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Chemistry

Catalyst, litmus test, chain reaction, half-life — the chemistry vocabulary that left the lab and now describes everything from social movements to relationships.

9 entries

Level

Core

Common

All

word

Chemistry

Catalyst

A substance that speeds up a chemical reaction without itself being consumed — and, by extension, any person or event that triggers a change without being changed by it.

phrase

Chemistry

Chain Reaction

A self-propagating sequence of reactions where each event triggers the next — most famously in nuclear fission, more generally in any cascade.

word

Chemistry

Distill

To extract the essence of something by heating and condensing — and, metaphorically, to reduce something complex to its core.

phrase

Chemistry

Eureka

Archimedes' shouted exclamation on discovering, in his bathtub, that the volume of an irregular object can be measured by how much water it displaces.

word

Chemistry

Half-Life

The time it takes for half of a quantity of a radioactive isotope to decay — and, metaphorically, the time it takes for anything to lose half its potency.

phrase

Chemistry

Litmus Test

A simple, single-issue test used to classify something — borrowed from the lab strip that turns red in acid and blue in base.

concept

Chemistry

pH

The 0-to-14 scale measuring how acidic or basic a solution is — 0 is strongly acidic, 14 is strongly basic, 7 (pure water) is neutral.

word

Chemistry

Saturation

The point at which a solvent can dissolve no more of a solute — and, metaphorically, the point at which a market, mind, or system can absorb no more of something.

concept

Chemistry

The Periodic Table

The chart arranging all chemical elements by atomic number into rows and columns that reveal the patterns in their properties.