Chemistry | Questions and Answers

Who Discovered Carbon?

Carbon is a prehistoric element which means like stone or air or gold, it is known since the antiquity. Therefore, it is not possible to name the person who discovered carbon; however, it is possible ...

Who Invented Iron?

Iron has always been around therefore, it can be discovered and not invented. Even the question ‘who discovered iron?’ is a very complex one. The humans have been using iron since the Iron Age, which ...

Who Discovered Crude Oil (Petroleum)?

Unrefined petroleum has been utilized by humans for more than 5000 years for different purposes so it becomes difficult to narrow down to the person who first extracted petroleum from the ground and used it ...

Who Discovered Metal?

The answer depends upon the metal in question. And one thing that must be kept in mind should be: metals can not be invented, they can only be discovered. Eighty-six metals are known by now. ...

Who Invented Natural Gas?

No one invented ‘natural gas’! Until the 1800s, it was, most of the time, merely an unwanted byproduct, which because of its explosive nature could turn out to be dangerous if not disposed of properly. ...

Who Invented Rubber?

Rubber is a natural product and the first person to make changes in the natural composition to make ‘natural rubber’ more rugged and thus more suitable for human use was Charles Goodyear. His invention is ...

Who Discovered Aluminum?

Sir Humphry Davy, an English chemist, discovered aluminum in 1808. Aluminum is a naturally occurring substance thus can’t be invented but only discovered. Although Humphry Davy was the first person to discover aluminum it took ...

How to Get Rid of Rust Stains?

Getting rid of rust is not necessarily the same as getting rid of rust stains. These two conditions that occur on iron and steel should be treated differently. Of course, getting rust stains out of ...

How to Get Rid of Rust?

One fellow who believed he had the comedian’s gift said the best way to get rid of rust is to not let things rust in the first place. But apart from this obvious advice, there ...

What Is Desalination?

To make water potable, salt and other particles are removed from recovered waste water, seawater and brackish water and this process is called Desalination. Desalination has become popular, necessary and affordable means because of the ...

What Is A Mass Spectrometer?

Scientists use a spectrometer to determine what an item is made of. That’s the basic explanation, but there is much more to it, course. According to Wikipedia, mass spectrometry is “an analytical technique for the determination ...

Why Does Copper Turn Green?

Though copper is well known as a metal that resists the effects of exposure to the air and to salt water (because of the salt), it does have an interesting characteristic when this exposure occurs. ...

Why Is The Statue Of Liberty Green?

Common knowledge indicates that the simple explanation is: copper. A closer look shows that, according to scientific research, the salts in copper have this blue/green color. One theory about the Statue of Liberty is that ...

Why Does Iron Get Rusty?

When the tools like screw driver, hammer etc. made of iron are kept in wet or damp places for sometimes, a brown colored layer gets deposited over these tools. This brown layer is called the ...

Is There Any Material Which Does Not Burn In Fire?

A substance gets burn and changes to ash, if we put it in fire. But there is a material which does not burn in fire known as asbestos. The fireman when enters the burning house, ...

How Do Fireworks Work?

Fireworks come in many different shapes, sizes and colors. But most of them have the same basic system that makes them work. Everything from the smallest sparkler to the largest aerial “bombs” that we see ...

How Are Plastic Bags Made?

The word “plastic” covers a lot of different items and materials, though most people are familiar with the thin but strong type of plastic that is used to produce plastic bags. After the basic chemical ...

How Is Glass Recycled?

Glass: Glass is a transparent amorphous kind of solid, which may be hard or brittle and is used in windows, some types of bottles and spectacles or eyeglasses. In technical words we can say that glass ...

Why Some Plastics Are Non Recyclable?

Plastic is the common term for a broad range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic materials used for manufacture of a variety of domestic and industrial products. Plastics are typically long chains of high molecular weight, ...

How Does Plastic Degenerate?

General wisdom states that, in fact, plastic does not degenerate. Of course, we don’t know this for sure because some plastic items, such as plastic bags, might take 500 years or more to break down ...

What Are Plastics?

These days plastics found great applications in thousands of products like- medical equipment, computers, toys, automobile parts, sports equipment, clothes, household items, defense equipments, cookware etc. Moreover, plastic industry is growing day by day. Even ...

How To Melt Glass?

Working on glass is not less then a hobby for many people. But a successful glass worker is needed to be extremely efficient and highly skilled in his work. Many things can be done with ...

What Is Oxidation?

Oxidation is a natural phenomenon which is occurring continuously in our surroundings for example- browning of a sliced apple, rusting of a bicycle etc. Oxidation can be simply defined as the reaction between the oxygen ...

What Is Bakelite?

Phenolic resin is a very early form of the plastic. It is popular with the trade name, Bakelite. These days, Bakelite is not in common use, but decades of 1930s and 1940s were the years ...

What Is Gel Chromatography?

Chromatography is an excellent science of separation. In many fermentation processes, chromatographic techniques are used to isolate and purify relatively low concentrations of metabolic products. Chromatography is basically concerned with the passage and separation of ...

What Is Catalyst?

A catalyst can be defined as a substance that increases the rate of a chemical reaction. A catalyst can be synthetic, organic or simply a metal. The process through which a particular catalyst increases the ...