More Than Chemistry

Friday Science Gleanings

2011-03-04T13:34:00.001-04:00

The Chemistry Department of the University of Nottingham has a YouTube video channel where they have a video for each element of the periodic table narracted by the stereotypical chemistry professor Martyn Poliakoff. The vidoes work however because of their verisimiltude ... these vidoes are works of love.

LINK to YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/periodicvideos

In any event their most recent is a mash-up of the famous Lehrer "Element Song" and their narrators saying the names of the elements. It made me smile:

A preoccupation with the trivial is a universal attribute of the scientist. I found this video on light bulb filaments fascinating:

Calamaties of Nature has a series on Science and Spirituality:

And there was this as well by "The Other Coast"

While not specifically about Science I have always thought that this quote spoke to the curiousity and attitude of the Scientist:

"When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth." George Bernard Shaw

I Always Thought the Chemistry Was Wrong On this Issue

2011-02-26T13:07:00.001-04:00

It turns out the Mafia informants have been overstating the use of barrels of sulphuric acid to dispose of human bodies. As someone who has put a lot of organic material in concentrated sulphuric acid over the years I just know that the fumes, heat and reaction residue would not be an easy clean-up. So it was good to hear that someone did the actual science on the whole "body in a barrel of Sulphuric Acid" myth. Now I have to come up with a different plans to dispose of the bodies ...

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/corpse-dissolving/

(I gotta ask though how this gets tagged as "biology" by the magazine)

Saturday Quote

2011-02-26T12:11:00.000-04:00

"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite."

Paul Dirac (Nobel Prize in physics, 1933)
Oh, and it snowed last night too.

Friday Science Round-up

2011-02-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

Came across this quote in my reading this week ...

"Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths." Bertrand Russell

And I came across these cartoons referencing science ...

LINK

Stuff I Like

2011-02-22T09:37:00.000-04:00

I like "Indexed" and this is the posting for today. Nice

Sometimes You Just Love Feeling Small

2011-02-22T09:20:00.001-04:00

I saw this first on a physics site that I monitor [ LINK ] and it is yet another of the amazing time lapse sequences taken at observatories or in the desert. One can argue that it makes one feel small but I had to watch this three times ... first in amazement ... then humbled and finally grateful. Take a look but just don't be satisfied with the little image here go to the actual video to see it in all its' glory.

He Sees You When You're Sleeping ...

2010-11-26T14:15:00.002-04:00

Several of you have expressed interest in the webcamera that I have mounted in the lab. As I have said, there was a time when I was concerned because I was alone in the lab with the students and would have appreciated a second set of eyes and an impartial account of what happened and when in the lab. So here we are. These are the images from the Intro Chem Lab 23 November:

And the Organic Chem Lab 25 November:

A River Runs Through It

2010-11-07T16:39:00.002-04:00

So we are in the middle of the biggest storm of the season and I decided to make a quick visit to the culvert (click on image for video).

From 2010-11-07(stream)

The video isn't perfect (I see I forgot to reset the date in the camera when I changed the batteries)but it shows the culvert releasing water at 3 meters per second and pooling over the lower rock field which clearly was created without thinking about the water table. The lower rock field will not act as a filter, the landscape fabric hoarding has been torn out and is now not holding anything in. If you look closely you can also see the demarcation line of the muddy outflow as it mixes with the stream. I have to admit though that the dilution factor has to be a significant factor with the stream volume so high.

I think this confirms pretty much everything I suspected and feared. Now we just need to wait until the city starts salting the streets to see what impact that has on the stream. Something tells me the stream doesn't freeze over this winter.

From 2010-11-07(stream)

Calm Before the Whirlwind

2010-08-27T14:27:00.004-03:00

It is weirdly quiet and calm here at CU. Sort of that ominous quiet before a big storm. I have been working on my courses for the fall and attending meetings. Oh, this morning I ran into this little fellow on the sidewalk in front of CU.

When informed that he would likely be stepped on he bobbed his head with a sense of resignation (echos of a behaviour observed by a student blogger who had the blog "ChemSucks"). In spite of his fatalism I helped him into a nice shaded bit of dewy grass where I like to think he cavorts and gambols in a salamandery way.

I liked this recent cartoon ...

I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me

2010-08-11T14:06:00.004-03:00

So, we had a significant precipitation event and I decided to make the Friday circuit to check the stream. It turns out the flow was much higher and had turned the water a light brown. This is what it looked like on Thursday before the rain ...

