Chemistry

Ok – my grade in English class is plummeting downhill faster than a spacecraft making its decent. For this reason, I am going to spend all of today to attempt to raise the grade. Ah, if only my blog posts don’t take an average of three hours to complete. Goodness, a day solely dedicated for English class. I guess is the sacrifice to make for failure to complete my work.

—Matter—

I have no idea particularly why I want to go into this subject on this post, but I want to blog about chemistry.

So, what is matter? In the most complex terms, matter is any material substance that occupies space, has mass, and is composed predominantly of atoms consisting of protons, neutrons, and electrons, that constitutes the observable universe, and that is interconvertible with energy.

In short, it is the “stuff” of which the universe is composed and has the two characteristics: it has mass and it occupies space.

To understand the nature of matter, it is classified in various ways. The three states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas are defined by:

-solid: rigid; has a fixed shape and volume

-liquid: has a definite volume but takes the shape of its container

-gas: has no fixed volume or shape; takes the shape and volume of its container

The state of a given sample of matter depends on the strength of the forces among the particles contained in the matter; the stronger these forces, the more rigid the matter.

Substances have physical properties. Typical physical properties of a substance include odor, color, volume, state (gas, liquid, solid), density, melting point, and boiling point. A pure substance can also be described in terms of its chemical properties, which refer to its ability to form new substances.

An example of a chemical change is wood burning in a fireplace, giving off heat and gases and leaving a residue of ashes. In this process, the wood is changed to several new substances. Other examples of chemical changes include the rusting of the steel in cars, the digestion of food in the stomach, and the growth of grass in the yard.

In a chemical change a given substance changes to a fundamentally different substance or substances.


—Kinetics—

I still need to suck out one hundred words…so let’s continue with chemistry into the study of kinetics.

Chemistry is far more complex than mixing “stuff” and seeing what happens. In fact, chemistry is known as the central science as it focuses and links many of the other branches of natural and physical sciences. Without chemistry, the complex nature of biological functions would be difficult to explain. It is needed to explain reactions and interactions with the physical world – and thus physics.

So what is kinetics?

Kinetics is a branch of science that deals with the effects of forces upon the emotion of material bodies or with changes in a physical or chemical system. In short, it studies the effects of reactions. It also deals with the mechanisms or vehicles by which a physical or chemical change is effected.

Sugar II

When we think of sugar, usually the standard white granulated sugar that is seen in packets comes to mind.
But in the scientific world, sugar is a far more complex subject. Molecules of complex sugar molecules are more commonly known as carbohydrates, while more simple sugar compounds are plainly “simple sugars.” In actuality, all sugars are carbohydrates – they contain a carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in the empirical formula C_n (H_2 O)_n. The underscore _ indicates the location of a subscript. In this configuration, it can easily be seen that carbohydrates are hydrates of carbon molecules – hence the name carbohydrate. For simplicity, carbohydrates are usually written in the form C_n H_2n O_n with {n ∈ Z 3 ≤ n ≤ 7}.

Carbohydrates are the main energy source of all organisms. As I mentioned before, these sugars vary widely in chemical composition – from the simple monosaccharides and disaccharides to more complex oligosaccharides – which contain up to ten molecules of ‘simple’ sugars connected by bonds. The root -saccharide derives from the Latin saccharum and Greek sakcharon. The Greeks modified this from the Prankrit sakkharā and Sanskrit śarkarā – all to mean sugar or gravel. Mono-, di-, and oligo- roots all refer to the numbers of saccharides (one, two, and ‘few’, respectively).

So how do plants produce sugars that we consume?

All plants have an organelle chloroplast which contains a green photosynthetic pigment that produces the chemical compounds with the aid of radiant energy from the light of the sun. The photosynthetic pigment is also responsible for the varying colors of green in plants. Photosynthesis is the process in which plants use radial energy from the sun (in addition to water and carbon dioxide) to form a simple glucose sugars molecule C_6 H_12 O_6. This process yields the energy plants need to survive – and it then can manufacture the more complex sucrose and fructose combinations. The photosynthetic process can be represented in a chemical equation 6 CO_2 + 6 H_2 O + sunlight →3 C_6 H_12 O_6.

In the culinary realm, because sugar does not occur in the form of glucose in plants naturally – it is usually modified from other sugar. Glucose is the main form of sugar in corn syrup. There is a distinct difference from corn syrup and high-fructose corn syrup found in many processed foods. This difference is just how the syrup is produced and the enzymatic processes that occur in each.

How is normal corn syrup useful?

Because of its different chemical structure, glucose is known as a preventative measure for crystallization in simple syrup.

Simple syrup:

Although I still do not know why exactly it may be called simple – I know it is a simple combination of sugar and water; it also just happens to be very simpleto make. Simple syrup has many uses in the kitchen where a liquid form of sugar is required. The best example is adding sugar to cold drinks. Notice how it just settles to the bottom of the container…? It just does not want to dissolve.

