalk’s chemical take on the popular Japanese
number puzzle, Su Doku. The puzzle comprises three tasks. The first
is to complete the grid. The rules are the same as for numbers in Su
Doku: a symbol can appear only once in each horizontal line, each
vertical line and each block of nine squares set within the bold lines.
All nine of the required element symbols are already shown in the
grid. Once you have completed the grid you can attempt the next
two tasks.
The elements used in the grid are a strange mixture – antimony,
argon, cobalt, iodine, nitrogen, sulfur, tellurium, uranium and
yttrium. There is no common chemical theme that links them
together. However, together the element symbols form two words
related to shopping. To identify the two words you will need to find
out: (a) which one of the nine element’s symbol must be used
twice; and (b) which element’s symbol occupies the bottom right
square of the grid because the letters of this symbol must be used
as two separate letters. So what are the two words?
On first inspection both these words are not obviously associated
directly with science and technology. In fact, one of them is. Which
one is it and why?
Please send you answers to: the Editor, Education in Chemistry, the
Royal Society of Chemistry, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London
W1J 0BA, to arrive no
later than Friday 7
December. First out of
U N
I
Co
the editor’s hat to have
Sb
Y
correctly completed the
N S Y
I Ar
grid will receive a £15
HMV token. The first
Sb Co N
entry drawn to have
Co Te
Ar N
identified the two
mystery words, and
I Te Ar
which of these is linked
Y Ar
Sb N U
to science and
technology and why
I
S
will receive a £25 HMV
Te
S
Y Sb
token.
W Na Sn Pb
Hg Ag
K
K
Au Ag Hg Fe
Fe Na W Pb Au Sn
Fe Pb Au Sn Ag Hg Na
K
K
Sn Pb W Fe Ag Hg Na Au
Ag Au Fe
K
Hg Na W Sn Pb
Na W Hg Au Pb Sn
K
Fe Ag
Au Fe Na Hg W Pb Sn Ag
Sn Hg W Ag Au
Pb
W
K
K
K
Fe Pb Na
Ag Na Sn Fe Au W Hg
UCaNdO no. 12
solutions and winners
Lisa Munro of The Ridings High School,
Winterbourne, Bristol completed the
grid. Nirupama Sharma also of the The
Ridings High School correctly identified
that all the elements in the grid are
represented by symbols which are not
(apparently) related directly to the full
name of the element. The other element
that shares this trait is antimony (Sb). Its
symbol originates from the Latin word
stibium for the ore stibnite (antimony
sulfide).
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