And on Friday morning after the rain the same section of the stream looked like this (and according to measurements was flowing twice as fast and was twice as deep.)

I made the trip up to the upstream site and the culvert. I did not meet up with any animals this time but I did notice some changes.

The hay bale containment barrier is new and there seems to be a bit of a design flaw in the landscaping since it would appear that the local terrain is draining to the side of the storm sewer rock pit. To my eyes it would appear that the rock pit goes too low and has a conflict with the local water table. There seems to have been some work done on the rock pit as well with the part just below the outfall made of larger stones ending in a meter high rock pile that is followed by a flatter rock field made of smaller rocks down to the stream edge ending in a landscaping fabric hoarding. I think we are going to see the stream back fill into the swampy area and create a pond or stagnant overflow catchment upstream to the rock field. Maybe.

On a different note we have had a game camera sitting in the lab for some time now and I decided to unpack the camera and field test it before the semester starts. I set it up tied to a tree at site 3 just downstream from the culvert. This is where I have run into the mist wildlife but over the three days it was set up it mostly took pictures of me measuring the stream and two dudes with dogs. There is one very faint image made at two in the morning that might be a raccoon but it was not the parade of wildlife that I expected. Oh well.

Science in Cartoons

2010-08-06T08:40:00.003-03:00

Curiosity, Childhood and the Scientific Method
(click on cartoon to embiggen)

LINK TO COMIC

Chemistry 1013 Fall 2010

2010-08-04T12:05:00.004-03:00

There were some important changes that have been made in the course over the summer. The most important change would have to be the selection of a new textbook. The text for this course will be one by Mahaffey et al (Chemistry: Human Activity, Chemical Reactivity link to text description).

Why change? Well, the previous text was not fitting the needs of the class (to my eyes). This text is a "full service" text meaning that it is large but comprehensive. This is the first time in a long time that I have used a comprehensive text like this in first year chemistry. I have always thought that the large size of such texts would be intimidating especially to weaker students. My mind was changed however in discussions about texts with colleagues at our recent national chemistry conference in Toronto.

The negative aspects of the size of the text are compensated by the significant supports that come with the text including extensive end of chapter questions at varying levels of difficulty. By far however the greatest advantage is access to the online tutor and assignment facility called OWL (link to resource).

The text is about $ 20 more expensive than the previous text but the deciding factor in switching to this specific text is that it incorporates the entire text that I use for the second year organic chemistry course (link to previous organic text). Now this text has a suggested retail price of $ 180 which is more than the first year text that I have chosen so if I can use the Mahaffey text for all three courses (Chem 1013, Chem 1023 and Chem 2113) the students will save a lot of money.

They will have to lug around a large text though and the students that have taken chemistry using the previous text will have to make a pretty dramatic transition from the two texts.

So if you are a first year student or a returning student you will be learning chemistry from the same textbook. I am told that the texts will be available in the bookstore by the middle of August. I will let you know when they are in.

Science in Cartoons

2010-08-04T11:46:00.003-03:00

Inform the Rebel Alliance that the Death Culvert is Fully Operational

2010-07-30T21:07:00.002-03:00

So it was time to make a trip to the North-West Branch of Hall's Creek again. I got the equipment together and headed out (notice how I rock out the clip-on sunglasses).

The residence site is a nice setting where the stream is forced to make a sharp turn at the base of a low sandstone cliff where I set up the equipment.

So, I had just calibrated the dissolved oxygen probe and was starting data acquisition (the instructions say that once the data starts collection the probe must be held still) I got that old "someone is watching" feeling. I looked around and saw this little guy.

Do you see him? Look closer ...

This little guy is about two meters away from me and clearly lives in the root tangle exposed by stream erosion. Over the five minutes he pokes his head out of every hole in the root ball chirping at me and I swear one time he threw a rock at me. Once I had my data I was able to take his picture but the motion spooked him and he ran downstream. And once again field collection of data is interrupted by an outbreak of biology.

I collected data at the upstream site and weirdly met a much larger version of the same critter living in a bank overhang just downstream of where I met the rabbit and the dogs. I could not get a picture of this guy 'cause he was really ticked at me and kept running around. In any event we have resident fauna close to the campus.

I made the upstream pilgrimage to the new storm sewer. I could see from the discoloration of the rocks in the drainage basin that a significant pool had formed between the drain and the stream.

That could only mean that in the last storm the sewer had released a significant discharge. I could see that even now, days afterwards, that the drain was still discharging and when I collected some of the fluid I noticed that it was very foul.

