CHEM 181 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Spinach, Vitamin A, Food Science

• School: McGill University
• Department: Chemistry
• Course: CHEM 181
• Professor: Joe Schwarcz

Document Summary

These continually accumulate in research journals/articles, where roughly 15m active researchers and 26m scientific publications have published facts over the course of 1996-2011. Where many of these facts revolve around the area of food science. Sam arbesman the half-life of facts: the time it takes for a fact to. Popeye: strength came from spinach where his muscle mass allegedly came from fe. Where a german chemist believed that there were 3. 5g of fe in spinach, then came along popeye cartoonists that somehow jumbled the decimal point to make it seem as though there was 35mg of. It is the b-carotene within spinach that transforms into vitamin a when we consume it via the diet: the green colour produced by the chlorophyll in spinach that masks the normal golden/orange colour you typically see with b-carotene. Turns out the half life of facts book got it wrong! Take home message: this allows us to understand how urban legends emerge.