GC: n

CT: Scientists hoping to make the next breakthrough in renewable energy now have plenty of new avenues to explore — Harvard researchers this week released a database of more than 2 million molecules that might be useful in the construction of organic solar cells for the production of renewable energy.
Developed as part of the Materials Genome Initiative launched by the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, the goal of the database is to provide researchers with a starting point for work aimed at increasing the efficiency of a solar energy technology that is cheap and easy to produce.
“One of the problems with organic solar cells is, right now, there are only a handful of molecules that are in the same league with silicon in terms of efficiency,” said Alán Aspuru-Guzik, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology. “This is really a guide for experimentalists. What we’re doing is democratizing access to this type of data in the same way that the biologists did with the Human Genome Project.

S: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/06/map-to-renewable-energy/ (last access: 11 November 2015)

N: 1. First known used 1794. From Latin moles “mass barier”. The word molecule comes from the Latin word moles, “mass barrier” and the Latin suffix -cule, “little”.
2. A molecule is the smallest particle in a chemical element or compound that has the chemical properties of that element or compound. Molecules are made up of atom s that are held together by chemical bonds. These bonds form as a result of the sharing or exchange of electron s among atoms.
3. In the fields of Chemistry and Physics: the smallest part of a substance that can exist separately and still retain its composition and characteristic properties.
4. Molecular spectroscopy is the study of absorption of light by molecules. In the gas phase at low pressures, molecules exhibit absorption in narrow lines which are very characteristic of the molecule as well as the temperature and pressure of its environment. In the microwave and long-wavelength infrared regions of the spectrum, these lines are due to quantized rotational motion of the molecule. At shorter wavelengths similar lines are due to quantized vibration and electronic motion as well as rotational motion. The precise frequencies of these lines can be fit to quantum mechanical models which can be used both to determine the structure of the molecule and to predict the frequencies and intensities of other lines. Because this absorption is so characteristic, it is very valuable for detecting molecules in the Earth’s stratosphere, planetary atmospheres, and even the interstellar medium.

S: 1. DORLAND – https://goo.gl/85fl9n (last access: 11 November 2015); OED – http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=molecule&searchmode=none (last access: 11 November 2015). 2. WHATIS – http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/molecule (last access: 11 November 2015). 3. TERMIUM PLUS – http://goo.gl/6g38cG (last access: 11 November 2015). 4. NASA – http://spec.jpl.nasa.gov (last access: 11 November 2015).

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CR: adsorption , atom, electron , ion , proton .