The magic of Chemistry lies in solving problems plaguing the world, writes IIT Guwahati professor

How do you know a molecule exists? Primarily by interaction of radiation with matter.

Take a strand of your hair. Cut it into ten lakh (one million) pieces – and not the way a barber would do – but perpendicular to it while keeping the length intact. You will then have been able to hold a chemical bond. How do you do that? There is no knife sharp enough to do that. Only a chemical bond, energetic atom, electron, or radiation would be able to cut the bonds. That makes it very difficult to know chemical bonds, consequently, molecules and their workings. However, knowing them is good for us.

Here is one example: We all need to drink a lot of water every day. Every water molecule has one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms. Now, add two hydrogen atoms and one carbon atom to the molecular formula. You get a new molecule called methanol. That is poison. A lot of people in India die drinking that liquid. Now add one more carbon atom and two more hydrogen atoms to the molecular formula of methanol. You will get ethanol. A lot of people enjoy that drink mixed with water. That’s the molecules in action inside our body.

Most of us would have taken painkillers. Every time we take a tablet, we take about a billion times a billion molecules. They go through the bloodstream and reach all parts of the body along with the section experiencing pain.

The molecules stop the pain shortly after the tablet is taken. Imagine the molecules knew the address of the pain and would just go there and nowhere else. That would be just right to stop the pain and not harm any other part of the body. Scientists are thinking about how to accomplish this. That would require great advancement in chemistry.

Here is another example.

In life, we are confronted with four challenges. They can be classified as: remembering to remember, forgetting to remember, remembering to forget and forgetting to forget. When a kid goes for a school examination, the parents’ advice is to remember to remember.

The kid comes back home and says, “Ma, I forgot to remember”. When we have a traumatic experience, the parents advise us to remember to forget the incident. However, we tell them that we forgot to forget. Imagine that there was a medicine (molecule) that would make sure that remembering to forget happens without harming us. That will save a large populace from life-long trauma. That solution is still far away from us. Scientists need to work hard over a long period of time to solve the problems.

Imagine you could create molecules in the form of dust and spray them over used plastic bags. In the presence of sunlight, these bags will become oil again. Wouldn’t that solve a major problem affecting the earth? Well, scientists are working on that and it may take time.

Imagine that you could create a new kind of salt and put that into sea water. When sunlight shines on the water the salt will help produce hydrogen fuel. Wouldn’t that be wonderful for all? Chemists are still trying to work out such a solution.

Global warming is primarily due to increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What if you could create a powder that would grab those molecules and convert them to food or medicine? Will you not love chemistry and work on solving such problems?

(The author is a professor in the department of Chemistry at IIT Guwahati)

(A Lesson from IIT is a weekly column by an IIT faculty member on learning, science and technology on campus and beyond. The column appears every Friday)