Chemistry
- Peter Debye derives the T-cubed law for the low temperature heat capacity of a nonmetallic solid.
- Casimir Funk introduces the concept of vitamins.
- Frans, a German chemist working for Griesheim-Elektron, patents a means of producing vinyl chloride from acetylene and hydrogen chloride using mercuric chloride as a catalyst.
- Fritz Klatte discovers polyvinyl acetate, and applies for a patent for its preparation from acetylene gas although it is not successfully commercialized at this time.
- Wilbur Scoville devises the Scoville scale for measuring the heat of peppers.
- December 24 – Merck files patent applications for synthesis of the entactogenic drug MDMA, developed by Anton Köllisch.
Read more about this topic: 1912 In Science
Famous quotes containing the word chemistry:
“The chemistry of dissatisfaction is as the chemistry of some marvelously potent tar. In it are the building stones of explosives, stimulants, poisons, opiates, perfumes and stenches.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“If thought makes free, so does the moral sentiment. The mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse to be analyzed.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day,—not an empty chamber, in which chemistry was left to work alone, but an inhabited house,—and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)