So the drain is operational and the stream has begun to change. It is amazing how things come out of no where to change things. Challenge or opportunity? I don't know. Anyway, this is what the stream looked like today.

The Watcher in the Woods

2010-07-16T21:41:00.003-03:00

So I am back in the woods doing more stream measurements. At this point I have been in the woods over two hours on one of the hottest days of the summer (air temp in shade 26 C). The three applications of insect repellant were wearing off and horseflies the size of hummingbirds were ripping small chunks of any exposed skin. I was hunkered down by the stream where i met
the dogs two weeks ago initializing the probes. I could not shake the feeling that I was being watched so I looked around and observed that one of rocks on the opposite side of the stream was not, in fact, a rock. This rabbit was sizing me up.

The look he was giving me was more aggravated than anything and I got the definite impression that he was thirsty and if I got in his way he would bunnystomp me. So once again I had animals in my sample area. Weird, what is it about this section of the stream?

Oh yeah, they have completed the storm drain and I wandered down to see the results. The discharge pipe is now cased and the discharge will fall into a stone field before it reaches the stream. Next big rain I need to check to see what kind of flow there from the drain.

Science in Cartoons

2010-07-13T09:19:00.003-03:00

Science and Religion, dinosaurs
(click on cartoon to embiggen)

LINK TO CARTOON

Homeopathy, solutions

LINK TO CARTOON

Science and Engineering Morals and Ethics, Science and Professional schools

LINK TO CARTOON

Phfft ...Like I needed a Movie Theatre Drink to Tell Me This

2010-07-11T13:45:00.005-03:00

Science in Cartoons

2010-07-11T08:21:00.003-03:00

Food Chemistry, Chemistry Urban Legends
(click on cartoon for link and to embiggen)

Biochemistry

(click on cartoon for link and to embiggen)

Probed in the Woods

2010-07-06T14:37:00.010-03:00

It has been a long time since I posted anything here mainly because I could see that my experiment was not reaching the pedagogical goals that I had for this exercise. Oddly, something I had not expected was the continuing number of visits that this site gets resulting from searches for honeydew or science cartoons. That said something weird happened in the comments of the last post so I thought I should post something to see if I should close this site down altogether.

So let us speak of sidewalks and their consequences. Our little university is having a major expansion that has resulted in a significant change in our view from the front. As part of the upgrading of the property it would appear that the sidewalk has been extended across the front of our property

What I noticed was that the sidewalk would extend into the woods at the edge of our property. This resulted in the destruction of the oldest tree on our property, a very large and sound oak tree. Progress I guess.

What I then noticed was that the same workmen that had removed the tree were also installing a storm drain that exhausted onto our property. It turns out that the installation of the sidewalks mean that the road no longer drained naturally and needed storm drains but in an amusing twist the municipal sewer system extended only to the university property not past it so the storm drain would have to have a discharge into the local natural waterway.

Well, the local natural waterway would be the North-West Branch of Hall's Creek which runs through the University property and is one of the marvellous natural resources that we have been blessed to have on the campus. Every year I have had classes and laboratories based on the stream with huge positive responses from the students. It is a lovely little stream.

But this new storm drain will discharge into our stream (mostly when it storms of course but the street runoff will go directly into the stream in large volumes now and the run-off in the winter will be heavily laden with salt). So, in a frenzy of concern for the stream, I decided to take a day and measure as much water chemistry as possible for the stream before the discharges begin. So I wander down to the stream near the new drain and set up computers and probes and I am standing in the middle of the stream, water level near the tops of my rubber boots, festooned with probes and wires like some sort of scientific Christmas tree.

I had just touched the master keypad to start data collection when I heard crashing noises in the woods coming in my direction. I swear this is true, a monster sized dog was coming down to the stream dragging a tree (really, a big dead tree with roots and branches). When it saw me in the stream it dropped the tree and struck a pose.

Where I grew up dogs running loose in the woods are never good this dog just stared at me. I avoided eye contact and spoke in a low calm voice. The dog did not move and kept staring at me. I figured that when the searchers found my mangled body a photo of the monster that attacked me might be useful so I carefully removed my camera and took a quick picture.

Then there was this more frantic and crazed crashing in the underbrush and I was just about to drop $ 2000 of scientific equipment in the stream and spend the last twenty seconds of my life re-enacting the more disturbing scenes from the Blair Witch Project when this blur flew past me.

