DESIGNING THE MOLECULAR WORLD CHEMISTRY AT THE FRONTIER

What this book aims to do is to present a selection of some of the things that a chemist today may find her or himself engaged in studying. If by doing so it succeeds in demonstrating simply that the new chemistry is no longer a matter of test tubes and bad smells (although both may be encountered along the way), that is fine enough. For this demonstration we will need to take a cursory glance not only at some of the basic principles of chemistry but also at a pot-pourri of ideas from disciplines as diverse as genetics, climatology, electronics and the study of chaos. Some of the most exciting scientific developments in recent years have come not from theoretical physicists, astronomers, or molecular biologists but instead from the chemistry lab. Chemists have created superconducting ceramics for brain scanners, designed liquid crystal flat screens for televisions and watch displays, and made fabrics that change color while you wear them. They have fashioned metals from plastics, drugs from crude oil, and have pinpointed the chemical pollutants affecting our atmosphere and are now searching for remedies for the imperiled planet. Philip Ball, an editor for the prestigious magazine "Nature," lets the lay reader into the world of modern chemistry. Here, for example, chemists find new uses for the improbable buckminsterfullerene molecules--60-atom carbon soccerballs, dubbed "buckyballs"--which seem to have applications for everything from lubrication to medicine to electronics.