Napolean's Bottoms

Napoleon's Buttons - Introduction

1. What chemical compound and what role did that chemical compound play in the transfer of ownership of Manhattan from the Dutch to the English?

Isoeugenol- the molecule that gives nutmeg its character. In the 17th century, nutmeg was precious because it can protect against plague. The English gave up Run where the nutmeg grew; however, the Dutch transferred the ownership of Manhattan to English in return.

2. Explain the history of organic chemistry. What is the difference in meaning of the term for a gardener, a 19th century chemist and a 21st century chemist?

Before 19th century, organic chemistry was still too complex to synthesized, with the discoveries of different organic compounds such as a slave-grown compound( sugar) during the Industrial Revolution in America and cotton compound in England, it started revealing the importance of organic compounds in chemistry. In the late-19th century, the German discovered the new dyes from coal tar and then develop the first man-made antibiotics because they both were composed of molecules with similar chemical structures. Phenol, a molecule used in the first artificial plastic, was also from coal tar and also chemically related to isoeugenol, the aromatic molecule from nutmeg. These chemical connections play important roles in organic chemistry. In 19th century, organic was defined for two hundred years as compounds that were derived from living organism, known as vital energy, and the belief was called vitalism. In 1828, Friedrich Wohler was successfully to produce the crystal of urea by heating the inorganic compound ammonia with cyanic acid, the belief started to shatter and nowadays organic compounds are defined as compounds that contain carbon element.

For a gardener, organic means agriculture conducted without artificial pesticides or herbicides and with no synthetic fertilizers. Simply speaking, it's from natural. To a 19th century chemist, it would apply to compounds that were from living organism ( vital energy) and for a chemist nowadays, organic compounds apply to compounds that contain the element carbon.

3. Why are chemical structures so important? What is the difference in the structure of the two honeybee pheromones? What is the difference in their function?

The chemical structures are so important because the connection and arrangement of the structures will give the compounds certain chemical properties and what they do and how that affected certain events in history.

The difference between two pheromones is that OH is attached to different carbons and is hugely important because other honeybees use this chemical structure as singling to tell the difference.

4. How and why do we simplify chemical structures?

We simply chemical structure because sometimes the structure looks cluttered and long to drew, sometimes it's easy to get complicated and confused. We can simply the structures by leave out the H atoms and with line structure; we can leave out the carbon

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