It turned out to be this other dog who promptly dropped into the stream and rolled in it while drinking water. I could tell that there was some kind of family relationship between the two dogs since the larger dog seemed to look at the black and white dog with the some-what disgusted look of an older brother. B and W Dog knew I was there but just wanted to drink and cool - off. Big Dog seemed to want to think this through more but nevertheless came down to the stream to cool off also.

So, now I have two good-natured dogs wallowing in the stream upstream of all my carefully placed probes so without overtopping my boots I carefully got to the master computer pad and turned off the probes just as clouds of silt and rafts of dog slobber floated through my study area.

On the edge of my hearing I heard a woman's voice calling though the woods, a voice that galvanized the dogs and they left as quickly as they could ... straight ... though ... my ... probes and sensors.

I have a complete intact data set, my equipment is fine and none of my internal organs have been ripped out. All in all this is what a Biologist calls a sucessful day in the field.

I am a chemist, what am I doing field Biology for anyway, this stuff never happens in the chemistry lab.

The Problem With Variables

2009-11-27T09:52:00.002-04:00

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 ...

2009-11-27T09:45:00.003-04:00

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

2009-11-25T15:49:00.002-04:00

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

2009-11-09T14:41:00.002-04:00

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

2009-11-06T09:48:00.003-04:00

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

2009-11-05T11:46:00.001-04:00

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

2009-11-04T09:40:00.003-04:00

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

2009-10-31T20:01:00.002-03:00

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

2009-10-28T12:47:00.002-03:00

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

2009-10-27T16:17:00.002-03:00

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

2009-10-27T15:54:00.002-03:00

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

2009-10-21T15:38:00.001-03:00

Saw this and liked it a lot.

Friday Thoughts on 11.09.09

2009-09-11T14:58:00.001-03:00

"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

2009-09-10T13:04:00.003-03:00

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

2009-09-10T11:58:00.002-03:00

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

2009-05-18T13:23:00.002-03:00

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

2009-05-15T13:23:00.002-03:00

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

2009-05-05T11:49:00.003-03:00

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

My Greatest Fear

2009-04-17T09:42:00.002-03:00

Friday Humour File: Chemistry LOL

2009-04-17T08:27:00.002-03:00

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

2009-04-09T10:05:00.003-03:00

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 ...

2009-03-27T08:37:00.005-03:00

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

2009-03-26T15:45:00.003-03:00

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

2009-03-15T16:51:00.004-03:00

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

2009-02-12T16:23:00.003-04:00

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

2009-02-04T13:14:00.003-04:00

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.

The Terror of Risk

2008-12-05T16:02:00.002-04:00

It seems that the media is like the creepy Nazi from The Marathon Man who sorrowfully remarks that in the previous days torture they had killed the nerve in the tooth that he was using to cause the Dustin Hoffman character pain. He then continues that they would have to drill into a healthy tooth to expose the nerve so they could continue the torture.

What I mean is that the media is constantly bringing some low risk, next to impossible event or complication and hitting us with it so that we will a) pay attention so that we can avoid the horrible fate and b) advocate the removal of all risk of this ever happening.

Now there are some campaigns that make a lot of sense. I can remember when pretty much everyone drove around in cars without wearing seatbelts while smoking. The causality and probability of both seatbelts and smoking were pretty much well established. On the other hand the fear of terrorists, contaminants in our drinking water and food is pretty much a fabrication created by exposing the incredibly improbable as possibly happening to you.

The latest is toxic epidermal necrolysis and its association with fairly common medications. What they do not tell you is that the necrolysis only happens once in a trillion prescriptions. No, fear sells almost as good a sex. In this case there is an incredibly small risk when you take certain medications that your skin will fall off in a horribly debilitating and quite often fatal drug reaction (LINK TO STORY) . There is no doubt that the people who suffer this reaction deserve our support and sympathy but they should not be used as a fear tactic to remove perfectly good medications from circulation.

This is in fact the reason why so many drugs fail in trials. There are many drugs that have been tested and have worked well for common conditions. The problem is that one in a thousand or one in five hundred patients will have an adverse reaction so the drug is withdrawn. We need our medical societies to step forward and set or recommend proper regulations for drugs so that as long as adverse reactions fall below a certain threshold (I'd say one in a thousand would be OK as long as I am not the one) the pharmaceutical manufacturers would be protected.

I don't know that pretty soon we will be chewing on willow branches and rubbing eels on our warts if we don't start accepting a certain level of risk.

LINK TO WIKIPEDIA PAGE
.

