The Science of Life

Hello, and welcome to the Organic Chemistry lecture series by The Science of Life.  Today, I’ll be covering some basic definitions which will be necessary for the rest of the course. To begin, what is Organic chemistry?  To put it simply, it is the chemistry of the compounds which contain carbon.  There are some definitions which exclude the most oxidized of these compounds, such as CFC’s in old school aerosols, Teflon, and carbon dioxide, but for the purposes of this course, these severely oxidized compounds of carbon will not be considered, so for all practical purposes in this course, these two definitions incorporate the same set of compounds covered in this course. Everything in this course, though, falls under the definition of the word chemical, which are substances which, in their pure form, contain the atomic nucleus of one or more element.  This means everything from glucose to fructose, from vitamin C to cyanide, from proteins to aluminum fall un...

Hello Internet, and Welcome to the Organic Chemistry Lecture Series by The Science of Life.  This is the first lecture, so let’s start off at the beginning.  That means let’s start off with the synthesis of the units of chemistry in mother nature, well before either the Earth or Humans were even ever a thing. The Big Bang happened 14.7 billion years ago.  This was the first instance of space, energy, and time in our universe.  It’s where the universe itself banged into existence.  What caused it is a mystery; nobody knows how it happened. Notice what was missing from the list: matter.  In the very first seconds of the universe, there was no matter in the universe.  Everything in the universe was on the energy side of the  equation.  After a few minutes of cooling, the energy finally became cool enough (and therefor cool enough) to condense to form matter in the form of quarks and bosons.  The quarks are the building blocks of proto...

Suddenly, there is silence. It's been quiet for a while now, but now that the rounds are complete, it is complete silence, here on the surface of Mars. Not that this is really Mars. In the deserts of Southern Utah, there is a crew at the Mars Desert Research Station, running simulations for a trip to Mars. There are strict protocols for such things. Ideas accumulated on the ground put into place by The Mars Society. So simple are these ideas that most people – and even higher percent of scientists – would not think of them. Like, for instance, keeping a comp notebook at each piece of equipment to track use and maintenance. Keeping a log on the computer for suggested SOP for the crew who takes over on the next cycle change. In the isolation of the desert, these people can teach us a few things about how to do what we do as Environmental Scientists. For one, it is alright to be a nerd and proud of it. In fact, it is the preferred state of mind for us....