I'm researching materials for a project I'm working on so I've been reading a lot of chemistry articles on Wikipedia. I've noticed that there appears to be a set of known building blocks that chemists use to build solutions. Something like:
- "Molecule bits" (rings, chains, functional groups, esters, etc.) that have known properties
- Common processes for modifying/changing those bits (alkylation, calcination, ether cleavage, etc.)
- A set of standard chemicals (alcohols, acids, solvents, emulsifiers, etc.)
For example I often read things like:
"In order to give a polymer higher temperature tolerance, chemists often add a benzine ring by calcinating the molecule using acetone."[1]
While I'm sure that a professional chemist needs to be able to handle lots of edge cases, it seems to me that a lay person could get a lot of milage out of learning these standard building blocks. I'm going to have to look and see if I can find a good resource that explains them.
[1] Note: All of this sentence is completely made up, I just intend it as an example.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/09/22/a_... - A Free Online Med-Chem Course
The course appears to now be at https://www.coursera.org/learn/drug-discovery
Removing Thiomersal from vaccines didn't reduce ASD diagnoses. That seemed to be sufficient for me to form a judgement on it. But, AIUI it's not used in vaccines in the UK now anyway.