Chemical Language Translated

Gold Book Logo

During my time at the Royal Society of Chemistry (do I sometimes make it sound like a prison sentence?), I watched in awe as my old mucker Andrew Wilkinson helped reformulate the IUPAC book of chemical definitions commonly known as the Gold Book. That mighty auric tome is online and searchable with a click these days. And is as useful as ever to chemists looking for a quick description for a jargon word.

Take chiral, for instance: “Having the property of chirality“. Hmmm. So, look up chiral: “The geometric property of a rigid object (or spatial arrangement of points or atoms) of being non-superposable on its mirror image; such an object has no symmetry elements of the second kind.” Such a crisp and easily comprehended definition. Not.

Obviously, there is a need for technical definitions, but somtimes such definition simply complicate something that could be just as easily described often with a single word. Chiral = handed. (The clue’s in the word itself, which comes from the Greek for hand and I’m pretty sure the scientist who coined the term did so to save us all the trouble of talking about non-superimposable mirror image objects (you know, like hands and gloves?). Indeed, many a chemistry student would grasp the concept much faster and many a lay reader of a scientific paper would understand if such terms were explained in parallel with their simpler analogue. So, for all you non-chemists, here’s a Boxing Day list together with links to their technical definitions if you need the fully Monty,

  • Chiral – handed
  • Hydrophobic – water hating
  • Hydrophilic – water loving
  • Micelle – microscopic bubble
  • Cyclodextrin – starch rings
  • Mass – how much stuff
  • Isotope – same element, different mass
  • Bond – a link between atoms
  • Organic – made with carbon
  • Inorganic – made without carbon
  • Lipid – Oily or fatty natural molecule
  • Morphology – shape
  • Half life – Time taken for value to half
  • Second Life – Virtual meeting place

Obviously, these simple definitions gloss over the finer details, but isn’t that the point of a glossary? “Professionals often face difficulties explaining these terms to lay people because they are too aware of the exactness of the concept, emphasizing both the morphological and functional aspects,” says chemist Andrew Sun, recently interviewed in Reactive Reports. There are many more I use in writing for a non-technical audience, but some jargon words are quite stubborn. Are there any good, simple definitions for the following?

  • Polymer
  • Sublime
  • Catalyst