Thanks to Chemistry Survey

A Burning Desire

In the 1930s and 1940s tanned skin, once looked upon as a sign of low class, became a mark of leisure and good health. A sunbathing craze emerged and fueled demand for products to help achieve glowing tans while avoiding painful sunburns.

A Flicker of Something Deeper

What does the Periodic Table tell us? Something about nature and something about human nature.

A Fresh Breath

Listerine began as an antiseptic; advertising allowed it to change the gargling habits of America.

A Sweet Invention

A disease known to the ancient Egyptians finally met its match with modern biotechnology. Discover how human insulin became the first successful biotech product, one that kicked off a new scientific revolution. 

About Thanks to Chemistry

Common objects have stories to tell us—about how they came to be and how they influenced lives and even the very shape and texture of our societies. Thanks to Chemistry uncovers the chemistry and the history hidden inside the stuff of our lives.

Accounting for Calories

A hundred years ago only scientists and factory managers knew what a calorie was. What happened to turn the calorie into an essential element of dieting? 

Baking Powder Wars

Even something as simple as baking powder can show us how food, health, and politics can intersect. In the early 20th century, fears surrounding food adulteration affected baking powder and briefly dragged this unlikely object into the limelight.

Cooking with Glass

In 1911 no one cooked with glass. Household glass was fragile. Mothers taught their daughters not to put glass on top of the stove or in the oven, lest it explode into fast-moving, sharp-edged fragments. That year, in the city of Corning in upstate New York, gossip started buzzing about a major local employer. Rumor had it that Corning Glass Works wanted to move into the kitchen. When the cookware idea leaked out, the invention bug spread throughout the town.

Healthy Metal

Join author Sam Kean as he digs up some elements with anti-microbial properties.

Miniature Power

The modern battery began life as a strange—and large—collection of silver, zinc, and brine-soaked cloth. Since the 19th century it has gone through many forms, but retained its size. How did one man and a war turn the bulky battery into the svelte version we know today and cannot live without?

Money Trouble

Inside common banknotes is some very uncommon chemistry. Discover how rare earth elements foil the nefarious attempts of counterfeiters.  

Plastic Communications

The 19th century created its own version of the Internet, one made possible by a natural plastic.

Rise Up!

Somewhere in your kitchen hides a squat little cardboard box surprisingly heavy for its size. Inside is a powder that packs a chemical punch, one that that changed the baking habits of America.

Sealed with a Whisper

Discover how a single mom and an inventor revolutionized post-war kitchen habits. 

Sweet as Saccharin

Wars and a changing consumer culture turned this lab accident turned sweetener into an essential part of diet culture.

The Cyborg Transformed

The melding of technology and body in the service of health has been going on since the 1950s. Cyborgs of today blur the old distinctions between science and fiction, artificial and natural.

The Lucky Polymer

Crystal clear, lighter than glass, strong, and heat resistant, polycarbonate’s versatility and adaptability earned it the nickname “the lucky polymer.” The history of the CD is often recounted as a triumph of electronics rather than as an achievement of the chemistry that created it.

Wrap it Up

Inside your refrigerator a battle rages between new and old, fresh versus mold. What weapons will fight such decay? For many in the years following Word War II the answer was plastic wrap.