The Watch Glass

Take the C&EN Redesign Quiz: How well do you know your chemistry history? We’re celebrating our...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/141213988203

Happy Birthday to Dmitri Mendeleev, the architect of the periodic table, born on this day in 1834. Why did Mendeleev’s table prevail over other versions? In a review from our archives of Eric R...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/138944337633

Chemist Albert Hofmann , who first synthesized LSD, was born today in 1906. Here’s his account of the first trip: I was seized by a peculiar sensation of vertigo and restlessness,“ he late...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/137127375618

In honor of World Antibiotic Awareness Week , here’s a bit of penicillin history: Few strokes of science have had as spectacular and immensely practical an impact as the development of penicil...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/133614206108

This week we’re looking back at how the Internet changed chemistry: check out the full special issue , complete with a handy timeline . The word “Internet” first appeared in our pages in Au...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/127172497123

TODAY IS THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ATOMIC BOMBING OF HIROSHIMA. READ OUR IMMEDIATE COVERAGE FROM AUGUST 1945 IN THE ARCHIVES: The most closely guarded secret of World War II—development, an...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/126048862195

Today’s the 46th anniversary of the ‪Apollo 11‬ Moon landing. Check out our 1969 special report on the mission: HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969 A.D....

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/124614893433

70 years ago today, the first atomic bomb was tested in the New Mexico desert. Here is how Major Gen. Leslie Groves described it in our 1945 coverage: “The effect could well be called unprec...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/124258243678

“Oh, my chemical friends, do you remember wading through qualitative analysis by following a...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/124079586488

Chemist Barbara L. Belmont (left) and her wife, Rochelle Diamond, participated in a symposium on LGBT issues in the workplace during the 2011 spring ACS national meeting in Anaheim, Calif. AS T...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/122515139978

Scientists are on the verge of a major breakthrough in hepatitis research that could lead to isolation and characterization of the virus that causes serum hepatitis and ultimately to development ...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/122276600518

A major breakthrough in the search for a nonaddicting narcotic antagonist came in 1960 when Dr. Mozes Judah Lewenstein synthesized naloxone (N-allyl-7,8-dihydro-14-hydroxynormorphinone). In 1961 ...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/121213134528

An assembly of Corning’s iconic Pyrex lab glassware (top, courtesy of Corning). Pyrex is used to ensure railway signal lantern against failure in rain and snow (bottom, C&EN Archives, 1943). ...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/119564195523

POLARIS POP-UP. Steel flasks, like the one shown above, will provide a blast of compressed air to boost the Polaris missile from its submarine launching pad to the surface of the water. There, t...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/118960306388

Yesterday, the American Chemical Society designated the “Keeling Curve” as a National Historic Chemical Landmark . It’s named after the late geochemist Charles D. Keeling , who started meas...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/117891860578

Denis Hayes. “Environment is the most beautiful issue at the dance and everyone wants to waltz with it,” says Denis Hayes, the 25-year-old national coordinator of Washington-based Environme...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/117092885018

Oil floating in the ocean from the BP oil spill is captured in a plastic bag just off the coast of Louisiana (Reuters/Carlos Barria/Newscom). Five years after the Deepwater Horizon spill in the G...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/116949596708

RAINBOW EFFECT. Quantum dots allow simultaneous five-color imaging in fixed human epithelial cells for the first time. The colors allow localization of cellular proteins and substructures: The nu...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/116572534268

HYDROGEN-COOLED GENERATOR. A new cooling technique for giant-sized turbine generators runs hydrogen at 10,000 feet a minute through rectangular stainless steel tubing to transfer heat from the st...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/116065810803

A little more insight into the physiology of life is coming from experiments made with the 80-foot-long biological spectrograph at Argonne National Laboratory (see cover). The spectrograph beams ...

https://cen.watchglass.org/post/115137627663