Ludwigshafen (ots) - In the old days, sponges only came from the sea. For millennia, brave divers risked life and limb to bring them back to the surface. In the age of plastic, however, you don't have to expose yourself to danger to acquire one. As a matter of fact, most modern artificial sponges ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - If you don't keep shaking a container of unhomogenized milk, then the thicker, fatty portions of it separate and float to the top. This is liquid cream, which can be ladled off and beaten to produce a stiff foam - whipped cream. Cream is mostly made up of lipids, water and ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - In this podcast you will learn how BASF is developing technologies with which CO2 can be separated out from flue gases. In order that less CO2 is emitted into the air, we have to use fossil fuels in a more economic and efficient way. But in the future, there could also be an ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - It doesn't take long after you've polished off a plateful of the delicious vegetable before you are forcefully reminded of it in the restroom. Some people are surprised by the strange odor rising from the bowl after ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - The whole point of the skin of a cherry is to keep that from bursting. The smooth, slippery envelope protects the fruit from falling prey to funguses or microbes, and water usually just slides right off of one. But the rainstorms feared by fruit-growers are a different matter. ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - In this podcast you will learn how innovative fungicides from BASF help to improve plant health. In the agricultural industry plant diseases such as fungal attacks can seriously damage the production of foodstuffs. And according to estimates, more than 40% of the crop yields that are theoretically achievable are lost because of ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - The very first thing many people do when they stumble out of bed in the morning is pour themselves a cup of coffee. The substance in the hot brew that helps wake you up is well-known all over the world: caffeine. Caffeine doesn't only come from coffee beans. Most of the caffeine ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - As far back as the Middle Ages in Europe, blue has always been a color worn by the nobility. Some kings wore blue cloaks to their crowning ceremonies. The dye was made from a substance that had to be brought all the way from far-off India - indigo, which was made from an ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - If someone is brave enough to bite into a lemon, then you can instantly tell from their expression that it wasn't exactly a pleasant experience. There's a reason why we can perceive the taste of sour. If something is too acidic, then it sends a signal to the brain. In ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Ketchup can be a stubborn condiment. Just when you're ready to bite into a burger, it often refuses to flow. Only when you give the bottle a serious shake or two does it start to move. And there's a reason why. Ketchup isn't ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - In this podcast you will learn how chemistry improves the efficiency of lithium ion batteries. In comparison to other battery types, lithium-ion batteries have some major advantages. For one, they are the most efficient battery on the market right now. In order to make a ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - All over the world cows, goats, sheep and other mammals are industriously milked every day to provide us with a whole range of dairy products. Children love it, and lots of grown-ups also enjoy a glass of creamy milk every now and again. But you can't let the milk get too hot. ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - The lead of a pencil is made out of the mineral graphite, which is one of the forms - or 'allotropes' - of the element carbon. Diamond is another. It's also made up of pure elemental carbon. But even though both materials ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - If you stretch a rubber band and then release it, it snaps back into its original shape. As you probably know, rubber has elastic properties, which is why its also called an elastomer. However, the natural state of caoutchouc, or raw rubber, is exactly the opposite of elastic. ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - In this podcast you will learn how chemistry improves the cost effectiveness of environmentally and climate friendly wind energy. It is generally less well known that modern wind turbines would hardly be conceivable without innovative solutions in chemistry. The huge rotor blades can be up to 60 meters long and are subjected ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - The discovery of fire opened up whole new worlds of taste for stone-age humans. They could start turning those chunks of raw mammoth meat into beautifully browned roast leg of mammoth and were benefiting from an interesting chemical reaction. In 1912, did French chemist Louis ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Over millions of years of evolution, spiders have developed the perfect material for constructing a net: spider silk. Material researchers can get pretty worked up just talking about its properties. It has five times the tensile strength that a steel thread of the same ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - When a shirt gets dirty, you usually just have to chuck it in the washing machine, add a little laundry detergent, and let the combination of water and soap do the rest. But some pieces of clothing are too delicate to put in there. As the name implies, dry-cleaning doesn't use any water - or any soap, for that matter. In ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Every winter it's the same old problem: Ice and snow wreak havoc with traffic. To battle the slick roads, the winter services people are out there day and night spreading salt on the streets. In entertaining episodes our Chemical Reporter answers questions of our Podcast ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - In simple terms, behind the glass on the front of a plasma screen you'll find a whole lot of tiny cells that are filled with one of the 'noble' gases, generally neon or xenon. Each of these cells represents a single point - a pixel. If a voltage is applied to the gas, then it ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - If you want your leather shoes to continue to look clean and snazzy, then there's no way around it: you have to polish them occasionally. The polish that you apply contains both fats - lipids - and wax. The lipids make the leather soft and smooth, while the wax protects it from ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Although the way glow sticks work at first seems almost magical, it's actually pretty simple. They provide a purely chemical source of light. A glow stick is a sealed, see-through plastic pipe containing a fluorescent dye and two different liquids. In entertaining episodes our ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - After the advent of liquid crystal displays, or LCDs, everybody nowadays has at least heard the term 'liquid crystal'. The high-tech screens are everywhere: in computer monitors, cell phones, digital cameras, and calculators. In entertaining episodes our Chemical Reporter ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - In this podcast you will learn how food fortification can help prevent children going blind. According to UNICEF, 40 to 60 percent of children and young people in developing nations are affected by a lack of vitamin A. This makes it the most widespread form of malnutrition. ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Cling film - also called plastic wrap - has to be pretty versatile. It should stretch a lot without tearing, it should keep out the germs, and it has to seal in moisture and aroma to keep those cold cuts from drying out and that chunk of French cheese from smelling up the ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - If you put the oil and water together in a single glass, then they act like a couple of suspicious neighbors. Each quickly finds its own level - the oil on top and the water below - and has as little interaction with the other as possible. There's a kind of fence between them that each is unable to overcome on its own: this ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - While taking a walk along the beach, you might have noticed shells that have inner surfaces that shimmer in colorful patterns when they reflect the sunlight. The iridescent substance responsible for it is called nacre, or more commonly: mother-of-pearl. The name says it all, ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - In this podcast you will learn how organic photovoltaics helps to produce solar cells with completely new qualities. In organic photovoltaics dyes are used that are able to convert light into electrical energy. Due to the extremely thin photovoltaic layer, flexible or even ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Hair isn't exactly lying still all the time. It's constantly in motion - we brush it, run our fingers through it, and style it in all kinds of tortuous ways. When we tax it and strain it, the shingles on the outside of a strand of hair can stand up - or even break off. But with ...
Ludwigshafen (ots) - Bioplastics might look artificial, but they sure act like they're organic. When you toss them on a compost heap, for example, they simply disappear. There's no magic involved, though. Compostable bioplastics disintegrate in nature without leaving a trace. In entertaining weekly episodes our Chemical Reporter answers questions of ...
