The Problem With Variables

In class today we were appreciating that to determine the acid concentration of a weak acid we would have to determine the extent of reaction guided only by the acid dissociation constant. When we do not know a value in math and science it needs to be assigned a symbol and the default is x. This leads to all sorts of mathematical merriment but makes us think ...

And Beaker Too ...

It looks like the crew is grinding out a number of these videos and they are all worth a look. I like this one 'cause how often do you get "Ode to Joy" performed in a lab coat?

click on image to go to video

Prof. H. Makes a Video

I do not care how beloved the original video is ... this is precious and reminds me of when I was young and the Muppet Show was one of the best shows on TV. That and the fact that any video with Professor Honeydew and Beaker in it has to be a winner.

click on image to go to video

Carl Sagan Day

Today would have been Carl Sagan's 75th birthday had he lived to this day. It has been long enough and Science has changed so much that as all senses of loss and pain we begin to forget. That said, we have not replaced him and he is missed as the ubiquitous polymath, explainer and evangelist for Science that he was.

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
– Carl Sagan, 1934 – 1996

Stoichiometry

So today it was all about balance on the atomic level. The conservation laws that we learned about (that matter is not created or destroyed in a chemical reaction) has consequences for our lives. We are gifted with atoms that we organize into our bodies. But we do not own those atoms we simply borrow them for a while and then we have to give all our atoms back to the Universe so it can make stars and diamonds (or Backstreet Boys Reunion CDs for that matter) out of what we leave behind. The idea of "I" in your head cannot be simply reduced to the atoms in your body it is emergent from the complexity that you have created.

Just like in this cartoon ...

... except of course I do not believe that the complexity "is just gone" when I die. Just like the atoms were a gift so was the complexity and when I die I will surrender that complexity ... that "I" ... to the One who created me to do with as He wills. That is my faith.

Because Athiests Need Hymns Also

This is really worth listening to especially since we are close to Sagan Day (the anniversary of his death and we have not replaced him so he is missed).

Quantum Chemistry is Like an Episode of Friends

I keep an eye on this online comic because of its science themes but I must admit that it can run to some non-Christian themes. This comic stood out to me because of its link to what we have been learning in first year chemistry.

Cool Cellular Scale Slider

I came across this link and liked it a lot. There are lots of sophisticated demonstrations out there and the original "Powers of 10" still works but I liked the simplicity of this one. Click on the image to go to the slider.

CH 1013 F09

Class,

Well, Power Outage Days has caught me unprepared. I did not copy emails to myself that had to do with our courses and they are only saved on the University server. As long as the power is down I have no access to those messages.

Could someone post the link to the chemistry vignettes in the comments to this post? If you cannot access your ABU email to find the link some of you gave me alternate email addresses and the link would be there or as a last resort if you could go through your web browser history you could find the link there.

Could someone email / forward me a copy of the last message that I sent to you so I can have a class set of email addresses? Send the message to my gmail account.

Thanks for anyone that is monitoring this blog and can help.

Prof. H.

Gender Issues

I stumbled on this link today and I sat and looked at it in wonder.LINK

What we have here is a cosmetics kit the size of fishing tacklebox. The possiblities are endless or as the ad says ... "Create over 60,000 looks with this stunning profusion of versatile colors. This chic, multi-tiered must-have comes complete with essential applicators." OK, I'm a guy and this is way out of my knowledge set but I have to ask what does it mean by "essential applicators"? My only response is to echo what the Dad says in the Luann comic "Thank-you Lord for making me a guy."

Science Students In the News

To be born in 1909 and to have lived to see all the things that has happened in the past century is a remarkable thing and should be celebrated. Imagine a life that started before quantum chemistry was sorted out or Gilbert Lewis first created his structural diagrams.

Congratulations, I hope you had a great day.

Safety in the Lab

Saw this and liked it a lot.

Friday Thoughts on 11.09.09

"If you are an atheist you do have to believe that the main point in all the religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake. If you are a Christian you are free to think that all these religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth. When I was an atheist I had to try to persuade myself that most of the human race have always been wrong about the question that mattered to them most; when I became a Christian I was able to take a more liberal view." - C. S. Lewis

"Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings."
- Victor Stenger

I don't know. I do not have the wisdom to make it all fit. But I think we all know evil when we see it and we have seen it's face. Life is too short for us to think that making other peoples lives shorter and harder because of what they believe can in any way be what God was thinking when he walked with us in the cool of the evening.

