Ci Newsletter #16: How solar panels work & musical molecules
Welcome to another fortnightly edition of the Ci Newsletter! This month's newsletter features a new infographic on how solar panels work, sobering statistics on racial inequalities in chemistry, music generated from molecular structures, and more!
How do solar panels generate electricity?
The current energy crisis has reenergised conversations around the switch to renewable resources. Solar panels are one of the options, so in this month's edition of Periodic Graphics in C&EN, I took a look at how these panels generate electricity and some of the present and potential materials used in them.
National Bunsen burner day
It's National Bunsen burner day tomorrow, so here's a handy graphic looking at the design of the eponymous burner which remains a common feature in secondary school chemistry labs. Although Bunsen gets the credit for the invention of the burner named after him, it was actually produced by his colleague, Peter Desaga, who perfected an earlier design of Michael Faraday's.
Missing Elements: Racial and ethnic inequalities in the chemical sciences
I was astounded to read, in the Royal Society of Chemistry's recent report on racial and ethnic inequalities in the chemical sciences, that of the 575 chemistry professors working in the UK, only one is black: Prof Robert Mokaya, of the University of Nottingham. The report is full of other sobering statistics, showing that black and minoritised ethnic people face structural barriers in both academia and industry which lead to their exclusion and marginalisation – to the detriment of chemistry. The full report is well worth a read.
International guitar month
April is almost here, and you probably didn't know it's International Guitar Month. As a keen player myself, I put this graphic together a few years ago looking at exactly how electric guitars work, and some of the elements and polymers involved. Then I called it 'the chemistry of an electric guitar' to annoy physicists.
Weeds & food: a chemical link
A spell of uncharacteristically pleasant English weather got me out into the garden over the past week, where I found it overrun by these round-leaved weeds. In the pauses between the backbreaking work of removing them from the flowerbeds, I found myself wondering what they are and how they've managed to infest our garden so efficiently.
And there the wondering might have stopped, but in the age of apps for literally everything, I was able to use one of those wildlife identification apps to discover that this is a 'hairy bittercress' – and that it's also edible.
This is probably a good point at which to point out that you probably shouldn't trust an app on your phone to know what's edible and what's poisonous. But anyway, after some independent verification, I had a nibble. If you're wondering, it's a bit like cress crossed with rocket.
This is where the interesting chemistry comes in, because the bitterness that evokes rocket is actually due to the same family of compounds: glucosinolates. These break down when you chew the leaves to form bitter tasting isothiocyanate compounds.
So there you have it, chemistry is everywhere, even in mundane garden tasks!
Chemistry news and features
The secrets of the sulfur cycle — www.chemistryworld.com
The nitrogen and carbon cycles get all the attention in school curricula, so interesting to read about the various ways sulfur is transformed through our environment and ongoing attempts to better understand these transformations.
And finally, musical molecules:
That's it for another fortnight – keep an eye out for the next issue, which I might actually manage to publish on a Tuesday as originally intended. Until then, if you've got any questions, comments, or suggestions, do email me and let me know!
Thanks for reading,
Andy