The Chemical Workers Song

A local band called "Great Big Sea" has a song about industrial chemistry worker relations. I taught on Newfoundland for five years and sometime I will have to tell you tales of the Long Harbour Phosphorus Plant ... it always makes me think of this song.



[Chorus:]

And its go boys go
They'll time your every breath
And every day in this place your two days near to death
But you go

Well a process man am I and I'm tellin' you no lie
I work and breathe among the fumes that tread across the sky
There's thunder all around me and there's poison in the air
There's a lousy smell that smacks of hell and dust all in me hair

[Chorus]

Well I've worked among the spitters and I breathe the oily smoke
I've shovelled up the gypsum and it neigh 'on makes you choke
I've stood knee deep cyanide, got sick with a caustic burn
Been working rough, I've seen enough, to make your stomach turn

[Chorus]

There's overtime and bonus opportunities galore
The young men like their money and they all come back for more
But soon your knocking on and you look older than you should
For every bob made on the job, you pay with flesh and blood

[Chorus]

Well a process man am I and I'm telling you no lie
I work and breathe among the fumes that tread across the sky
There's thunder all around me and there's poison in the air
There's a lousy smell that smacks of hell and dust all in me hair

[Chorus 2x]

A Little Love for my American Cousins

I understand that you are all engaged in an economy saving frenzy that will max out all your credit cards so as you tuck into your turkey leftovers consider this seasonal note ...

The Neverending Argument

We are having a re-evaluation here at Liberal Arts U. about safety apparel. I am reminded of a discussion I had with a British professor who had come to Canada just after the Second World War as part of the large contingent of second tier academics that came to teach the North American boomers. In a comment to me he said (referring to Canadians) “We first had to talk them out of the trees and teach them to wear clothes before we could teach them chemistry”. Lovely sentiment that, Rule Britannia!


Anyway, I cannot convince the Biologists that wearing safety clothing is like wearing a car seatbelt … 99% of the time it is an unnecessary inconvenience and 1% of the time it is the only guarantee that there will be a next generation of Liberal Arts Biologists. And the cavalier way they handle chemicals like acrylamide and ethidium bromide makes me despair. I have persuaded them to wear disposable gloves most of the time (but I think CSI convinced them more than I ever did that someone could look hot, do science and wear gloves).

In any event the current argument is over goggles and I am seriously thinking of making a pragmatic retreat on this one. The uber-safe, clamped to the skin, scuba goggles just will not fly with the Biologists and we have agreed that we will not make the students purchase separate safety gear for the different Science labs so it looks like we are heading towards a lightweight, polycarbonate clear vision safety goggle that does not touch skin around the perimeter.


The convincing argument that the Biologists gave me was that if we went for the safe goggles the students (actual meaning: the Biology professors) would not ever wear them but if we go for the second option there is a good chance that they at least would wear them propped up on their foreheads or dangling on lanyards. Sigh.

This Is Not My Lab

This is an image from the recent National Geographic (I would link to it but I cannot find the image in the online version of the magazine). It is described as a chemistry lab in a Detroit school that was abandoned to vandals after a fire in the school.

I don't know if Detroit vandals are more polite than the vandals around here but there is far to much intact glassware in the picture. In fact, who walks away from this amount of functional equipment? There are alot of useful items still in useful condition left in this abandoned lab. Give me an hour to clean it up and I could teach most of first year chemistry with chemicals from the grocery store and the equipment that I see.

In any event I found the image striking.

The Well Rounded Chemist

The movie "Wit" starring Emma Thompson is an extraordinary narrative of the journey that an English professor takes from diagnosis of cancer to her death. It reveals deep insights into both the medical and academic professions. I happen to have seen it again this weekend and was struck by a small scene early in the movie. The portion of note happens at the 3:00 - 4:00 minute mark from this clip ...



What strikes me about this is the idea that a scientist is admired for taking optional advanced humanities courses where you rarely see humanities students in introductory science courses and only if they are filling a science requirement for their degree. You would never expect to see a humanities student in an advanced science course.

Indeed, as an undergraduate in Honours Chemistry, I opted to take an advanced course in Shakespeare simply because I was interested, on top of my required courses. I would argue that the liberal arts ideal is typically fully realized only in Science students that are allowed to explore their interest in non-Science subjects. The sheer fact that humanities students do not have the language of Science means that they cannot simply show up in advanced courses and get anywhere and in this way they typically fail to meet the ideal of a well rounded academic worldview. I have worked with any number of scientists that could speak with deep personal knowledge on their favorite philosopher, musician or artist but have rarely spoken with an academic from the humanities that had anything more than a superficial knowledge of Einstein or Hawking let alone Hoffmann.

For this reason our community will fail to educate the one sector of society that most needs insight into what we do. Unless we seek to find ways of bringing senior undergraduate humanities students into our advanced courses we cannot expect them to understand science policy issues when they enter society, business or politics. I think this is something we have to think about. I mean how many of our universities pay lip service to the humanities science credit by creating science courses for humanities students called "Science and Society"?

We cannot complain that society does not understand us when we have the instrument of that communication in our hands generation after generation and fail to exploit the opportunity.

It's what I am thinking about. The first thing that I think I am going to do it try to start a movement to change the policy in my University that allows humanities students to complete their Science requirement with one course of Intro Stats. I am going to push for it to be a Natural Science and if possible a lab course. Or, maybe I will just sleep on it.

"Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast. " Shakespeare, Macbeth

The Chemistry Version of these Videos Must be Made

See If We Can get Thomas To Do this on Video

Saw this, learned something and was reminded of our dropped pestle test to see if our S4N4 was pure enough to use. Of course there are much more impressive and less educational videos of nitroglycerine on Youtube but the Brits always do a good job of this sort of thing. It's a shame TK left the UK.