The 3000 lost was a tragedy but objective and analytical Science would have us remember that more than that number die preventably each day in childbirth, of malnutrition and war.

We can do better. We were told to do better. We will be asked why we didn't do better. I can do better. I will do better.

Fifty Million and Counting

The American Chemical Society (I am a member) maintains the Chemical Abstract Service which logs in each new chemical and compound as they are discovered. The milestone fifty millionth compound was logged in September 7. This actually says a lot and not so much. It says that we continue as a discipline to catalogue the complexity of what we see but also the huge number of compounds that we have yet to figure out.

That cannot take anything away from G. Attardo, S. Tripathy, and M. Gagnon who reported in their patent Preparation of arylmethylidene heterocycles as novel analgesics. the synthesis of (5Z)-5-[(5-Fluoro-2-hydroxyphenyl)methylene]-2-(4-methyl-1-piperazinyl)-4(5H)-thiazolone.

LINK TO STORY

I wonder if they will have t-shirts made up. On the other hand the organic chemistry students should recognize this compound as closely related to the much loved oxathiazolones.

Honeydew Rising

New semester, new students and new construction. Excellent time to revive the old Honeydew blog.

These are the videos that I played in the lecture yesterday:

And this is the LINK to the second video.

Gateway Thoughts on Science

I can remember reading science books when I was in elementary school and thinking that the more science a person knew the more answers that you could give to interesting questions. What I noticed was that it was not the Trivial Pursuit questions that interested me (although I got the biggest pay back from teachers for just knowing stuff that blew them away). The questions that I liked knowing the answers for were things like why clouds are flat on the bottom and why is space black if it is filled with light.

That said it, is the stereotype circus science that seems to always be the "gateway thought" (sort of like marijuana being thought of as the gateway drug (when in my opinion it is alcohol (or caffeine))). It is important however for us in Science to remember that there has to be something that grabs children and makes them re-think becoming a fireman as a career. In chemistry it is the inevitable "Magic Show" (shudder) with faux wizards, bangs and flashes that seem to get that first response. In a horrible way it is like a model for Christianity where we use televangelists to do children's ministry. I do a school outreach presentation entitled "Not a Magic Show" where I do the regular stuff but underpinning it all is a grade appropriate explanation for what the students are seeing. But still ...


I think XKCD caught the idea in their most recent strip (as a disclaimer I will note that XKCD is an "adult" webcomic that explores modern life from a engineering / science perspective and veers sometimes into the inappropriate).





I guess what I am trying to say is that sometimes the complete mis-understanding of what Science actually is may be our best way of promoting it to children. But then again that is a model that works for religion, politics and relationships. Does all of life have to be the Dance of the Seven Veils?

Environment, Economics and Ethics

This is a bit preachy, liberal and a bit free with the simplifications (especially with the science) but I think it makes a good starting point for discussion.

Somebody Taped My Quantum Chemistry Lecture

This is exactly what teaching Quantum Chemistry in First Year is like. I especially like the "Quantum Appreciation Chair".

My Greatest Fear

Friday Humour File: Chemistry LOL

So, I think I have mentioned in the past that I am a member of the American Chemical Society [ACS] (my original membership back in 1982 was the "prize" for having the highest mark in Chemistry for my year). The ACS is the largest professional society in the world and there are a lot of benefits to membership. Part of the ACS is Chemical Abstract Services which reads and summarizes every publication that is chemical in nature. Now, chemical abstracts are about as interesting and sexy as Star Trek fans but the promotional arm of Chemical Abstracts called SciFinder has brought out a couple of oddly amateurish, somewhat amusing videos showing students the value of the service. What makes me laugh is the "cool" chemist who rocks out with three girls at a time. Yeah, that happens alot. Nothing makes the girls gather like the faint odour of organic solvents or oxathiazolones.

For the last video below you would have to kind of remember the 80's to get the Robert Palmer reference but the chemistry on the blackboard made me laugh (butyl lithium just might abstract ... LOL).

Nerd Humour

The good people at BioRad have been sniffing the lab solvents again. I can remember when they were as cool as a sleeping basset hound. They are a respected company in the biochemical and medicinal chemistry industries. If you look closely in the science labs of shows like CSI and NCIS I am sure you would see their products. And yet I guess they figured they need to up their cred with the new generation of chemists.

