Sometimes the Students are the Teachers

There is not much to say about this other than to celebrate a life lived and a chemistry department willing to work with a student and a family to allow this to happen. [LINK]. Godspeed.

Chem Way to Die

Our discipline selects for over-achieving, pessimistic introverts so our natural inclination is to appreciate gallows humour. That is probably why I get such a kick out of this PSA from England that is making a hit on the internet.



I decided that I would offer an Extra Credit challenge for my students in lab courses to re-write this catchy little tune for chemistry in a "Chem way to Die". For full marks they have to upload a youtube video of them singing your stanza and the refrain. So for example:

"Light a candle in solvent stores.
Use a bunsen burner to make smores.
Over-nitrate toluene.
Use an open flask to make a phosphine.

Refrain
Chem way to die
So many chem ways to die
Chem way to die-ie-ie
So many chem ways to die"

I understand that there will always be killjoy haters that will point out that one should not make fun of safety rules and that people have actually been hurt in these kinds of accidents. Well. haters have to hate ... I choose to laugh.

Keep Calm and Chemistry On

Today's Dilbert made me think of Derek Lowe and Chemjobber's recent reflections on Big Pharma. Not funny, not funny at all. A salute from a quiet academic backwater to the chemical industry survivors out there in the industrial version of the "The Perfect Storm" (who have to decide if they are going to ride out the storm even if it means riding the boat to the bottom because their captain has gone Ahab).

"Bad is never good until worse happens." 
Danish Proverb

  

Chemistry: The Most Recognizable Science

OK, I take back everything that I said before. Chemistry has to be a "true" science because it is the only science that is instantly recognizable *as* science. Let's face it, most academic mathematicians and physicists can be mistaken for members of the custodial staff while biologists and geologists can be mistaken as hippie survivalists. If you want to convey the image of science with limited artistic time chemistry is where you go. For example in today's episode of the webcomic Bug this panel shows up:

Lab coats, safety glasses, test tubes, e-flasks and phenanthrene are all most definitely icons of chemistry that are shorthand to popular culture for "Science". So there you have it, chemistry is not a science because it uniquely addresses a fundamental question of existence ... it is a science because our culture needs us. Huh.

Is Chemistry Actually A Science?

It turns out that if it weren't for people searching for chemistry cartoons, incest or posts about cleavage about half the visits to this blog would disappear. So I gotta say "Welcome!" to those of you that like cartoons and boobies, this little blog would have closed down long ago without you.

Anyway, one  of the webcomics that I monitor is "Scenes from the Multiverse" for its science themed cartoons and the recent discovery of energy fluctuations that may be evidence of a trace from the Higg's boson showed up in the webcomic. It made me laugh and then I decided that it might be a nice little smirk to include in my atomic structure lecture for intro chem.

It would be a little addition that I could make when I introduce sub-atomic structure and the differences between fermions, bosons and those small irritating Mexican hairless dogs.

It did however get me to thinking about what defines a science as a discrete intellectual and philosophical entity.

It would appear that everyone is jumping on the "Science is a Continuum" / "Abolish the Departments" mentality but the one department that always seems to get "merged" is the chemistry department. Why is that? One could argue that this would be proof that Chemistry is indeed the Central Science. One could also argue that it is proof that Chemistry is in fact a Franken-science made from the margins and pieces of other true Sciences.

Indeed, one chemblogger who has successfully "gone pro" is the author of "The Curious Wavefunction" who in his maiden post on the Scientific American site addressed this issue. I would not want to put words in his mouth so will simply quote what he said:

"The overall aim is to point out the central place that chemistry has in our world and to demonstrate that it is very much the human science."

This resonates nicely with the thesis of an introductory chemistry text, "Chemistry: Human Activity, Chemical Reactivity" (that I have used the past couple of years) by Peter Mahaffey of Kings University College in Alberta, Canada. It is however, not one that I think fits the reality that we live in.

