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Text 1

D.I. Mendeleev

Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleev was born at Tobolsk, Siberia, on 7th February, 1834. He was the 17^th and last child in the family. Dimitri was educated at the gymnasium in Tobolsk, where he showed great interest in mathematics and physics. In 1849 his family moved to St. Petersburg. He entered the Main Pedagogical Institute in 1850 and graduated in 1855.

In 1856 he defended his master's thesis: "Research and Theories on Expansion of Substances due to Heat." Following his master’s program, Dmitri focused his life on his career of teaching and research. He was essentially a teacher devoted to his work and to his students; he was next a lover of his country. The first led to his books and the periodic table, while the latter gave rise to his studies of chemical technology and the organization of Russia's industries, agriculture, transport meteorology and metrology.

In 1859, financed by a government he went abroad to study scientific and technological innovations at the University of Heidelberg. Between 1859 and 1861 he studied the densities of gases with Regnault in Paris and the workings of the spectroscope with Kirchoff in Heidelberg.

Mendeleev returned to St. Petersburg where he continued teaching and research. He became a Professor of Chemistry at the Saint Petersburg Technological Institute and Saint Petersburg State University in 1864 and 1865, respectively. In 1866, he became Doctor of Science for his dissertation "On the Combinations of Water with Alcohol". His research findings were expansive and beneficial to the Russian people. He became professor of general chemistry in 1867 and continued to teach there until 1890.

As he began to teach inorganic chemistry, Mendeleev couldn’t find a textbook that met his needs. Since he had already published a textbook on organic chemistry in 1861 that he had been awarded the prestigious Demidov Prize, he set out to write another one. The result was “The Principles of Chemistry”, which became a classic, running through many editions and translations.

In 1893 the Russian government appointed him Director of the Bureau of Weights and Measures. There he made significant contribution to metrology. In this role he was directed to formulate new state standards for the production of vodka. Mendeleev also investigated the composition of petroleum and helped to found the first refinery in Russia. His most remarkable contribution to science was the creation of periodic table.

Mendeleyev's notes on "three services to the Motherland" are quite interesting. He places work as an explorer of nature at the first place. He devoted himself to it. He tried to make his experimental and theoretical results serve society. He also devoted much of his effort to teaching, to the spread of knowledge. Finally, the third important task in Mendeleyev's life was to do his best for the economic and industrial progress of Russia.

Dmitri Mendeleev received numerous awards from various organizations including the Davy Medal from the Royal Society of England, the Copley Medal, the Society's highest award. Mendeleev continued to be a popular social figure until his death from pneumonia on 20th January, 1907.

Text 2

The discovery of the periodic law

D. I. Mendeleev made important contributions to chemistry. His profound thoughts led him to the discovery of the periodic law, among other things.

There were attempts before Mendeleyev’s to put elements into some kind of order. But they were not successful. In 1866, the Englishman Newlands published a relationship of the elements entitled the "Law of Octaves". Mendeleev's ideas were similar to those of Newlands but Dmitri had more data and felt that Newlands had not gone far enough in his research. By 1869, the Russian chemist had assembled detailed descriptions of more than 60 elements. On March 6, 1869 a formal presentation was made to the Russian Chemical Society entitled "The Dependence between the Properties of the Atomic Weights of the Elements", which described elements according to both atomic weight and valence. Unfortunately, Mendeleev was ill and the presentation was given by his colleague Professor Menshutkin. He published his periodic table of all known elements and predicted several new elements to complete the table.

On November 29, 1870, Mendeleev predicted the properties of undiscovered elements. His table had blank spaces where he predicted three new elements and suggested several properties of each. At first the periodic system didn’t raise interest among chemists. However, with the discovery of the predicted elements, it began to win wide acceptance. In 1875, one of the predicted elements was discovered which was named Gallium. The other two elements were discovered later and their properties were found similar to those predicted by Mendeleev. These discoveries took him to the top of the science world. Mendeleev enjoyed international recognition and had received awards from many countries. Mendeleev’s Periodic Table has undergone some minor changes, but fundamentally is unchanged, and it was a remarkable scientific achievement.

