I know this has little to do with the general blog thematic, but it’s not bad to know a little bit more about things we daily see. I remember that a teacher said me: If you go to a TV shop, for example, you know which television is better than the other. But, do you know how do they work?

So what I want to talk you about is that part of the world in which we all participate without knowing anything about it. Here we go!

Ammonia (NH₃)

We all know what’s ammonia. It’s that gas that smells horribly and that when it enters into our nose, we are smelling it a lot of time.

Its name is not of normal nomenclature (Stock), what would be Nitrogen Hydride (III), but it comes from the adorers of egipcian god Amon, used by them to improve breathing and concentration.

Ammonia dissolves very well in water (so isn’t oil, which is immiscible with it). This high solubility makes its tipic smell, because ammonia dissolves easily in the watery mucus that coats the olfactory epithelium of our nose. Water would probably smell as hot as ammonia if our olfactory sensors weren’t continuously coated by water. It means, if it was coated by ammonia instead of water, water would smell hot.

The ammonia, apart from its industrial production, can be found in cattle dung, in Brie or Camembert cheeses and in old urine.

It’s used as vegetal fertilizer, it’s added to cigarettes to make nicotine more harmful, it’s thrown by exhaust pipes in cars, etc.

Ethanol (C₂H₆O)

Probably you don’t know it with this name, but it’s what we usually call alcohol.

Fermentation was discovered probably by accident, when honey, cereals or fruits juice were found converted in mead, beer and wine, or concentrated by the famous distillation.

Physiologically, alcohol acts as a depressive and as a general anaesthetic; in last states of intoxically, the effects are similar as a frontal lobotamy. Alcohol seems like a stimulant for who drinks it, but actually it acts numbing cerebral cortex parts.

Other physiological effects that comes with alcohol ingest includes the interference in antidiuretic hormones production, which leads us at a secretation excess and deshidratation sensation. It also dilates blood vessels, increasing blood flow, what leads us to a pink skin tone and a hot sensation.

Scottish Whisky (from the gaelic uisce beatha, what means life water) takes out the ethanol from partially germinated barley before being fermented.

Vodka (in Russian, water) is almost only water with ethanol, so it’s the most pure compound I talk about.

Saccharin (C₇H₅O₃NS)

For those who don’t know anything about chemistry, C is carbon, H is hydrogen, O is oxygen, N is nitrogen and S is sulfur.

Saccharine was discovered in 1879 by a chemist who forgot to wash his hands after staying in the laboratory. With the discovery came the opportunity of being a sweet-addict without caring about obesity, because saccharine is not metabolized by our body and is excreted as is (everything what enters, quits, =P).

It’s 300 times sweeter than sugar and has a very low caloric value. It’s such sweet flavour is mainly due to the link between carbon and three hydrogen atoms.

By the way, saccharine doesn’t attract bees or butterflies, like sugar. It’s suspected as a posible inductor to bladder cancer, but only for the appearing of this disease in rats.

So, you already know, ask for saccharine.

Quinine (C₂₀H₂₄O₂N₂)

Quinine is a white and cristallyne solid, which is extracted   from Cinchona pubescens’ cortex, a tree from South America.

Its bitter taste is more familiar in tonic form, used for example in gin tonic or a French kind of wine, enhancing its flavour.

Its serious application is for fighting malary. The molecule joins the causing parasite’s ADN and which is transmited by female mosquite bite. Quinine voids the replication of its ADN, and for this reason, it dies.

It has analgesic application too! In higher dosis than gin tonic it can produce abortion, because it makes uterus contractions.

But basically, we all know it for the tonic we drink when our stomach hurts us or because we have eaten a lot, because it helps stomach with the food descomposition.

Caffeine (C₈H₁₀O₂N₄)

Caffeine is the main ingredient of coffee and tea, which stimulates cerebral cortex.

Tipically, a cup of coffee or tea contains a tenth part of caffeine. Coffee is obtained from toasting the seeds of Coffea arabica trees; and tea from fermented leaves of Camellia thea. Caffeine is also in soda plant seeds. The extracts from this plant are used for flavoring soda drinks, instead of cocaine, what is what they contained originally (answering with this the myth about that Coke contained cocaine much time ago).

Salicylic acid (C₇H₆O₃) and Aspirins (C₉H₈O₄₎

Some of the softest and non-addicting analgesics that are sold, are of the kind of aspirins. They’re derivated from acetylsalicylic acid. The acid is situated in the cortex of the willow (and some other plants from the group of the Salicaceae) combined with a glucose molecule. The ones from the cortex were used to ease the suffering in traditional medicinal preparations. The extracts from the leaves and cortex from various trees and bushes, like tea trees, have similar medical properties, so they have similar substances.

Its discoverer was the german Felix Hoffman, who worked in a medication for his father, who suffered rheumatoid arthritis.

Its action its a bit hard to explain. Acid interferes in the synthesis of determinated compounds, inhibiting the action of an enzyme that participate in the modification of signals transmitted by synapses (connection between neurons) particularly pain signals. These compounds also intervene in blood vessels dilatation, whose effect is migraines.

I hope I haven’t bored you so much, and don’t worry, I’m sure that the next post in this blog will be about computers!! xD

See you, readers!

This entry was posted on 15 January 2010 at 12:00 AM. Categories: [lang_es]Ciencia[/lang_es][lang_en]Science[/lang_en].You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.