Chemistry in Pictures

GRAINBOW COLORS This is a close-up photo of a piece of stainless steel from a large spring, meant to support 5000 lbs (around 2200 kg) of weight, that failed during testing. Russell Rohloff, a...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/708250235907997696

NOT TANG The inorganic crowd gets the lion’s share of pretty colors in synthetic chemistry circles, but every now and then the organic chemists get a piece. These sparkling orange crystals a...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/707999528377253888

A SCENT-UAL SKETCH The online art shop n.p.ainting released this chemistry-themed watercolor last year, which will surely please many a natural products chemist. What might not be obvious to ...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/707272195040247808

THE COLOR OF LIFE Xiaolin Liu calls porphyrins “the colors of life” because they’re brightly colored and the molecular motif shows up in some very important biomolecules. A porphyrin is ...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/707182018299133952

DRUG DELIVERY IN BLOOM The molecules found inside this rose could be potent antiviral agents. Not because they’re newly discovered natural products—rather, they’re small interfering RNA ...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/706989454144028672

IS THERE ANYTHING PORPHYRINS CAN’T DO? Nature uses porphyrins for all kinds of things. The aromatic, disc-shaped molecules form the functional core of systems that transport oxygen, catalyze...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/706801969902354432

LASER CUT Hitendra Kumar of the University of Calgary and Zhangkang Li, a PhD student in his lab, are creating hydrogels like this one that can house cells and maybe one day mimic living organ...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/706162724168695808

TRYPOPHILIA Trypophobia, an aversion to things with semi-regular textures of small holes, has been an on-again off-again internet darling in recent years. But on the microscale, such patterns ...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/705980983469637632

O CHEMISTREE Andres Tretiakov, a physics technician at St. Paul’s School in London, made this density column chemistree as part of a demonstration for students using a few kitchen staples an...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/705732439134420992

HOLEY HOHLRAUM, BATMAN! Researchers at the US National Ignition Facility made energy history on December 5. For the first time, humans caused a controlled nuclear fusion reaction that yielded ...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/705713565405937664

SECRET MESSAGE Although she’s still perfecting how neatly she can write with a paintbrush, Shaista Lone sends invisible notes like this one to her labmates using solutions of fluorescent com...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/705709739869339648

HOLIDAY LIGHT This festive fluorescence photo was taken by Andrea Nikolić, a researcher in Igor Opsenica lab at the University of Belgrade. It shows Nikolić’s labmate Ljiljana Koračak’s...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/705709738531373056

WARP DRIVE Raman spectroscopy is a powerful analytical technique in part because of the high signal-to-noise ratio. If regular absorption spectroscopy is like viewing the noonday sky through a...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/705619187225313280

QUINOLINE QUILLS As the weekend approached, Chayut Thongdeelert had to put his experiments on hold. So after he evaporated most of the solvent from his round-bottom flask, he left the flask si...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/705533847067049984

AN LED’S POLAR BEAR PLUNGE Light-emitting diodes shine in a spectrum of colors thanks to semiconductors inside them: materials that can easily shuffle electrons between two discrete energy l...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/703005088554336256

A LITTLE NUDGE All it takes is a few taps on the side of this vial and—like magic—a ring of fluffy white solid suddenly appears inside, seemingly out of nowhere But a closer look reveals a ...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/702446477724778496

LET THERE BE LIGHT In the beginning, there was darkness: a nonfluorescent solution of cesium bromide, lead(II) bromide, and a metal-organic framework dispersed in dimethyl sulfoxide. But all i...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/701263209715384320

EAT MORE SEAWEED Every chemist who routinely uses single-crystal X-ray crystallography to verify structures wishes that they could grow perfectly X-ray-worthy crystals every time with ease. Bu...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/700927088368222208

IRON LACE In photochemistry, light provides the energetic push to drive chemical reactions. The area shows great promise for energy production and continuous-flow industrial transformations, b...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/700636299870208000

VAN GOGH’S WORRISOME BRAIN CHEMISTRY The flowing line work, the pastel-icized color palette, the off-center emphasis evoking imbalance, the brushed texture, all hallmarks of Vincent Van Gogh...

https://cen.chempics.org/post/700460060087910400