Throughout the remainder of his life, Dmitri Mendeleev received numerous awards from various organizations. In St. Petersburg his name was given to the National Metrology Institute. In Moscow there is D.I. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia. Russian Academy of Science yearly awards Mendeleev Golden Medal for achievements in chemical science and technology. A synthetic chemical element mendelevium (Md) with the atomic number 101 was named after him.

Text 3

The names of chemical elements

The names of chemical elements often hide thrilling stories of their discovery. And chemists who had discovered a new element were not infrequently at a loss to find a name for the "new-born". It was important to think up a name which would at least partly indicate the element's properties. Such were business names, if you like. They could hardly be called romantic. Examples are hydrogen (the Greek for "producing water"), oxygen ("producing acid"), and phosphorus ("light-bringing"). These names record important properties of the elements.

Some elements were named after the planets of the solar system; such are selenium, and tellurium (from the Greek for Moon and Earth, respectively), uranium, neptunium and Plutonium.

Other names are taken from mythology. One of these is tantalum. Tantalus, the favourite son of Zeus, was cruelly punished for an offence against the gods. He had to stand up to his neck in water and above him hung branches with juicy aromatic fruit. But whenever he wanted to quench his thirst the water would flow away from him, and whenever he stretched his hand out to pick a fruit, the branches would swing away from him. The suffering experienced by chemists before their efforts to isolate the element tantalum from its ores were successful could be compared only to those of Zeus's son Tantalus. The names titanium and vanadium also come from Greek mythology.

There are elements which were named in honour of various countries or continents, such as germanium, gallium (from Gaul, the ancient name of France), polonium (Poland), scandium (Scandinavia), francium, ruthenium (Ruthenia is the Latin for Russia), europium and americium. Other elements were named after cities. These are: hafnium (Copenhagen), lutetium (from Lutetia, the Latin name for Paris), berkelium (in honour of the town of Berkely, U.S.A.), yttrium, terbium, erbium, and ytterbium (after Ytterby, a small town in Sweden where the mineral containing these elements was first discovered).

Finally, some elements were named to immortalize the names of great scientists: curium, fermium, einsteinium, mendelevium, and lawrencium. There is still some controversy among scientists as to the origin of the names of the elements of antiquity, and nobody knows so far just why, say, sulphur is called sulphur, iron — iron, or tin — tin. See how many curious things we find in the register of the chemical elements!

Text 4

The chemical elements essential to life

How many of the naturally occurring elements are essential to life? After more than a century of investigation the question still cannot be answered with certainty. Only some time ago the best answer would have been — twenty. Since then four more elements have been found to be essential for life, for example, for the growth of animals, such as fluorine, silicon, tin and vanadium. Nickel is thought by the scientist soon to be added to the list.

In many cases the exact role played by these elements would remain unknown or unclear. Both chemists and biologists have long been surprised by the way the evolution selected certain elements as the building blocks of living organisms.

The solar system, like the universe, seems to be 99 per cent hydrogen and helium. In the earth's crust helium appears to be essentially non-existent, except in a few rare deposits, hydrogen atoms constituting only 22 per cent of the total.

Eight elements provide more than 98 per cent of the atoms in the Earth's crust, namely, oxygen 47 per cent, silicon 28 per cent, aluminium 7.9 per cent, iron 4.5 per cent, calcium 3.5 per cent, sodium 2.5 per cent, potassium 2.5 per cent, magnesium 2.2 per cent. Of these eight elements only five are among the eleven that account for more than 99.9 per cent of the atoms in the human body. Two elements, hydrogen and oxygen, account for 88.5 per cent of the atoms in the human body, hydrogen supplying 63 per cent of the total and oxygen 25.5 per cent. Carbon accounts for another 9.5 per cent and nitrogen 1.4 per cent. The remaining 20 elements are now thought to be essential for life and they account for less than 7 per cent of the body's atoms.

Silicon is known to be 146 times more plentiful than carbon in the earth's crust. Silicon like carbon has the capacity to gain four electrons and forms covalent bonds. Carbon was selected over silicon as the central building block. The difference that led to the preference for carbon compounds over silicon compounds can be explained: 1) by the unusual stability of carbon dioxide, and 2) by an almost unique ability of carbon to form long chains and stable with five or six members. The versatility of the carbon atom is responsible for the millions of organic compounds found on the earth.

