A1920s science headline, "Ice cream from crude oil," may best capture the era's unbridled enthusiasm for chemistry. "Edible fats, the same as those in vegetable and animal foods... and equally nutritious... can be obtained by breaking up the molecules of mineral oil and rearranging the atoms," exclaimed Science News Letter, the predecessor to Science News, in 1926. Synthetic ice cream was just one of the wonders that could lie around the corner.
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