For the most part, we are somewhat defined by the company that we keep and one could argue that Chemistry is the Industrial Science, Physics is the Military Science and Biology is the Human Science. If we want to promote our science we can emphasize what happens at our margins but it would seem most responsible to me to focus (if not obsess) about what we do that actually pays the bills, keeps the lights on and buys the kibble. And for Chemistry that would be our intimate, and at times, frightening link with Industry.

But that still doesn't answer the question if Chemistry is a distinct or discrete science. As I thought about this I was reminded of a blog post by Chembark. I would argue that what allows a science to be distinct from the other sciences is the nature of the "God Question" that the science can uniquely address and answer. Does the science have at its core, key principles that allow it to address or know things that only God would know? Does the Science allow us to answer the snake in the Garden by saying "We are not "like God" we are Gods"?

Oppenheimer caught this when at Trinity he quoted from the Bhagavad-Gita

"Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds".

That, I think, would be an adequate philosophical place to start the discussion on whether or not Chemistry is a distinct science and as Chembark indicates for Chemistry that would be the Origin of Life. Oddly enough, our philosophical distinctiveness rests in an obscure and neglected backwater of our science that we would apparently like to hand over to the Biologists and the half-breed Biochemists so they can get even more Chemistry Nobel prizes.

Meanwhile, the Physicists have put their "God Question" at the forefront of their science and committed almost all their time and treasure to it. What will we learn from that?

50 Days to First Lecture, gotta go do something small, derivative and publishable. Keep Calm and Chemistry On.

Selling With Chemistry: Dentyne Gum

Well, it seems I am on a thing about updating previous posts. In previous posts here and here I had noticed the use of chemistry and the icons of chemistry to sell things. I observed that certain icons such as the periodic table, test tubes and Erlenmeyer flask have a high positive penetration in the minds of the general population.

So the advertizing companies are at it again with element symbols and the periodic table:

List of Elements

Fr    Friendly
Fd    Friendly
It    Intellectual
St    Stylish
Ri   Mr. Right
Rn    Mr. Right Now
Rb    Rebellious
Tr    Trouble
Be    Blue Eyes
Co    Confident
Wi   Wild
Ir    Irrisistible
Ht   Hottie

At the end there seems to be some semblance of a period table structure and it would appear that Wild and Hottie bear a group relationship but the structure is variable suggesting that they are in fact attempting to show molecular bonding interactions.

I also see that they have two symbols for Friendly (Fr and Fd) which suggests an isotopic relationship between the two. I would assume that Fr is reserved for short lived friendships while Fd is for long termed friendships.

All in all it seems to align with my assertion that the benign chemical icons can be used in pop culture without alarming people. So why the universal negative response to the word "Chemical" and the sinister popular image of complex chemical glassware?

I am supposed to be doing a structural analysis on a new crystal structure but am finding my mind is easily wandering. Three posts on a nearly moribund chemblog in one week is clearly an alarming symptom of work avoidance.Time for a vacation.

Selling With Science : Inappropriate Laboratory Behaviour

Again in the spirit of updating a previous post on a related topic this video was brought to my attention for its blatant abuse of laboratory safety rules (again with the stiletto heels in the laboratory). The protagonist in this educational video is Heather who works in a lab called "Mad Hair" and she obviously does not keep up with the recent blog postings on the incompatipility of lab solvents and electronic devices (LINK from LINK) because around 0:25 she is clearly manipulating organic solvents on the same bench as her colleagues computers. As well, given her fantasical bangs it is clear that she should re-read my previous post on hairnets. Just who is the safety officer for this "Mad Hair" lab anyway?

The use of lab coats to accentuate rather than cover was not something I had considered possible before. In the words of the immortal G.I. Joe "Now you know ... and knowing is half the battle."

(PS: to be fair, as a graduate student working in synthetic Main Group chemistry using Fluorine and anhydrous HF as solvents this would be a fair approximation of our impression of the lax safety rules in the biochemistry research lab below ours.)