ChemCafé

Among the loads of various ‘concentration calculators’ and ‘grams-versus-moles converters’ that are available online, I think the one provided by WolframAlpha can be quite useful and is nicely done. For example, if you need to know how many moles of iron are present in 5 grams, just query ‘how many moles are in 5 grams [...]

Well, this post is not really chemistry-related, but I think it should probably be of interest for a broad audience, especially for everyone who likes dreaming when looking at a cloudless night sky… Nature News reports on Twitter the Apollo 11 mission as it happened, exactly 40 years ago – wish I was alive then… [...]

Spring is usually associated with renewal, growth and mating. For some people (including myself) it also means hay fever. So last morning I was taking my daily pill against allergies, I looked at the label on the flask, where it is mentionned that the active ingredient is ‘cetirizine hydrochloride‘, which serves as ‘antihistamine‘. So, what [...]

This afternoon came to EPFL Prof. Achim Müller from University of Bielefeld (Germany) to give a talk to our institute. Among a series of impressive giant molybdenum-based spheres (see figure below) he mentioned molecules belonging to either Archimedean or Platonic solids… Although the talk itself was quite fascinating, the question I was asking to myself [...]

I went yesterday to the chemical stores to get a new 2.5L bottle of acetonitrile, and I was stunned to see the price had moreless quadrupled since the last time I bought this solvent… I was aware of the world shortage of this compound, but had never so directly observed its consequences. The funny thing [...]

Hi, welcome to ChemCafé – the chemistry blog, my little corner on the huge Web!
I’m currently a PhD student in chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland. This blog is where I share my thoughts on what I daily observe about the world of chemistry. So you’ll find news but also [...]