Question

This unit discusses in detail the role of catalysts to lower the activation energy of reactions. The term catalyst appears in nonscientific discussions to refer to something that provokes or speeds significant change or action. Consider this example from the 2006 Associated Press article "Chernobyl cover-up a catalyst for glasnost": "For the Soviet Union, Chernobyl was a catalyst that forced the government into an unprecedented show of openness that paved the way for reforms leading to the Soviet collapse." Discuss how this scientific term has made its way into common usage. Does the term carry the same meaning in regular usage? How is it used differently in a scientific context compared to a nonscientific context?

Answer 1

Catalyst has found usage in non-scientific terms as an almost metaphorical word for something provokes or speeds up action or change. The word's applicability to many topics made it easy for it to find its way out of the scientific lexicon and into other domains, in this case political. 

Its meaning is roughly the same, in that a catalyst in this context is something that facilitated or sped up the process of glasnost.

One distinct meaning that I notice is that "catalyst" in more casual or non-scientific speech is that it is often used as a creator of action all its own, an actor in itself, rather than a facilitating agent to a reaction, as its scientific definition states.