Chain Reaction
The Wondrous Chemistry of Everyday Life
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- 13,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
All around us are ever-evolving strings of chain reactions, of bonds forged and broken, of connections made and unmade in less than the blink of an eye.
In Chain Reaction, Professor Ijeoma Uchegbu dives into the chemistry that underpins our everyday existence. With warmth and personal anecdotes about the chemistry that has shaped her life, Uchegbu takes us on a journey exploring how our bodies are held together by weak chemical bonds, how our constituent molecules start to break up once our heart stops beating, how our food is stitched together by a careful exploitation of chemical bonds at the interface between water and oil, and exactly what the fibres in our clothes are made of. To be human is to be a walking chemical reaction, as our individual cells are all powered by careful co-ordination of chemistry.
From hairdressing disasters and laundry mishaps to life-saving medicines and kitchen experiments, this eye-opening book reveals that chemical processes are all around us, defining our interactions with the world we live in. This is a story that's both universal and personal, grand and intimate, and it will change the way you see everything.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Uchegbu (Fundamentals of Pharmaceutical Nanoscience), chemist and president of Wolfson College, Cambridge, reveals how chemistry underpins everyday life in this oversimplified account. "Without chemistry everything would simply not be," she writes, explaining there are 118 known elements (including aluminum, carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen) and everything on Earth—from a fried egg to air—is the result of bonds forging and breaking between them. She describes the chemistry behind the making of everyday substances, like mayonnaise (weak bonds between oil, water, and egg yolk allow for a smooth yellow mixture) and hair-straightening chemicals (sodium hydroxide breaks the curl-inducing bonds along the hair shaft to loosen the curl). The chemistry of clothing is also elucidated, including efforts to find more environmentally friendly ways to dye jeans blue. She underscores the prevalence of chemistry through personal anecdotes, explaining, for example, how medication soothed her blistering skin during a sun allergy flare-up by blocking a substance called histamine in the body. Elsewhere, she uses the death of her father as a jumping-off point to demonstrate how chemicals can be used to delay decomposition. While her stories are intriguing, the science is relayed with an abundance of analogies and lacks specifics. This is best suited for those new to the subject.
