Page 222 - Arrow Pushing in Inorganic Chemistry A Logical Approach to the Chemistry of the Main Group Elements

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Group 16 Elements:

The Chalcogens

Linus Pauling: Have you ever smelled hydrogen selenide?
Matthew Meselson: No, I never have.
Pauling: Well, it smells much worse than hydrogen sulfide. …
Now, hydrogen telluride smells as much worse than hydrogen
selenide as hydrogen selenide does compared to hydrogen
sulfide … some chemists were not careful when working
with tellurium compounds, and they acquired a condition
known as “tellurium breath.” As a result, they have become
isolated from society. Some even committed suicide.
Meselson: Oh.
Pauling: But Matt, I’m sure that you would be careful.
Why don’t you think it over and let me know if you would
like to work on the structure of some tellurium compounds?
Interview between Pauling and then prospective graduate
student Matthew Meselson, who during his subsequent
tenure with Pauling did the Meselson–Stahl
experiment, which proved the “semiconservative”
nature of DNA replication.
Two of the group 16 elements—oxygen and sulfur—are among the most familiar ones.
Not only is water critical to all life and O to all aerobic life, the ozone layer protects life
2
and civilization on Earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. The annual worldwide
production of sulfuric acid is in the hundreds of millions of metric tons and is the high-
est by weight for all industrial chemicals. Indeed, the amount of sulfuric acid produced is
often a good indicator of a country’s state of industrial development and economic status.

Arrow Pushing in Inorganic Chemistry: A Logical Approach to the Chemistry of the Main-Group Elements,
First Edition. Abhik Ghosh and Steffen Berg.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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