Trust the French: Natural Recycling

2008-11-22T10:32:00.002-04:00

Found on the internet ... it made me smile. I like the paradox of using the highest level of animation to produce a minimalist video with no real dialogue and simple plotlines. This reminded me of the Skrat clips from the Ice Age videos (which also made me smile) and the amazing introduction to Wall-E (which left me stunned with its brilliance).

The editors at Boing Boing make the excellent point that although Miniscule video clips are spread all over the internet the French animators are trying to make a living at this and we should feel motivated to purchase their products.

OK, Now this Guy wins the Crystal Growing Competition

2008-11-13T15:13:00.004-04:00

I am not a big fan of post-modernist art. I just don't get performance art and don't like dissonance and abstraction.

This I get.

This guy turned an entire apartment into a crystal growing experiment and called it "Seizure". A number of students at the end of the crystal growing competition looked at the bottom of their beakers and commented on the thick pad of well formed crystals that covered the bottom. Now imagene a whole apartment covered with those crystals.

I would have some concerns about exposure to the crystalline dust by going into the apartment and there is such a thing as copper poisoning but on a cool scale this is way cool.

LINK TO ARTIST WEB SITE

New Brunswick in the News: Tungsten

2008-11-01T19:37:00.003-03:00

The CBC is reporting that a company in New Brunswick has found a mineable ore body that it proposes to work for tungsten. It would appear that the most important user for the product is the nation of China. In fact the company homepage has a Chinese language link about the project. I knew about zinc and copper (and in fact antimony but we don't mine it anymore) but this is the first that I had heard about tungsten in New Brunswick.

LINK to GeoDex

Tungsten has a number of uses that relate to its physical and chemical properties of high density, hardness and relative inertness. It seems to be an important component of speciality steels where performance at high temperatures is important. There is an alloy called high speed steel that can be up to 18% tungsten. Of course, the feasibility of the mine is related to the demand for the metal and the cost of mining in New Brunswick.

Once again we will need to carry out the dreadful algebra to determine if the upheaval of our environment (and probably public financial support) will equal 250 resource based jobs. just look at the GeoDex webpage picture of the mine sight and it just looks like New Brunswick. Of course you could argue that NB has lots of scrub forest and could easily live with a couple hundred acres less if it meant real jobs. I am glad however that a full environmental impact statement is going to be done. I would also like to know if this is simply an ore extraction or if there will be some processing of the ore before it leaves Canada.

Environmental Chemistry Experiment in Fredericton

2008-10-31T17:18:00.002-03:00

This is the basis for an ongoing environmental nightmare in Fredericton.

First you spill some chemicals (LINK to story): namely 2,700 litres of chromium trioxide spilled by Custom Machine & Hardchrome.

Second you MAIL the following notice to the affected people (LINK to announcement): "The Department of Health continues to advise about a dozen homeowners and several businesses in the Evergreen Park area outside Fredericton not to consume their well water, or use it for cooking, bathing or any other use which would bring it into contact with their body."

Third you ignore the affected people so that an older couple ends up drinking the rainwater from their roof downspout. (LINK to story).

This is really as bad as it gets environmentally speaking. This is a citation from the Wikipedia page on CrO3:

"Chromium trioxide is highly toxic, corrosive, and carcinogenic. Chromium trioxide may cause cancer and/or heritable genetic damage. It is explosive when mixed with combustible material. It is toxic in contact with skin and if swallowed and very toxic by inhalation. CrO3 causes severe burns and may cause sensitisation by inhalation and skin contact. It is also toxic: danger of serious damage to health by prolonged exposure through inhalation. There is a possible risk of impaired fertility. CrO3 is very toxic to aquatic organisms may cause long-term adverse effects in the aquatic environment."

This is the stuff that made Erin Brokovitch famous. I just hope that Custom Machine & Hardchrome has very very good insurance and that this won't just be a case where the company just folds up and the province is left with the clean-up. I do however wish that someone would offer the old couple a cup of cold water in Jesus' name.

X-rays in your life

2008-10-22T17:26:00.004-03:00

I love this paper on X-rays generated from unrolling Scotch tape in a vacuum. They even proved it by using the X-rays to take a picture of a researchers finger. To do that the researcher would have to have his hand in a vacuum chamber long enough to expose the film. That is loving your research. This is the kind of work I would love to be involved in. Absolute genius.

LINK to Article

National Chemistry Week Crystal Growing

2008-10-21T13:43:00.003-03:00

It is National Chemistry Week (LINK) and the highpoint of the week will be Mole Day (October 23 ... 10.23 ... you know .... Avogadro's Number ... 6.02 x 10(23) ... man, it kills the mood when you have to explain everything).

