Tim Seidel, age 13, of Middletown, Ohio, for his quesion:

WHAT IS CHEMURGY?

Chemurgy is a branch of chemistry involving the use of farm and forest products and their residues in industrial manufacture and in the development of new types of plants for industrial use.

The word "chemurgy" was coined in the United States in the early 1930s when ways were being sought to use increasing farm surpluses. Plants, because they consist mainly of cellulose, starch, sugar, oils and proteins. serve readily as raw materials for industrial and chemical products.

In 1938, Congress authorized the U.S. Department of Agriculture to establish laboratories at Philadelphia. New Orleans, Peoria, I11., and Albany, Calif., for the purpose of finding new uses for farm products grown in their respective sections of the country. From these and other labs have come the first large scale processes for producing penicillin and other antibiotics.

An early chemurgist, Charles Herty, developed an improved newsprint through experiments he conducted with the pulp of the Southern pine tree. George Washington Carver developed many products from such plants as the peanut and sweet potato.