Be it in an action movie, a TV show, or even in an ACDC song, people love explosions. There’s just something magical about watching something blow up. Maybe it’s the intrigue involved in watching something that took time and effort to make suddenly disappear almost effortlessly in a spectacular ball of fire, who knows? In an effort to bring together two things I love, science and explosions, I decided to base my project on the formation of 2,4,6-Trinitrotoluene, better known as the infamous TNT. My project is, briefly, an artistic representation of the formation of TNT. TNT is an organic molecule, being a benzene ring having gone through multiple reactions, and I found that it was one of the more interesting ones that exist, so I decided that my project would be based around it.

I’ll begin by explaining my artwork in further detail. I decided that the colour scheme would play a crucial role in the representation of the different topics applied in this reaction. To begin with, in the benzene ring in the top-left corner, the bonds between the carbons are red, which indicates electron density, which in turn is caused by the activating nature of the methyl group. Once one nitro group has been added to the ring, the bonds between the carbons in the ring become purple, indicating a reduction in electron density due to the deactivating nature of the nitro group. This trend continues as more nitro groups are added until all three are added and the bonds in the benzene ring become blue, indicating that the ring is very low in electron density and that the ring is almost deprived of electrons in a way. The bonds between the ring and its substituent groups also follow this same colour code; where red is more electron dense and the more blue it becomes, the less electron dense it is. The bonds between the nitro group and the benzene ring are red, signifying how the nitro group withdraws electrons from the ring.

The reaction process is represented by little molecules, arrows, and lines between each different aromatic compound. The arrows simply point the path the reaction takes, but their increasing size is part of a trend which I will later discuss. The molecules above and below each arrow are HNO₃ and H₂SO₄, respectively, as this represents nitration in electrophilic aromatic substitution. The red curved lines represent the curve one would observe on an energy diagram of each step in the reaction. The diagram’s curve, whose start and finish coincide with those of each respective arrow, increases in size with each nitro group added to the compound, representing the increase in needed energy to perform each subsequent step. Finally the little white circles with black swirls in them are clocks, which, with each nitro group added, become greater in size and number, representing the increase in time that accompanies the addition of each nitro group. The arrows also follow this trend, to give and help magnify an overall feel that, as a nitro group is added, there is more time and energy required to add the next. This is the visual representation of one of Atkins’s big ideas in chemistry: there are barriers to reaction.

This idea relates directly to kinetics, where the activation energy and the rate of reaction are studied, and this is the most important idea represented in my project, as it is one big representation of the time and energy it takes to have this reaction happen. The other, more basic ideas are present as well, such as matter is made up of atoms, which goes without saying as the painting is a visual representation of atoms and molecules. There is also the idea that electrons pair to form chemical bonds, which also is clearly represented by the bonds holding all the present molecules together. There is even the idea that elements display periodicity, which is actually a more crucial idea to my project. The changes in electron density are due to the way different molecular groups that are added to the benzene ring affect the compound as a whole, which is all determined by the specific qualities and characteristics of each element in each molecular group, which is a lengthy way of defining periodicity. So, as the change in electron density in the benzene ring is a crucial part of my artwork, and periodicity is what explains why each group is either activating or deactivating, this idea is also quite important to the project.

Looking back on the experience, I quite enjoyed making my artwork and am pleased with the final result. So, to stay in the spirit of my project, I’ll end this article with a bang.

BANG