So, in the first year chemistry class we tried growing crystals of Potassium Aluminum Sulphate ...

And Copper (II) sulphate.

All in all the crystals were very nice. The class set of crystals can be seen by following the link below.

2008-10-21(CH1013XL)

ABU Riverkeepers

2008-09-27T15:03:00.002-03:00

So, the ABU Biology Society and their faculty sponsor Penny Humby got us all up on a rainy Saturday morning to drag other people's garbage out of a nameless brook we had never really noticed before. This professor took his camera and whenever he took a photo the students would all look sad and feign intense interest in gum wrappers.

From 2008-09-27(BI3513Riverkeepr)

So I passed the camera off to a student and suddenly the other students were posing like models for the Eatons catalogue (go figure).

From 2008-09-27(BI3513Riverkeepr)

So they took my camera and wandered off to play Riverkeeper in their own 'hood and they even formed a gang called the Keypurz .. here they are with their peeps flashing their gang signs. ]

From 2008-09-27(BI3513Riverkeepr)

Some people took Riverkeeping to a whole new level of personal participation.

From 2008-09-27(BI3513Riverkeepr)

Finally at the end of a long wet morning the students met a hillbilly and his pet snake.

From 2008-09-27(BI3513Riverkeepr)

This is a slideshow of the rest of the photos:

Thanks to all the students that participated and for the Biology Society for getting us together. And thanks to Somer for taking the photos of students with smiles.

Things that Make Me Laugh: Science Ads

2008-09-27T14:38:00.002-03:00

Chemists get a reputation as humourless, soul-destroying trolls that hide under bridges and kill any hope that wanders by. It is therefore quite pleasing to see a thin layer chromatography firm depart from the stereotype and show a sense of humour in this clip that is in fact an extension of a famous Monty Python skit. The cinematography and acting are very good for this sort of thing so it must have been a labour of love for the owners of the company.

LINK TO VIDEO

Internet Serendipity

2008-09-25T15:37:00.003-03:00

Came across both of these on the same day and the serendipity of it all it made me laugh ...

"The Scriptures are so chop'd and minc'd, and as they are now so Printed, stand so broken and divided, that not only the Common People take the Verses usually for distinct Aphorisms, but even Men of more advanc'd Knowledge in reading them, lose much of the strength and force of Coherence, and the Light that depends on it" John Locke

CHEM 1013 Lab 2 Penny Data

2008-09-25T13:06:00.004-03:00

So we have been working in the penny library for a fortnight now and we have counted and measured pennies ....

And boiled pennies in acid ...

All in the name of science. So now it is time for us to collect our data as a class. Use the comments section of this post to give the densities that you measured. Give them as YEAR (Density gcm-3) [so you should report them as 1993 (7.8 gcm-3)]. This way you will be able to compare your data in your formal report with the data from the class.

Charles We Hardly Knew Ye

2008-09-07T15:15:00.004-03:00

Science is done by human beings and we as humans share much that is mundane about our lives. There is a new book out now that explores the real, human side of scientists that loom large in our minds and imaginations. Check out this description ...

"He suffered from incessant retching or vomiting, usually brought on by fatigue; and from painful bouts of wind that churned around after meals and obliged him to sit quietly in a private room until his body behaved more politely. Reading between the lines, his guts were noisy and smelly. "I feel nearly sure that the air is generated somewhere lower down than stomach," he told one doctor plaintively in 1865, "and as soon as it regurgitates into the stomach the discomfort comes on." He was equally forthright with his cousin...: "all excitement & fatigue brings on such dreadful flatulence that in fact I can go nowhere." When he did go somewhere, he needed privacy after meals, "for, as you know, my odious stomach requires that."He also had trouble with his bowels, frequently suffering from constipation and vulnerable to the obsession with regularity that stalked most Victorians. He developed crops of boils in what he called "perfectly devilish attacks" on his backside, making it impossible to sit upright, and occasional eczema. There were headaches and giddiness. He probably had piles as well."

Sort of makes you see Charles Darwin in a whole new way don't you think?

LINK TO BOOK

Five Days to Get Your Life in Order

2008-09-05T10:26:00.003-03:00

It would appear that they are about to switch on the Large Hadron Collider. You may remember this installation for the initial word that it would be able to find the "God particle" and later on that when the thing was turned on it would cause the existing universe to wink out of existence. It would appear that someone has corrected the math on that issue.