If some generalization were made about the role of various elements it would be interesting to note that five elements: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur make up the molecular building blocks of living matter: amino-acids, sugars, fatty acids, purines, pyrimidines and nucleotides. These molecules not only have independent biochemical roles but also are the constituents of the following large molecules: proteins, glycogen, starch, lipids and nucleic acids. This is the first essential group. The principal positively charged ions are provided by four metals: sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium.

Text 5

What is there the most of on Earth?

People tried to estimate the amounts of the separate elements on our planet. For example, lead, zinc, and silver were widely used in practice; there was much of them. Hence, these elements were considered abundant. But the rare-earths (lanthanides) were rare because they were hardly ever found on Earth.

Now we can state exactly how much there is of everything! We can even tell how many atoms of each element there are in the Earth's crust. So was born the science of geochemistry.

It appeared that the first 26 representatives of the Mendeleyev Table, from hydrogen to iron, form practically the entire crust of the Earth. They constitute 99.7 per cent of its weight, leaving only three tenths of a per cent for all the other 67 elements occurring in nature.

Now what is there the most of on Earth?

Neither iron, nor copper, nor tin, though man uses them for thousands of years and the supply of these metals seemed immense, even inexhaustible. The most abundant element is oxygen. If we place all the Earth's resources of oxygen on one pan of an imaginary pair of scales and all the rest of the elements on the other, the scales will strike an almost perfect balance. Almost half of the Earth's crust is oxygen.

It is everywhere: in water, in the atmosphere, in an enormous number of rocks, in any animal and plant, and everywhere it plays a very important part.

One quarter of the Earth is silicon. It is the ultimate foundation of inorganic nature. Further, the elements of the Earth arrange themselves in the following order of abundance: aluminium, 7.4 per cent; iron, 4.2 per cent; calcium, 3,3 per cent; sodium, 2.4 per cent; potassium and magnesium, 2,35 per cent each; hydrogen, 1.0 per cent; and titanium, 0,6 per cent. Such are the ten most abundant chemical elements on our planet.

But what is there the least of on Earth? There is very little gold and platinum. That is why they are valued so highly. But it is a curious paradox that gold was the first of metals to become known to man. The noble metals possess a unique feature. They do not occur in nature as compounds but in the native state. No effort is required to smelt them from their ores, that is why they were found on Earth, so very long ago.

We could rightly call them ghost elements.

The geochemists tell us that the amount of polonium on Earth is only 9600 tons; the amount of radon is still smallег, 260 tons; there is 26 thousand tons of actinium. Radium and protactinium are giants among the ghosts: their amount is about 100 million tons, but compared to gold and platinum this is a very small quantity. As to astatine and francium, they can hardly be called even as ghosts, because they are still less material. The terrestrial reserves of astatine and francium are measured, ridiculous though it sounds, in milligrams. The name of the rarest element on Earth is astatine (69 milligrams in all of the Earth's crust). No further comments are necessary.

Text 6

States of Matter

We often talk about the three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas. Most of the matter that we use is in one of those three forms. Did you know that there are more states of matter? We aren't as familiar with them nor do we see them every day. They include: plasmas and the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). Solids, liquids, gases, plasmas, and Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) are different states that have different physical properties. Each of these states is also known as a phase.

Plasma was a new idea when it was identified by William Crookes in 1879. It is often called the fourth state of matter. Plasma is electrically charged, does not hold its shape, has a huge amount of energy and is very difficult state to manipulate without a laboratory. Plasma can be found here on the earth in flames, lightning, and the polar auroras. The sun, the stars, and some other space events and objects are also made of plasma matter.

The scientists who worked with the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) received a Nobel Prize for their work in 1995. A Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter of a dilute gas of bosons cooled to extremely low temperatures very close to absolute zero (that is, very near 0 K or −273.14 °C).

Elements and compounds can move from one phase to another when specific physical conditions change. Generally, changes in the physical state do not lead to any chemical change in molecules.

