"Well, let's hurry to the hangar now!" Elie said."Or else we'll be late, and we don't want that, do we?"
"Are we going to do a chemical reaction there too? " Valerie asked her, while she was putting on her socks and sandals.
"Yes, but with that reaction we will make giant molecules, not small ones, like before."
The twins were proud of their new knowledge and also wanted to try it out in more and more new places so they didn't need to prod. They ran happily toward the unknown metal hangars. It was only familiar in one detail. The cylinders had already been met, the pipes had not yet been seen, and in the end the pieces of plastic were not familiar to them either.
"You should fill the cylinders with Ethene molecules, Hydrogens and a bit of energy." K.O. said, and started to fill on his side. The children imitated him. Since K.O. needed a lot more yarn to his new balloon, than the twins for their small tent, he filled more cylinders, than the kids.
"And now what should we do?" Conrad asked, when they had been finished the filling.
"We start the machines, to make the reactions." K.O. said.
"Will the machine do the reaction?" Valerie asked frustrated.
"You'd get bored if you had to do it by hand!" The two adults laughed at her.
"But you can take a closer look at what the machine does!" Elie said. "With your hand device's button!"
Valerie cheered up, and she couldn't wait for the machines to start. K.O. pushed the buttons on them, and waved Valerie that she could start observing.
"You could watch now." He said, and the girls put the button onto the machine.
"The machine cut a Hydrogen molecule to the half. " She informed the others. " Now an Ethene molecule is cut into half… No. Just one of the bonds in the middle is cut. The free hands of the Carbon atoms have gone the the ends of the molecule, and one of the hands have made a bond with the Hydrogen atom's hand."
"And what about the other one?" Conrad asked, impatient.
"Nothing. It is just being there." Valerie answered. "Now another Ethene's bond is broken, the free hands of the Carbons went to the ends of the molecule, and one of the hands makes a bond with the previous molecule's remaining free hand."
"And now?" Conrad asked since his sister became silent.
"It is the the same like before, and one more time, and one more time, and one more time. Do you want to check it?" She asked, because after the excitement for the new vanished, there was nothing interesting in the chemical reaction. Conrad nodded, and took the handed over device. He was soon bored of the reaction too.
"It is just repeating the same thing over and over." He said, frustrated.
"It is called polymerization." Elie told him. "Basically it builds a very long line from the same molecules. The whole line will be one molecule. That's why they are called giants. Later the machine furls three strings into one, and in the end it will be your yarn."
"The process is quite boring." Valerie said.
"There is something interesting at the beginning of the machine!" Elie smiled at her.
Valerie snatched her hand device from her brother's hand and began to examine the front of the machine.
"Here is a gray little one!" She said, and examined the small guy thoroughly. "Its name is Titanium. Another Giant!"
"What do you see, what is it doing?"
Valerie was watching the process for while, before she could describe what was happening to the gray Titanium.
"It makes the hands shake in the second bond."
"Yes. It is important to the reaction."
"Why?"
"Because it loosens the bond and so we can break it with less energy."
"But we didn't even load an atom like that into the machine!" Conrad protested.
"Wouldn't it need one of these for each reaction? Valerie asked.
"No and no. It didn't have to be loaded into the machine because it was already done by those who built the machine. But you don't need a Titanium atom for each reaction. Just one for all. It is called catalyst. It is involved in the reaction, yet it is not. Sometimes the catalyst is written on the arrow in the equation."
"I don't understand." The two kids said in unison.
"It participates in the reaction, but also appears at the beginning and end. So it's like it's not involved at all. But that's just the appearance."
K.O. wrote an equation.
H2C=CH2 + *H2C-CH3 = *H2C-CH2-CH2-CH3
"Do you see?" He asked, but the kids didn't say anything. "There isn't Titanium on either side of the equation. But there is in the machine, to help in the reaction. So that's a catalyst is."
Valerie and Conrad nodded.
"K.O.!" Elie warned the old man. "The first yarns have already made."
"We should refill the cylinders." K.O. nodded.
He and the kids refilled the cylinders, and went to the end of the machine. At the end of the machine were a bunch of old-fashioned skeins of yarn that the machine wound on plastic spools. They collected their own spools, and went back to the cylinders. They had nothing to do, but refill the cylinders, and collect the spools.
The kids soon became bored. K.O. gave them the application of practicing of writing equations, but they got stuck quickly.
"You didn't discover enough kind of little ones to understand the equations." Elie sighed, and looked at K.O. for some help of any idea to make the kids busy. He was searching for something in his hand device.
"Conrad! Do you want to have your own ball?" He asked suddenly.
The boy's face lit up, and nodded.
"I really-really want one!" He said happily.
"In this case, we need 60 pieces of Carbon atoms. How many do you have?"
"I have 27 pieces." Conrad said in a sad voice. He really wanted that ball, but he didn't have enough Carbon atoms.
"I have 29 pieces." K.O. said. "But it is still not enough. Valerie, I think you have remaining Carbon atoms too." The girl nodded."Could you give your brother 4 pieces of Carbon atoms?"
Valerie was thinking for a while. She didn't really want to give the Carbon atoms to her brother, because he didn't support her in making earring. But it was only 4 pieces… She had more than that amount. But why would she gave him those atoms? Although she was very curious of making a ball form the Carbon atoms. Valerie in the end held her device and send Conrad the requested quantity. Her curiosity was stronger, than the anger for her brother.
"Let's see, how to build your ball!" K.O. turned to Conrad, and they immediately immersed in their hand devices. Elie could tell them, but she let them discover things themselves. So she accepted the work to fill the cylinders and collect the yarns. Valerie, originally said that she would help her, but her attention was quickly distracted by the interesting project.
The boys, meanwhile, split the coal into unique Carbon atoms and tried to make a hexagon from them. Elie laughed in herself, when the hexagon ring came to alive, and didn't want to sit obediently.
"Rather, start with a pentagon because it is a stretched structure and atoms cannot rotate around their bonds!" She advised to the boys. " The pentagon shape will remain calm."
Conrad nodded, cut the ring, and cut one of the Carbon atoms from the squirming snake. He closed the circle, but this time the Carbon atoms formed a pentagon. They were building hexagons around the pentagon, and another pentagon row on the top of hexagons. They repeated the hexagon row, and the blackness of the Carbon atoms began to loose their black color. One more pentagon row, and one more hexagon row, and they were ready. The color of the ball turned from black to yellow.
"We are ready!" Conrad said cheerfully, and he tossed the ball up and down.
" It was quite a hard work!" Valerie noted, with some tense in her voice. No wonder, she would have to make a lot of Fullerene for her earrings, and the making process seemed to be difficult. Very difficult, and the Carbon atoms were not cooperating either. They were all lively jumpind up and dow, and sometimes Conrad had to run after them.
"Well, it really wasn't easy! These carbon atoms are pretty tricky. We struggled with the last ones when we pushed them into place!" K.O. sighed, but smiled. He was happy to see Conrad's cheerful playing. The boy was down for a while, and the old man wanted to cheer him up. He was successful.
"We will do them in another way." Elie patted the girl's back. "That way the process will be faster."
"Is there a machine for that too?" Valerie asked, though she couldn't decide for herself what answer she was waiting for.
"No." Elie smiled. "We will have to do them by hand."