4.3 Science in Everyday Life (La ciencia en la vida diaria)

Readings on this topic are popular science (la divulgación científica): articles, interviews and talks that explain science to people who aren't experts. They usually start from something familiar, like why bread rises or why we get a fever, and then explain the process behind it.

The scientific method (el método científico) is the backbone. Scientists observe something (la observación), propose a possible explanation (la hipótesis), test it with an experiment (el experimento), analyze the results (los resultados) and draw a conclusion (la conclusión). A discovery (el descubrimiento) is something found that was already there; an invention is something made.

• Ceviche, the dish of raw fish in lime or lemon juice found along the Pacific coast of Latin America, isn't cooked by heat. The acid changes the fish's proteins, which is why it turns firm and opaque, much like cooking does.
• Nixtamalization (la nixtamalización) is the traditional Mesoamerican method of cooking corn with lime (la cal), a white powder made from limestone. It makes the dough for tortillas easier to work and frees up niacin, a B vitamin; people who ate lots of untreated corn without it could develop a disease called pellagra.
• Spanish chef Ferran Adrià, at his restaurant elBulli in Catalonia, became famous for using chemistry in the kitchen, such as turning liquids into little spheres. It's often called cocina molecular or cocina de vanguardia.
• Vaccines (las vacunas) train the immune system (el sistema inmunológico) by showing it a harmless version or piece of a germ, so it can react fast to the real one later.

In 1803, a Spanish expedition led by the doctor Francisco Javier de Balmis left A Coruña to carry the new smallpox vaccine (la vacuna contra la viruela) to Spain's territories in the Americas and later the Philippines. There was no way to keep the vaccine alive on a long voyage, so the expedition brought 22 orphaned boys and vaccinated them two at a time, arm to arm, keeping the vaccine fresh. The nurse Isabel Zendal cared for the children.

It's often described as the first international vaccination campaign. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Spain named a new Madrid hospital after Isabel Zendal, which shows how the story still shapes how Spaniards talk about public health. It also raises ethical questions today about using children this way, so a good essay can mention both its achievement and its cost.

• porque / ya que / debido a que + a clause (because, since)
• debido a / a causa de + a noun: a causa del calor (because of the heat)
• por lo tanto / por eso / como resultado (therefore, that's why, as a result)
• provocar, causar, producir (to cause): el ácido provoca un cambio en las proteínas
• llevar a cabo un experimento (to carry out an experiment), comprobar una hipótesis (to test or confirm a hypothesis)