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Host Bill Nye looks back over the past two centuries, in which chemistry has brought us from a time when atoms were merely a hypothesis to an age when scientists may be able to combine particles on the atomic level into micromachines. Nye examines the late 18th and early 19th centuries, during which oxygen was discovered; scientists learned that electricity transforms chemicals and that elements can combine into more complex molecules; and modern pharmacology was born out of the first synthesis of an organic compound from entirely inorganic materials. The second half of the 19th century, Nye shows us, was a time dominated by discoveries relating to light, electrons, radioactivity, and the periodic table of the elements. Finally, the 20th century ushered in synthetic hardened plastic and the chemical marvel of fullerenes, which may become the building blocks for nanotechnology research, allowing the construction of machines on the atomic level. Students will be introduced to such pivotal figures in the history of chemistry as Joseph Priestley, Antoine Lavoisier, John Dalton, August Kekulé, Amedeo Avogadro, Dmitri Mendeleev, and Leo Baekeland. Through Nye’s one-on-one conversations with Nobel laureates Roald Hoffmann, Dudley Herschbach, and Richard Smalley, as well as the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s president, Arnold Thackray, they will be introduced to some of today’s leading minds in the chemical and molecular sciences. The DVD features a video index that allows you to find the right content segments quickly. A guide for teachers is included, and highlights of the program are correlated to National Science Education Standards.
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