Place the polycarbonate into the CD-ROM. Click the ABS command. Wait long nanoseconds while the message goes though circuits and chemically pure silicon chips. That’s it. The information you are looking for pops up on the screen of your monitor, protected by the case made with thermoplastics resins and by a glass that had its transparency enhanced by the cerium hydroxide. You check the data, make the changes, and it is time to print your work. A new touch on the ABS and the dyes, nitrates, solvent and the pantanediol, which are the components of the toner of your printer inside a tube of polypropylene or high density polyethylene go into action. Little by little, in the paper, manufactured from cellulose that was bleached by the hydrogen peroxide and chlorine compounds, the product of this action takes shape, what is more and more common in the offices and homes.

Although the computer language is quite different, many of the steps achieved with the help of microcomputers could be described in this way. The chemical products are an essential part of the computer processing activities. To start with, without the chemicals, it is very likely that the computers would still be only in the science fiction books, Among other factors, the products developed by Chemistry made possible the manufacturing of microcomputers, making the data processing accessible to a much large number of consumers.

It is understandable that the chemical technology is not that apparent to the users of information processing and to the majority of its users. However, it is not hard to notice how the resources of Chemistry have driven the milestones of modern life. It is enough to ask, for example, how would the diskettes be manufactured if the thermoplastic resins were not available; Or to know that the toner of the modern laser printers is a compound of styrene-acrylate copolymer, carbon black, polypropylene and iron oxide. There are many other "tricks" of information processing that would be mere illusions without Chemistry. The scanner, for instance, capable of capturing the images, digitizing them and allowing them to be stored in the computer memory is, basically, a plastic product. Inside the mouse case there is a perfect sphere made with synthetic rubber. As you can see, the presence of Chemistry, although veiled, is essential to make our day-to-day life easier, even in the field of information technology.

Text: Luiz Carlos de Medeiros (Mtb 12.293) English version by Joe Vianna (translat@mvpisp.com)