I especially like the calming reassurance: "As the Safety Assessment Group writes, “Each collision of a pair of protons in the LHC will release an amount of energy comparable to that of two colliding mosquitoes, so any black hole produced would be much smaller than those known to astrophysicists.” "

LINK TO ARTICLE

So if you have anyone to apologize to or to show some love you have until September 10th.

It still makes me think of this cartoon:

LINK TO LARGER IMAGE

CHEM 2113 Lab #1 Class Data

2008-09-05T10:21:00.002-03:00

This is the post for the class to combine it's data collected in the first lab. I want everyone to log into the comments section of this post and leave any data that you have on the compounds.

for example;

Compound E: m.p. 123.5 - 125.0 oC
Compound E: TLC (CH2Cl2) Rf = 0.123
Compound E: TLC (acetone) Rf = 0.789

Welcome Back: Questions for Prof. H.

2008-09-02T13:12:00.002-03:00

1. Why blog?

Three reasons really: ego, access and anonymity

Ego: The nature of the internet ensures that this is a public forum with a memory. People throw stuff on the internet without thinking about it much but it all gets stored somewhere. With that in mind a person has to believe that they have something to say that other people need to read.

Access: This blog will pretty much be "active" 24/7 which means that it can function as a forum for the courses anytime that a student has opportunity to work on the course. Perhaps I will not be signed on but a message can be left that another student might be able to read and help.

Anonymity: Some students just do not do the "face-to face thing" very well. They may come to my office with specific goals and questions and then let the stress of the encounter cut the meeting short or incomplete. A blog gives a student a chance to think things through and make sure that they get what they need (or at least they have the opportunity). The anonymity is important in that it is possible for the student to participate without me or their peers developing a negative opinion of them.

2. How would this blog be different from other online forums?

This could be done internal to the university computer system. I noticed that when Union University had a tornado tear apart their campus they had an off-site blog ready to go (LINK) and that reinforced in my mind the importance of having multiple lines of communication.

I see that some courses are supported by Facebook pages and that has two problems in my mind: a loss of anonymity and Facebook contact with the professor (both of which can have their problems if you tend to be a bit wild on Facebook).

3. What will you use this blog for?

If you look over the posts prior to this one you will see that there are three basic types of post:

a) Course information / discussion quick announcements especially for students that may have missed something, I might be able to emphasize here. I will also routinely post links and comments to information on the internet that relates to concepts taught in the course.

b) Course assignments: This is something that I have tried before and I don't think I have it quite right yet but would like to try again. I will post a problem and the class will work together to post a solution to the problem in the comment section of the post and only students that log in and post will share in the marks.

c) Commentary: Sometimes a professor just has to vent.

And a Tree Shall Lead Them

2008-08-18T15:58:00.003-03:00

As if we needed more reasons to love trees there is a science story out today that not only are trees our only proven hope to sequester atmospheric CO2 it would appear that trees are also able to remove airborne pollutants and convert them to amino acids.

LINK TO ARTICLE

So it would appear that the trees are important to us for a number a reasons. It would make for an interesting social and cultural study to look at populations that have extensive wood supplies and compare them with similar groups that do not. I bet that wooded societies are healthier and happier and probably wealthier. The anthropologists talk to us about Stone Age and Bronze Age societies but there must be a Wooden Age in there somewhere. I would guess that our complex master - slave relationship with our cellulosic neighbours must be an important part of our development.

In our own little corner of the world we have a property here at ABU where the campus sits on a much larger parcel of land that was clear-cut in the early 1970's. That is our best bet for the photo below. Notice that the highway has not been twinned and the old farm property that was here before ABU is still intact. In terms of the clear cut it makes for an interesting comment that the parts that were not clear cut are the high ground between Gorge Road and the Gorge Brook, the Gorge Brook area itself and a boggy area in the North - East sector of the property.

What I like about this early view of the property is that it clearly shows the property borders since I am sure the woodcutters would have cut right to the border with the neighbours. It also clearly shows where the logging roads are and that might be useful for access to the woods today.

If we now look at the 2005 Google Earth view of the ABU property we can see that the scrub forest has covered the property again. Up close it is a nasty tangle of poplar, birch and swamp maple with a seasoning of conifers. But it is treed and starting the natural process of succession from cleared land to conifer forest. What is also clear is the gaping hole in the property that is the surface pit for fill that worked the property from the time of the last clear cut and left about a quarter of the property stripped down below the subsoil leaving an almost Mordor like blasted moonscape of scum, slime and tufts of mis-begotten grass.