As we learned in solids, liquids and gases all matter exists in certain states or phases. Water can be liquid water, solid ice, or gas vapor. It's still all water, however, and made up of molecules of 2 hydrogen atoms and 1oxygen atom (H2O). 

If you give a liquid water molecule enough energy, it escapes the liquid phase and becomes a gas. That vapor (or gas) can condense and become a drop of water in the cooler air. If you put that liquid drop in the freezer, it would become a solid piece of ice. No matter what physical state it was in, it was always water. It always had the same chemical properties.

Scientist use the term "standard state" to describe the state an element or substance is in at "room conditions" of 25 degrees C and one atmosphere of air pressure. Most of the elements, like gold and iron, are solids in their standard state. Only two elements are liquid in their standard states: mercury and bromine. Some of the elements that are gases in their natural state include hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and the noble gases.

Text 7

Organic chemistry

Organic chemistry is the study of compounds that contain the element carbon. It overlaps with other sciences like biochemistry, medicine, and materials science. Organic chemists study the properties, structure, and chemical reactions of organic compounds.

Non-chemist can't help being surprised to learn that many chemical compounds are obtained from living things. For example, sugars, ethanol, methane, urea, etc.

What all these compounds have in common are the elements carbon and hydrogen. Thus, it can be said that nearly all compounds obtained from living things are carbon compounds.

In the early days of chemistry no one ever thought of obtaining compounds from living things in the laboratory. The idea was that there were special processes going on inside the organism (living thing). The special processes were believed to be essential for the formation of the compounds. They called chemicals from living things organic chemicals and the others inorganic chemicals.

However, in 1828 a chemist called Wohler showed organic chemicals to be just ordinary chemical substances. He did this by converting an inorganic chemical into an organic one simply by heating it in the laboratory. Gradually, more and more organic chemicals were shown to be just like ordinary chemicals. But we still use the terms "organic" and "inorganic" to divide chemicals into two classes. Nowadays, however, we use the term "organic compounds" to mean carbon compounds, there being some exceptions to the rule.

Most of the organic chemicals we have nowadays are man-made and are obtained directly from organisms. However, the main raw material for manufacturing organic chemicals is petroleum, it having been formed in the past from marine organisms.

There's a simple reason for keeping carbon compounds separate: there are just too many of them. There are more compounds of carbon than compounds of all the other elements put together. Organic chemistry is therefore to be a very large branch of chemistry. It includes millions of compounds. Most of these are compounds of carbon involving just a few other nonmetallic elements, for example, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and the halogens.

Why does carbon have so many more compounds than other elements? What is special about it? The answer to these questions is: carbon atoms have the special property of being able to join together to form chains of atoms. The chains may be short, or they may be hundreds or even thousands of atoms long.

Since the carbon chain can be practically any length, the number of possible hydrocarbons is enormous.

Text 8

Carbon

Carbon is to be ranked along with hydrogen and oxygen as one of the most important of all the elements to man. Carbon occurs in nature as a free element and in many compounds. It constitutes only about 0.03 percent of the Earth's crust, but this relatively small amount of the element is of great importance. Its importance is indicated by the 300,000 or more compounds of the element which exist naturally or which have been prepared. It is proved that this number is approximately ten times the number of compounds of all the other elements put together. For a long time it was believed that these compounds might have never been produced except with the aid of organic life, in other words, by living plants and animals. For this reason they were called organic compounds.

It is known that carbon occurs in two crystalline forms which differ strikingly by their properties. Carbon occurs in its pure form in nature as graphite and diamond. Graphite is black; soft, a good conductor of electricity. Diamond, on the contrary, is colourless and transparent, the hardest of known substances, a non-conductor of electricity. It is the crystal structure, as determined by X-rays, which gives an explanation of this contrast of properties. All atoms in a diamond are firmly linked together, hence the whole crystal acts as a giant molecule. Thus we account for the extreme hardness of the diamond, its high melting point, and its failure to dissolve in any solvent.

On the other hand, it is found that graphite possesses parallel planes of atoms, and each is at a considerable distance from its neighbours. A certain portion of the electrons in graphite are relatively free to move as it is true of metals. Hence, graphite is a conductor of electricity.

