Rodrigo's Genie in the Bottle

The Genie in the Bottle by Dr. Joe Schwartz was an extremely good introduction to Chemistry because of the way the author presented the various topics of the book. The book consists of sixty-seven commentaries describing various issues in chemistry. The five most intriguing things that Schwartz describes in this book were the importance of rubber, date rape and the effects on the human body, the effect of stress on the human body, the Bunsen burner, and the effects of the sun.
In the section “The Silly Side of Flubber” Schwartz states how useless but necessary rubber is to people. He uses the example of when the U.S. stopped getting rubber imports from Japan. The lack of rubber resulted in a shortage of a lot of products. For example, rubber is a key component in making tires and other parts of the car, but it also was used to make ear plugs and other things for soldiers. Seeing the opportunity in this economic demand, Paul Hodgson and Ruth Fallgatter created flubber, earning themselves six million dollars. The author then digresses how simple and worthless this object really was and how ironic it was that it made these two men millionaires. “Flubber,” thought of by the author as idiotic, was just dumb enough to make these two men millionaires.
In the section “Playing with Fire” Schwartz discusses the development of the Bunsen burner. The first Bunsen burner made allowed for toxic gases to come out of it when used; so much so that Robert Bunsen, the creator, had to wear a gas mask when he was using it. As a result of releasing toxic gases into the air, it was dangerous for people to be around. Then Robert Bunsen found himself one day in a bad situation involving a fly and decided to begin to “play with fire.” He created a new device that would tube in flammable gas while still letting air to flow through it. He was attempting to create a “clean” fire so he deduced that the gas flowing through his device must also be clean. The result of his tribulations was in fact the Bunsen burner that we use today. Its popularity is epitomized by the fact that we too have many Bunsen burners in our own Chemistry lab.
The section “Nothing to Rave About” was very interesting. It talks about GHB (gamma hydroxybrutyrate), the drug also known as “Date Rape.” Surprisingly, it used to be legal because it helped people on diets and people who wanted gain quick muscle. It was only after many years that this drug was found to be so dangerous, thus they made it illegal. Even though it was illegal, people still used it all the time because it is one of the easiest drugs to make it. In fact, people can buy two of its main components in stores. He urges that teenagers be informed about just how dangerous this is, because people usually like to Even though people say it’s dangerous they have to have it driven into their mind for them to know. Along with date rape drugs being an interesting topic, the Bunsen burner was another good commentary.
In the chapter, “The Dark Side of the Sun” Schwartz explains how harmful the sun is to the human being. Back in the early 1900’s, when the ozone layer was not completely destroyed, the sun actually did good things to the people, it healed diseases. People were told to bath in the sun to heal some diseases by giving out vitamin D and if they did that now a day, they would just get skin cancer. The sun not only causes cancer, but it also creates wrinkles. Therefore, sun lotion was invented which helps protect people from the sun. Yet, even with the great invention of sun lotion it is still not a good idea to be in the sun all day. Sun lotion doesn’t work all the time and rubs off in water for the most part. The sun if still a very dangerous object and people don’t give it the respect it deserves. Sun lotion does not make you immune to the sun and when people learn that there will be a lot less skin cancer. Along with the sun being a very dangerous thing, stress is also a very interesting topic.
In Schwartz’s chapter “Surviving the Rat Race” he explains how stress can be a dangerous thing. He starts off his story by explaining how he went to an assembly and only remembered the story about the drunken man. The man had a lot of stress when he was drunk because of his high blood pressure. They used rats to test out if blood pressure was caused by stress. They found out that it did and that rats acted just like humans with adrenaline. It turns out that heart pressure, sweating, and heartbeat are all affected by how much stress a person has. This all tied into his drunk person story because a drunk person has no control of their senses and can’t handle stress in certain situations. Therefore that is why some drunk people get into fights and others just laugh. It has been proven that therapy have been set up to help people handle their stress that they are having. The therapies make it so that people don’t experience pain (Brest cancer patients) or crazy. Along with stress being an interest topic, date rape drugs were also an interesting commentary.
The Genie in the Bottle was a very interesting book. It took sixty-seven things that people would never think of and brought them to peoples eyes. Who would have ever known that some date rape drugs could be so harmful or that the Bunsen burner didn’t actually start of making fire. Schwartz’s book is a very good book and brought five things to my attention that I would have never known and I found them very intriguing.