Chemical Instrumentation

It is widely recognized that conceptual and theoretical innovations and the employment of new instruments and experimental techniques are important factors in explaining the growth of scientific knowledge in chemistry. This study examines another dimension of research in chemistry, collaboration and co-authorship. I focus specifically on Theodore Richards’ career and publications. During the period in which Richards worked, co-authorship was beginning to become more common than it had been previously. Richards was the first American chemist to be awarded a Nobel (...) Prize and he was at the forefront in this new trend in chemistry. He collaborated more than was typical for his time, with many scientists, in different sized groups, and he often had persistent collaborative relationships, extending over a number of years. Further, it appears that these collaborations benefited Richards, his collaborators, and the field of chemistry as a whole. (shrink)

The article summarizes the software tool on astrophysical analysis with multi-wavelength space telescope data. It recaps the evidence analysis conducted on the Kerr-Newman black hole (KNBH). It was written prior to the article Research on the Kerr-Newman Black Hole in M82 Confirms Black Hole and White Hole Juxtapose not soon after the experiment. The conducted analysis suggested Hawking radiation is caused by the movement of ergosurfaces of the BH and serves as the primal evidence for black hole and white hole (...) juxtapose. A later data exploration was conducted with the radiation trails in the multi-wavelength data. The evidences produced corroborates with Yale professor Priyamvada Natarajan's black hole seeds theory. It implies that the electromagnetic dynamic of fusion and fission temperature determines the pressure of surface tension on the macro particles, and the mass density of the BH is determined by the electromagnetic tension between the outer ergosurface and inner ergosurface. The ring singularity of the BH and the Penrose-Hawking singularity of the BH determine the spin and gravitational singularity of the BH. Inside the ergosurfaces, the BH singularities' backward inflow causes the vicinity's rate on feeding the BH. It makes the active galactic nuclei (AGN) a semi-closed system. The density pressure is released on threshold. During the mass exchange observed by energy momentum upon the AGN's open, the macroparticle composition of the BH changes with the galactic event. This causes the expansion rate of the galaxy and contraction rate of the BH. AGN types and their relative motions determine the expansion rate of the cosmic universe in a generalized quantitative thinking. The article concludes that BH spin is caused by the asymmetric motions of AGN in the BH system. A set of the nuclear resonance caused by BH and white hole (WH) oscillation is processed with the same set of data. (shrink)

The article explains on the two-year experiment after the author’s finalization of dissertation. The thesis of the dissertation was hidden in the last chapter with analytical linguistics. It was done so with the fascist development of the Chinese Communist regime with neo- Nazi characteristics. Since numerous prior warnings on the political downshifts & coup d’état in China was willfully ignored by the university, the linguistic innovations in dissertation found a balance between multilateralism and outer space (security). The experiments were conducted (...) with a combination of physical unit analysis & thermonuclear dynamics analysis. It describes the experiment process in terms of gravitation as gravitational singularity and Bekenstein-Penrose singularity. Detailed research process is elaborated in the article concerning the sociopolitical interactions the research involved. (shrink)

A history of design changes for the eudiometer.

In his account of scientific revolutions, Thomas Kuhn suggests that after a revolutionary change of theory, it is as if scientists are working in a different world. In this paper, we aim to show that the notion of world change is insightful. We contrast the reporting of the discovery of neon in 1898 with the discovery of hafnium in 1923. The one discovery was made when elements were identified by their atomic weight; the other discovery was made after scientists came (...) to classify elements by their atomic number. By considering two instances of the reporting of the discovery of a new chemical element 25 years apart, we argue that it becomes clear how chemists can be said to have been responding to different worlds as a result of the change in the concept of a chemical element. They saw, did, and reported different things as they conducted their research on the new chemical elements. (shrink)