Carbon is the central element to all living organisms. It is the basis to all life on earth. By studying carbon and organic compounds, scientists can learn more about life, the human body, and how it works.

Text 9

Hydrogen

Hydrogen is the lightest chemical element. Its mass is the unit of the measurement for the masses of other elements.

Hydrogen is a colourless, odourless gas when pure. It is sixteen times lighter than oxygen, being the lightest of all known substances. The solubility of hydrogen in water is very slight, compared with that of oxygen.

Hydrogen is liquefied by compression when cooled below its critical temperature (—234°C). Liquid hydrogen is also colourless, and when allowed to evaporate rapidly, it freezes to a colourless solid.

Hydrogen was first obtained in 1766 by Sir Henry Cavendish in London. He found that he could get the gas by dissolving zinc, iron or tin in diluted vitriolic acid (H2S04) or spirit of salt (HC1). He discovered that a mixture of hydrogen and common air explodes with a long noise, and he was impressed with the lightness of the gas. He named the gas "inflammable air", the name "hydrogen" (water-former) was given by Lavoisier.

In combination with oxygen, in the form of water, and with carbon, in the many organic compounds, hydrogen is one of the most abundant elements on the earth.

Hydrogen is usually obtained by action of sulphuric acid (H2S04) on zinc. The metal replaces the hydrogen, which bubbles off a gas. Electrolysis of water also liberates hydrogen at the cathode, while oxygen comes off at the anode.

Hydrogen burns in the air forming water. Although hydrogen is readily combustible, yet it is not a supporter of combustion; that is, substances will not burn in it. At ordinary temperatures hydrogen is not an active element. But under certain conditions it combines with many elements. For example, if a mixture of hydrogen and chlorine is exposed to the sunlight, the two gases will combine with explosion forming hydrogen chloride. Under the right conditions hydrogen combines with nitrogen forming ammonia, and with sulphur forming hydrogen sulphide. If a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen is heated to about 800°C, a violent explosion occurs and water is formed.

Hydrogen exists in three isotopic forms, known as hydrogen (or protium), deuterium and tritium. By studying the behaviour of hydrogen isotopes, scientists started an entirely new branch of science, known as isotope chemistry.

Text 10

Water

Water is hydrogen oxide, a compound of hydrogen and oxygen. It can be made if hydrogen or a hydrogen-containing substance is burnt in air or oxygen.

Most of the world's water is liquid, but an important fraction is solid as ice and snow.

After the examination of the water properties the chemists found that physical properties of water can be used to define many physical constants and units. The freezing point of water is taken at 0° С. The boiling point of water is taken as 100° C.

Many mineral substances contain water of crystallization (e. g. copper sulphate) and in the atmosphere there are millions of tons of water vapour. Clouds consist of minute droplets of water or crystals of ice.

Water dissolves a very large number of substances and is the most important solvent. It does not dissolve greasy, fatty substances or most plastics.

After they had found the composition of water, the scientists could investigate its properties. It was stated that ordinary water is impure, it usually contains dissolved salts and dissolved gases, and sometimes organic matter.

For chemical work water is to be purified by distillation. Pure water is colourless, tasteless, and odourless. Rain water formed by condensation of water in the air is nearly pure water. It contains only small proportions of the dust and of dissolved gases. One of the most important problems is to obtain water sufficiently pure to meet our needs. Water is not only the most abundant compound, but it is also very important for life. To be sure life would be impossible without water.

When water is to be used for drinking, it is necessary to kill the microbes it may contain. To achieve this, water which is to be purified is thoroughly filtered. Another way to purify water is to boil it. None of these methods is fit for producing pure water in the chemical sense. To prepare chemically pure water suitable for scientific use, we take advantage of the fact that water is usually changed to steam while most of the dissolved substances are not volatile. If we condense the steam, we are thus able to remove all the impurities except volatile ones. This process is called distillation. Distilled water has many uses, both in the laboratory and in industry.

So water is one of the most important of all chemical substances. It is a major constituent of living matter and of the environment in which we live.