Friday, April 17, 2009

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).





Thursday, April 09, 2009

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.