structure of a laboratory report (generalized from Italian, Chinese and US sources), we distill a fifth flavor, the givens, whose flip side is the freedoms or tangibles of an experiment. (Stated in terms of computer science, we are trying to find inputs and outputs, but these turn out to be surprisingly vague in chemistry.) Then, in the service of a white-boxing ethos (which sounds less severe than ‘anti black-boxing’), we establish a movable boundary between givens and tangibles, with implications for (...) ‘ontological attitudes’ and for the future of chemistry. Next, in revisiting a 2002 exchange between Schummer and Laszlo, which might be paraphrased as the chemist-as-philosopher versus chemist-as-artisan, we apply a second kind of sliding scale which seems to harmonize the discussion. Finally, on a possibly quixotic note, we look briefly at a third kind of sliding scale, now aimed squarely at ontology itself. For illustrative purposes, we adopt an atomocentric viewpoint (as distinct from atomistic), and assign it the provisional name ‘Fuzzy CH4 Ontology’. (shrink)

The present paper claims that M. S. Tswett’s chromatographic adsorption analysis, which today is a ubiquitous and instrumentally sophisticated chemical technique, was either ignored or outright rejected by chemists and botanists in the first three decades of the twentieth century because it did not make sense in terms of accepted chemical theory or practice. Evidence for this claim is culled from consideration of the botanical and chemical context of Tswett’s technique as well as an analysis of the protracted debate over (...) Tswett’s chromatographic analysis of chlorophyll between him and Leon Marchlewski, a noted chlorophyll chemist of the period. In this way, the paper expands and amends what it calls the ‘textbook story’ of the early history of chromatography, examples of which may be found in historical notes in many textbooks of chemical instrumental analysis and numerous short articles in chemistry journals. The paper also provides an accessible introduction to the early history of chromatography for historians of science likely to know little or nothing about it. (shrink)

Science, in general, and chemistry in particular advances by methods that are difficult to codify. The availability of theories (models) and instrumentation play an important role but indefinable motivations to study individual phenomena are also involved. The area of chromium photophysics has a rich history that spans 150 years. A case history of the progression from the natural history stage to its present state reveals the way in which several factors that are common to much physical science research interact.

The direct reading emission spectrometer was developed during the1940s. By substituting photo-multiplier tubes and electronics forphotographic film spectrograms, the interpretation of special lineswith a densitometer was avoided. Instead, the instrument providedthe desired information concerning percentage concentration ofelements of interest directly on a dial. Such instruments `de-skill' the job of making such measurements. They do this by encapsulatingin the instrument the skills previously employed by the analyst,by `skilling' the instrument. This paper presents a history of thedevelopment of the Dow Chemical/Baird Associates (...) direct reader. Thishistory is used to argue for a materialist conception of knowledge.The instrument is a material form of knowledge, knowledge of aspectsof spectroscopy, analytical spectrochemistry, electronics, instrumentdesign and construction, and metal production industry economics. (shrink)

Based on the design of many modern chemical instruments, information about a specimen is retrieved after the specimen undergoes agitation, manipulation and disturbance of its internal state. But can we retain the traditional ideal that instruments should reveal properties that are definable independently of all modes of detection? In this paper I argue that the capacity of chemical instruments to convert experimental phenomena to information places constraints on the way in which the specimen is characterized. During research, the specimen is (...) defined by those properties which permit its detection. Based on modern instrumentation, this constraint necessitates a conception of the specimen as a reactive system of dynamical properties. The dream of a purely transparent detection process violates the design of chemical instruments. This mutual dependence of instrument and specimen is illustrated by empirical studies of the geometrical configuration of DNA. (shrink)

Building upon Nancy Cartwright's discussion of models in How the Laws of Physics Lie, this paper addresses solid state research in transition metal oxides. Historical analysis reveals that in this domain models function both as the culmination of phenomenology and the commencement of theoretical explanation. Those solid state chemists who concentrate on the description of phenomena pertinent to specific elements or compounds assess models according to different standards than those who seek explanation grounded in approximate applications of the Schroedinger equation. (...) Accurate accounts of scientific debate in this field must include both perspectives. (shrink)