Endless Curiosity about science, math and universe

In short: The 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry — for plastics that conduct electricity — began in a Tokyo laboratory in 1967, with an experiment that looked like a failure. The researcher who ran that first experiment was Hyung Chick Pyun, a visiting scientist from Korea. His name did not appear among the authors of the first paper; it remained only in the acknowledgments. This article follows the record honestly, without accusing anyone of stealing credit. Why was polyacetylene a wall? Plastic built the modern world because it is light and slow to decay — and because of one absolute rule: it does not conduct electricity. That is precisely why electric wires are wrapped in it. Polyacetylene, a plastic made of acetylene molecules linked into long chains, looked different on paper: its alternating single and double bonds seemed to hold a path for electrons. But whenever anyone made it, all they got was a black powder — impossible to shape, impossible to measure. To be useful, it had to ...

In short: Dynamite itself never became a drug. Its explosive ingredient, nitroglycerin, turned out to widen blood vessels — an effect first noticed in Alfred Nobel's own factory workers — and from 1879 it was prescribed for angina. The same molecule, at a vastly smaller dose and in a different context, went from blasting rock to saving hearts. How can an explosive and a heart drug be the same substance? Nitroglycerin was first synthesized in 1847 by the Italian chemist Ascanio Sobrero. The liquid was so unstable that handling it was perilous. In the 1860s Nobel mixed it with diatomaceous earth to create a far more manageable solid explosive: dynamite. Then, in Nobel's factories, something strange was reported. Dynamite Angina medicine Key substance Nitroglycerin Nitroglycerin Purpose Blasting, construction, mining Widening blood vessels, relieving chest pain Difference Dose and context — bulk explosive vs a tiny medical dose What did the factory workers discover?...