Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Dead simple’ way to see atomic structure

Did you know almost all surfaces have a coating of water on them. Making water all around us and not only in our body. In this article I also found out that water is very difficult to study and that water dominates interfacial properties”—properties that affect the wear and tear on that surface. Since water is very energetic or flux as the article says it doesn't sit still long enough for measurements to be taken and the understanding of water to be made. Which makes the making and understanding the mystery of water an unsolved crime for us. Until while doing another experiment water was involved so they conducted even more experiments and found that the graphene sheet was automatically conformal and hugged the water so tight that it revealed the structure of water that we have not been able to figure out for so many years. Though it was an unfortunate discovery for the scientists which discovered this mystery were very pleased by the unfortunate outcome because it finally let them figure out the mystery that has fooled many other scientists and have been waiting to discover for so many years. Who knew by chance you could make an important discovery and solve the mystery that has haunted us for so long.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Macromolecules in cells

Macromolecules are a large class of molecules very important biologically. There is also the term monomer that comes from a greek word. Mono meaning one and meros meaning part which is what they are made of. Different molecules that when are pulled apart form a different function. They are chemically bonded together to form long multipart polymers. Polymers you may know is a very difficult term but it has the most basic meaning in the world. Polymer means a large molecule made up of similar or identical subunits called monomers. You may know with every class their must at least one or two main subunits but in this class their is four which all behave differently. They are protein, carbohydrates, lipids, and nucleic acids. You may know if you have taken health that all of these main components show up in your daily life but the one that I found most interesting was carbohydrates. They make up most of our diet and are showed up in many of our foods but it doesn't only show up in our food. I bet you didn't know that some molecular structures of carbohydrates are found on cancer cells and help doctors tackle the cancer before it finally spreads throughout your body and takes its course in making you weak. Just like when you have a glucose molecule and  galactose molecule one little switcheroo will make the name change and the way it behaves. The oh and the h will be switched and that is when galactose is formed. But most importantly you have to know how a macromolecule is formed and what it is formed by. Macromolecules are formed by condensation reactions and are broken down by hydrolysis.  Making many new ingredients that are used in our diets today. Such as the glucose that is in our fatty foods.