Thus we have these advertisements that have gone viral in the chemistry community. Now I guess the chemical industry will all want to make ads like these. They did make me laugh and now I can't get the GTCA song out of my head.

You don't need to know any chemistry to enjoy these but I would remind my first year students that enzymes do indeed make reactions go faster for reasons that they should know.

You, Sir, Have gone too far ...

LINK TO CARTOON

A while back, at a previous University I decided to maintain a more professional, vertical relationship with students. I got into the habit of learning and using peoples surnames and prefacing them with either "Mr." or "Ms" as appropriate. I felt that this gave better impact from statements such as "Mr. Smith, put down the Wuperman expostulator and step back".

I realize that other professors, if they learned names at all, preferred knowing student's given names. To each their own I guess.

It does however speak to what happens next. Years of formality mean that the students themselves resist the dropping of the formality long after the student - teacher relationship is over. I would hate to think the the longest lasting piece of information that my students retain is the intuitive feeling that if they call me by my first name I will give them a lower mark on their next test.

And that brings me to the next topic addressed by cartoons.

LINK TO CARTOON

Students often tell me that me and my class play the roll of evil villain in their dreams. Just what am I supposed to do with that information? It is like this sequence of cartoons from Sheldon ...

LINK TO CARTOON

More Biology than Chemistry But Still Science

The Australians (bless their drought stricken hearts) imported toads to eat beetles in their sugar cane fields. Australian sugar cane grows taller in Australia than in their home habitat so the toads could not, did not eat the beetles but they found other things to eat and their numbers exploded. So, now the Australians are going to fight the toad hoards with a bounty, looks like about fifty cents per toad.

LINK TO ARTICLE

Now we have seen other "festival" animal slaughtering events in popular culture including:

The Simpsons "Whacking Day" (LINK)

And Weird Al's "Weasel Stomping Day" (LINK)

I just find it all a bit weird. I just hope that when our alien overlords show up that they won't have "Fat Baptist Professor Whacking Day" (although I suspect that there are some ex-students who have their bats ready for that hoped for day).

We Need to Raise Kids that are Smarter Than We Are

I don't know if anyone is monitoring this page any more, I sorta lost my edge. We will see how this goes.

I am not a doomsayer and I have not drunk the Kool-aid on anthropogenic climate change. The facts on sustainability are not in dispute though. Our working thinking has got to be that our children, when faced with problems that we created but can not / could not solve, will be able to solve them. Make sure they eat their fish while the oceans have fish to give us.

On that depressing theme Jorge Cham relates his recent visit to Canada. It is all pause for thought.

Click on image for larger view

LINK TO CARTOON

Now, I would say this about that. I am a child of the 70's when the Cold War was hot and Alvin Toffler was the lead doomsayer that fed off our societal guilt about our profligate ways. There did not seem to be a solution to the population, pollution and political problems in the 70's as we marched to our inevitable nuclear holocaust. And yet, it turned, and we lived.

It all reminds me of those incredible verses from Joel and Jonah that express a hope and a sense of being unsure about future events (pretty rare in the Bible):

Joel 2:14 (NIV) 14 Who knows? He may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing— grain offerings and drink offerings for the LORD your God.

Jonah 3:9 (NIV) 9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish."

CH1023 Formal Report Research Topics

Students may select their topic only in the comments section of the message in ensure first come first served.

1] Chemical History of Aspirin
2] Chemistry of Salicylic Acid and related organic acids
3] Chemical Structure and Properties of Painkillers
4] Chemistry of Aspirin Related Painkillers
5] Chemistry of homeopathic pain medications
6] Chemistry of Methyl salicylate and related compounds
7] Other topic related to the laboratory in agreement with the instructor

Mike Says We Need a Logo

I was having a conversation with Mike the other day and he mentioned that he thinks we really need to have a bright, simple logo for ABU Science. We could then get stickers, transfers etc made and have our own unique brand.

We have played with this idea in the past and this was the sort of thing that I came up with but it looks too chemical. It is bright and simple though. Are there any students interested in graphic design or squeezing a graphic designer that could make something up for us to consider? I would be willing to sponsor a prize if the students wanted to contribute possible logos. Anybody want a beaker mug? We would have to come up with some kind of formal contest if there was any interest.