Fermium - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Fermium, the eleventh member of the actinide series, was discovered in 1952. Fermium (element 100), together with einsteinium (element 99), were unexpectedly produced in the explosion of the first U.S.

Fertilizer - Chemistry Encyclopedia

A fertilizer is a plant nutrient added to a soil to increase its yield. Plants need nutrients to grow and produce fruits and vegetables.

Fibers - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Fibers are long strands of molecules interwoven to form a linear, stringlike structure.

Fibrous Protein - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Many of the familiar cells in your body use fibrous proteins to carry out important tasks. Skin, bones, muscles, tendons, and hair cells all rely on molecules in this class.

Fireworks - Chemistry Encyclopedia

One of the most beautiful and entertaining uses of fire occurs in firework displays. Fireworks need a source of combustible material for energy such as black powder, a mixture of charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter (an old name for potassium nitrate), or smokeless powder such as cellulose nitrate.

Fluorine - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Fluorine is a chemical element that in pure form occurs as a dimer of two fluorine atoms, F2. The fluorine atom has the ground state electron configuration 1s22s22p5.

Food Preservatives - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Most foods contain enzymes or natural chemicals, such as acids or alcohols, that cause them to begin to lose desirable characteristics almost immediately after harvest or preparation. In addition, a host of environmental factors, such as heat and the presence of microorganisms, acts to change foodstuffs in ways that may harm the food product.

Forensic Chemistry - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Few processes are more important to society than solving crimes, both to protect the public from criminals and to protect the innocent from unjust punishment. Very often, the strength of a prosecution rests on the ability of law enforcement personnel to connect the accused with the victim by matching physical evidence from the crime scene or victim with trace evidence found on or about the person accused of the crime.

Formulation Chemistry - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Formulation chemistry is the branch of manufacturing that addresses substances that do not react with each other, but have desirable properties as a mixture. These products include paints, varnishes, cosmetics, petroleum products, inks, adhesives, detergents, pesticides, and a broad range of household products.

Fossil Fuels - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, fossil fuels have been important sources of energy. European industrialization began in the late 1700s in England, and coal soon became a major fuel.

Francium - Chemistry Encyclopedia

The element francium is named for the country of France and its most stable isotope is known as actinium K. Dimitri Mendeleev assigned it the name eka-cesium prior to its actual discovery, although at this time it was also known as russium, virginium, and moldavium.

Freons - Chemistry Encyclopedia

The trademark Freon refers to any of several gaseous chlorofluorocarbons, CFCs, with the general formula CFxCl4−x or C2FxCl6−x. Due to their physical and chemical properties, these CFCs became the compounds of choice as propellants and refrigerants, substituting for the toxic and flammable sulfur dioxide and ammonia materials used until the early 1930s.

Fullerenes - Chemistry Encyclopedia

In 1985, while working in the laboratory of Richard Smalley at Rice University, graduate students Jim Heath and Sean O'Brien found that carbon aggregates in an inert atmosphere form C60 (and to a lesser extent, C70) as the most abundant species. Previous work in the Smalley laboratory had involved clusters of atoms such as silicon, germanium, and gallium arsenide.

Gadolinium - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Gadolinium is a chemical element. Its ground state electronic configuration is [Xe]4f75d6s2.

Gallium - Chemistry Encyclopedia

In 1870 Dimitri Mendeleev predicted many of the properties of an unknown element that he called eka-aluminum. The element was discovered in 1875 by Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran who named it gallium from Gaul, the Latin name for France.

Gardening - Chemistry Encyclopedia

A successful garden represents a broad spectrum of chemical processes. Photosynthesis provides the route by which diverse chemical transformations use sunlight, water, carbon dioxide, and inorganic chemical elements to produce life-sustaining organic molecules and oxygen (Equation 1).

Gases - Chemistry Encyclopedia

A gas is a state of matter in which a substance does not have a specific shape or volume of its own, but adopts the form and size of its container. It was the early-seventeenth-century Flemish chemist-physician Jan Baptista van Helmont who coined the word "gas" (from the Greek chaos) in order to convey the idea that a gas had an indefinite shape and size.

Gasoline - Chemistry Encyclopedia

In 1859 Edwin Drake and E. B.

Gemstones - Chemistry Encyclopedia

There are several thousand known minerals in nature (with estimates ranging from 2,000 to 7,000), but fewer than a hundred are considered gem minerals. Of these, only about a dozen or so are actually valuable enough to be important gemstones on the world market.

Genes - Chemistry Encyclopedia

A gene is a unit of genetic information that codes for a single biological function or product. Genes are found on chromosomes and are made up of nucleic acid (deoxyribonucleic acid [DNA] for most organisms) and proteins.

Genetic Engineering - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Genetic engineering is a discipline represented by the ability to isolate, modify the expression of, or transfer genetic material. Genetic engineering was born in 1973 when Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer reported the successful transfer of reptile DNA into bacteria.

Enrico Fermi - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Enrico Fermi was born in Rome, the son of Italy's chief railroad inspector (Alberto Fermi) and a schoolteacher (Ida de Gattis). While he was attending Ginnasio Liceo Umberto I, an associate of his father recognized Fermi's talents in physics and mathematics and encouraged him to master several challenging scientific treatises.

Fuels Fire Power Plants - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Fire is a phenomenon of combustion, usually the reaction of a substance with oxygen, producing heat, light, and gases. It has been used for entertainment, religious ceremonies, destruction, and energy.

Emil Hermann Fischer - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Emil Hermann Fischer, born October 9, 1852, in Euskirchen, Germany, received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1902 for his elucidations of the structure of sugars and the synthesis of purines. His father, a very successful lumber merchant, intended Emil to join the family business upon completion of his secondary school education.

Alexander Fleming - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Alexander Fleming will always be remembered for turning a laboratory mishap into one of the great medical discoveries of the twentieth century. His discovery of penicillin in 1928 laid the foundation for modern antibiotic therapy and earned him a share of the 1945 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine.

Rosalind Franklin - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Rosalind Elsie Franklin, the second of four children and the first daughter of Ellis Franklin, a wealthy Jewish banker, and Muriel Franklin (née Waley), was born on July 25, 1920, in London. Although raised in a happy home where children were encouraged to develop their individuality, Rosalind felt discriminated against because she was a girl, a feeling that surfaced again, along with an awareness of anti-Semitism, when she was working on DNA at King's College.

Johang Gadolin - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Johan Gadolin became an expert in the chemistry of the elements known as the lanthanide series of elements. From 1775 to 1779 he studied mathematics, then chemistry, in Åbo, Finland.

Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac - Chemistry Encyclopedia

Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac was one of the great scientists of the industrial age. Born on December 6, 1778, in St.