Reading

This is only a quick break from science and the chemistry of cooking. But this month and the end of February has been an extremely tiring and stressful. With the start of Literature Circles, my homework load increased three fold. Literature circles are the newest installment of my English class curriculum. It utilizes small groups of two or three who read a particular text of no less than two hundred pages. The reading is to be completed in three weeks at one week intervals. I chose a partner who is a good friend of mine. Initially, we were undecided upon which book we were going to read. Another friend of ours in the class had no partner, but a book he was interested in reading. Soon the three of us obtained copies of Octavia E. BUTLER’s book Parable of the Talents.

Far beyond high school, I realized that the pace at which I read is far slower than the usual pacing of my peers. I rarely read books in my spare time, not that I truly have any spare time nor do I read for pleasure. At its most basic, the only time I read fiction works are for English-Language Arts class or other education.

Now in my hands, I hold a four hundred page book that I must complete in three weeks. Unfortunately, there was no time to reassign myself to another group or attempt to persuade both partners to switch titles. Four hundred pages – three weeks. My group decided to divide the book into even thirds based on the number of chapters. Luckily there were twenty one chapters and twenty one divides into three seven times evenly. Therefore it reasoned that twenty one chapters should be dispersed in three seven-chapter intervals. And thus it was set, seven chapters were to be read each week (if it isn’t obvious, that roughly can equate to one chapter per day). In Parable of the Talents, BUTLER writes approximately fifteen pages for each chapter…fifteen pages of reading each day. Yuck. I knew I should not have agreed to read this book of four hundred pages. I understand that many avid readers scoff at the idea of ‘only’ fifteen pages, which they could read in ten minutes. I am the complete opposite; I cannot read quickly, possibly five pages in a half-hour at most – depending on how dense the material is presented.

Anyhow, one week passes. I should be starting the second installment of my book. I should be starting chapter eight. I should be at page 135. But what have I accomplished in seven days? Almost nothing, absolutely nothing. The only time I spent reading was during class and lunch. My marker rests at page thirty. One hundred pages behind pace.

I decide it is time for a meeting with my English teacher. My English teacher (whose name shall remain undisclosed) and I shared a valuable conversation. We both learned something new about me and my reading. He told me to take a half-hour of reading time, and take notes on what thoughts are going through my mind, what distractions are around me, and what else is possibly hindering my reading pace. My teacher explains that the issue is less likely a problem with reading itself, but other aspects which may affect my reading. The notes I took gave a framework to build upon…

Sugar

The human tongue can essentially detect five different flavors: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and savory (also: umami). What substances taste sweet? Sugar, of course – but why do we have a natural attraction to sugar and sweets? When we are born, we have a natural attraction to sugars, because sugars (usually) mean energy. On the same token, at a young age, many children dislike vegetable. When cooked (and exponentially worse when over-cooked) enzymes react in response to the high heat to form extremely bitter compounds. And in many cases in the natural world, poisons and toxics are bitter. As humans mature, our food pallet becomes more sophisticated and becomes more comfortable with pungent, spicy, sour, and bitter flavors. It is for this reason why adults are more comfortable consuming vegetables; their pallets are less affected to the bitter components of a dish more than the other complex harmony of aromatics and spices of a fully-‘developed’ pallet.

Studies have shown that there is a relation between the ability (and severity) of tasting PTC (phenylthiocarbamide) paper and the flavor of vegetables. PTC is a chemical which is extremely bitter to some of the population, while virtually tasteless to others. This strange difference of two extremes is dependent on a genetic encoding to taste certain bitter compounds. Those with high sensitivity to PTC (myself included) showed an extreme disgust to vegetables (I can recall placing the PTC paper on my tongue and immediately spitting it out. That taste lingered for hours – if it helps, the paper tasted like chloroquine or quinacrine that you would take for prevention against malaria.). Conversely, those who seemed to have no effect from the PTC had no issues with vegetable consumption. Therefore, some children don’t eat their vegetables because they don’t want to, but because s/he is too sensitive to the bitter compounds or even become unpalatable…so it is not entirely the kids fault.

Moving onto another subject of sugars… (I understand the majority of the text above is about bitters, but I thought it was interesting and decided to do the extra research)

Albeit not as complex as salts and flour, sugar has a unique array of varieties. Apart from the normal white granulated sugar, there is brown sugar (golden brown and dark brown), raw sugar, and all types of sugar syrups (like corn syrup). So how does sugar arrive on our supermarket shelves?

It all begins with the sugarcane stock.
Sugarcanes are any of about twenty five species of tall grasses (like bamboo) in the Saccharum genus which originated somewhere in Asia. In many cases, the sugar found in the sugarcanes at the grocery store is a hybrid of the twenty five. Cultivators carefully select the best characteristics of the sugarcane and decide which best moves to the next generation of crop. It is not uncommon for stocks to grow from six feet to as high as nineteen feet in height.

After harvest, the cultivators have several options to produce a consumer product, all based on its final destination. In Costa Rica, I have had the pleasure of taking the whole sugarcane, pressing it through rollers, and straining the pulp to produce a pitcher of a sugarcane juice. This elixir was served in a shot glass and looked like a clouded mixed drink. The taste was concentrated – sweet, but not overwhelming and with a nutty flavor. It was an opportunity to enjoy a rich Costa Rican delicacy of cold pressed sugarcane.