October In Chemistry

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October in Chemistry
written and compiled by Anthony Hardwicke, RSC Schoolteacher Fellow

Today in Chemistry
‘Elastoplast’ – sticking plaster dressings – were first manufactured in Hull on October 1st 1928.

Today in Chemistry
On October 2nd 1852, William Ramsay was born. Ramsay’s work on the liquification of air led to the discovery of a whole Group of elements – the Noble Gases.

Today in Chemistry
On October 3rd 1952 Great Britain became the third nuclear power (after the United
States and the Soviet Union) by exploding a test bomb of its own. The test was carried out in Australia.

Today in Chemistry
On October 4th 1762, the Scottish chemist Joseph Black carried out three important experiments on steam. These led to the idea of latent heat; boiling water at 100°C needs to be heated more in order to turn it into steam at 100°C. This extra heat that you need to add to change state from liquid to gas is known as latent heat. If you get burnt by steam, it is more painful and it causes more damage to your skin than being burnt by boiling water.

Today in Chemistry
The highly explosive compound, nitrogen triiodide, NI3, was discovered on 5th October 1811 by the French chemist Pierre Dulong. Injury by explosion did not deter him from continuing his research. One year later he lost an eye and two of his fingers in a further nitrogen triiodide experiment!

Today in Chemistry
On October 6th 1807, Humphry Davy first isolated potassium. He made a giant battery in the basement of the Royal Institution, Albermarle Street, London and used it to electrolyse molten potassium chloride.

Today in Chemistry
On October 7th 1885 Niels Bohr, the father of quantum theory, was born. His quantized model of the atom explained all the lines in the atomic emission spectrum of hydrogen. He won a Nobel Prize in 1922.

Today in Chemistry
On October 8th 1850, Henry-Louis le Châtelier, was born. He studied reversible reactions and in particular, the effect of temperature and pressure on the position of equilibrium. Le Châtelier’s principle states that if you make a change to a system at equilibrium, the position of equilibrium will change so as to counteract that change.

Today in Chemistry
On October 9th 2001, letters postmarked in Trenton, USA, that later tested positive for anthrax spores were mailed to senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy. The senators were unharmed, but two weeks later a Washington postal worker, Joseph Curseen, died of anthrax. Anthrax is a deadly disease that is caused by bacteria. Unlike most bacteria, bacillus anthracis can survive for long periods of time in seed-like structures called spores.

Today in Chemistry
On October 10th 1731, Henry Cavendish was born. He was the first person to realise that water is not an element (it’s actually a compound in case you were wondering!) and he discovered the element hydrogen, H. The Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University, which has had a long and distinguished history of chemistry research, was named after him.

Today in Chemistry
On October 11th 1968, Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, was launched. Chemists played a key role in numerous aspects of the mission. For example the Teflon spacesuits, the electricity-generating fuel cells and the rocket fuel (a mixture of kerosene and liquid oxygen).

Today in Chemistry
On October 12th 1812, AscanioSobrero, who discovered the explosive nitroglycerine, was born.
He said, "When I think of all the victims killed during nitroglycerine explosions, and the terrible havoc that has been wreaked, which in all probability will continue to occur in the future, I am almost ashamed to admit to being its discoverer."

Today in Chemistry
On October 13th 1985, the first observation of a proton – antiproton collision was made by the Collider Detector at Fermilab in the United States.

Today in Chemistry
On October 14th 1863 Alfred Nobel patented a new method for preparing nitroglycerine. He was to go on to invent dynamite (nitroglycerine soaked in clay to make it less unstable), which was to make his fortune. After he died, he left a large sum of money to establish the Nobel Prize.

Today in Chemistry
On October 15th 1951, the first oral contraceptive pill (a steroid hormone called norethindrone) was developed by Carl Djerassi and his team of chemists.

Today in Chemistry
On October 16th1875,
H.C. Sherman, who
discovered the
action of
vitamins in
our body,
was born.

Today in Chemistry
Albert Einstein arrived in the United States as a refugee on October 17th 1933. He was forced to leave his home in Nazi Germany because of his Jewish faith. He spent the rest of his life at Princeton University, where he tried to explain gravitational, magnetic and nuclear forces by one unified field theory. In 1939 he wrote to the President of the United States to say that it would be possible to develop an atomic bomb.

Today in Chemistry
On October 18th 1799, C.F. Schonbein, discoverer of ozone, was born. He also made important discoveries about hydrogen peroxide and guncotton.

Today in Chemistry
During a historical session of the Berlin Physical Society on 19th October 1900, Max Planck announced his famous ‘quantum principle’; at the time, a result of inspired intuition rather than of experimental deductions. Within two months theoretical proof was put before the Society, but like so many great scientific breakthroughs, it took many years and much discussion before it became generally accepted.

Today in Chemistry
On October 20th 1891, James Chadwick, who discovered the neutron, was born. He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1935.

Today in Chemistry
On October 21st 1803, John Dalton read a scientific paper containing his first list of atomic weights to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. This was the first time since ancient Greece that the idea that everything in the universe is made of atoms was seriously considered.

On October 22nd 1881 C.J. Davisson was born. The Davisson-Germer electron diffraction experiment showed that electrons could behave as waves as well as particles. This led to the (rather confusing) idea of wave-particle duality.
Today in Chemistry

Today in Chemistry
Today is international Mole Day! Why? Well one mole is
6.02 x 1023 particles, so at 6:02 am on 10/23 it is Mole Moment! I kid you not.

Today in Chemistry
On October 24th 1939, stockings made of the newly discovered polymer, nylon (rather than silk) first went on sale in Wilmington, Delaware, USA.

Today in Chemistry
On October 25th 2005 UNICEF launched a global AIDS awareness campaign. Although there is still no cure, AIDS can be treated by antiviral drugs such as AZT
and DDI, but fewer than
5% of children with
AIDS are receiving
treatment.

Today in Chemistry
On October 26th 2002, the ‘Nord-Ost Siege’, a hostage crisis at a Moscow theatre, ended in tragedy. Russian special forces used an experimental knockout gas, but as well as killing the Chechen rebels, at least 129 of the 800 hostages were also killed. The Russian authorities refused to divulge the chemical composition of the gas, but it is thought to have been a mixture of anaesthetics including fentanyl.

Today in Chemistry
On October 27th 1788, Antoine Lavoisier narrowly avoided blowing himself and his wife up during a sequence of experiments. The following year he published the most important book in the history of chemistry, TraiteElementaire de Chimie.

Today in Chemistry
The copper-coated Statue of Liberty was unveiled on October 28th 1886. The statue was a gift from the people of France to commemorate the 100th anniversary of American independence.

Today in Chemistry
On October 29th 1947, scientists attempted to extinguish a forest fire in the United States by ‘seeding’ a cumulus cloud with dry ice for the first time. Planes dropped small lumps of solid carbon dioxide into the clouds above the fire and this triggered rainfall.

On October 30th 1961, the Soviet Union detonated a 58 megaton yield hydrogen bomb over Novaya Zemlya – the largest nuclear device ever to be detonated.
Today in Chemistry

Today in Chemistry
On October 31st 1835, the organic chemist Adolf von Baeyer was born. In this lab he synthesised many new organic dyes, including indigo. He also introduced the idea that in a ring of four or less carbon atoms the bonds will be strained and therefore the molecule will be unstable. He won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1905.