Well, it looks like we are going to be here for a while and it is clear that the good Lord gave us trees to save us from ourselves so I think we had better start planting some trees.

"Recycled" Water ... It's About Time

2008-08-12T09:43:00.003-03:00

I love this article in today's New York Times.

LINK TO NYT ARTICLE

I have been lecturing for years that it is the mark of the civilized Western society that we can urinate, defecate and dump chemical waste into our own drinking water and not suffer for it. We can directly connect the success of urbanization with municiple water treatment systems. I always say that more people are alive today because of municiple water treatment than modern medicine ... but no one listens.

The author (not journalist in this case) visits a new water treatment plant and realizes that the purpose of the plant is to treat sewerage and return it to the city drinking water reservoir. The first response is "Yuck" but there is some really well developed science and chemistry here.

What really gets me cranking are the self righteous rural folk that claim that they have their own well and will not "pollute" their bodies with treated water. In most rural settings your well is down stream from someones septic field ... or a cemetery. At least with municple water someone is responsible for monitoring the water quality.

There is one line in the article that I really like and it shows the two objective and subjective sides of the science involved:

"You could argue that in coming to terms with wastewater as a resource, we’ll take better care of our water. At long last, the “everything is connected” message, the bedrock of the environmental movement, will hit home. In this view, once a community is forced to process and drink its toilet water, those who must drink it will rise up and change their ways. Floor moppers will switch to biodegradable cleaning products. Industry will use nontoxic material. Factory farms will cut their use of antibiotics. Maybe we’ll even stop building homes in the desert."

I think I am going to get a copy of the authors book.

LINK TO AMAZON BOOK LISTING

Physical Science in the Olympics: Air Quality

2008-08-08T12:46:00.005-03:00

There is a fight going on right now between the BBC

LINK TO BBC STORY ON AIR QUALITY

And the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee

LINK TO OFFICIAL OLYMPICS SITE ON AIR QUALITY

In essence the BBC is saying that the air quality is bad and anyone can see that it is bad. In fact they have been measuring it and the numbers confirm that it is bad. For example, today (08.08.08) they obtained a reading of 191 micrograms per cubic meter of the worst kind of solid particle pollution called PM10 pollution. The WHO cites 50 micrograms per cubic meter as the the criteria for acceptable air but raised that to 150 for Beijing.

On the other side, the organizers of the Beijing Olympics are saying:

" Du said in the past seven days the Air Pollutant Index (API), an indicator of the air quality, in Beijing has been all below Level II, indicating excellent or good air quality.
"Maybe the fog makes it not a nice picture to look at the Bird's Nest or the Water Cube, but the monitor south of the two stadiums reads the API at 80 today. It conveyed a strong message that our efforts had paid off since August," he said. An API rating of 51-100 (level II) means good quality. "

What it comes down to is the number and how it was determined. It is amazing that scientists are capable of using modern technology to measure the same physical phenomenon and get such dramatically different numbers. Physical science is supposed to be above this sort of thing. If the data are distorted then who is distorting them? Is it more likely that the BBC is knowingly publishing false or skewed numbers to support a story and embarrass the host city and country or that the Olympic organizers have "adjusted" their numbers to look better. At least the BBC admits to a 20% error in their measurements. There is another possibility that both sets of numbers are false. We cannot know but there is a third voice on the issue from within China and on that blog this is a picture of the air quality today.

LINK TO BLOG

What we can know is how well the athletes respond to the air. According to the SOURCE OF ALL KNOWLEDGE (Wikipedia) an average human has a deep breath volume of about 5 liters. An adult will make about 40 deep respiration's per minute during physical exertion. So that is about 200 L of Beijing air a minute or one cubic meter of air every five minutes. You have to believe that even elite athletes pulling that kind of air into their lungs for that period of time will have to see an effect. This is the reverse of what high altitude training does to prepare and athlete. At high altitude the air pressure is lower so there is less oxygen, in response the body increases lung capacity and the number of red blood cells to capture as much oxygen as possible. When the athlete returns to sea level there is a short term benefit that can improve performance. In this case however what we are looking at are athletes that can perform well in bad air. I do believe that China may well have an advantage here.

As a post script to this issue there is also a bit of discussion about the air quality of these Olympics compared to air quality in previous Olympic cities such as Athens and Mexico City. According to the BBC this is what athletes faced in previous Olympics.

Other Olympic cities on the opening day of the Olympics:

London (United Kingdom) 21
Athens (Greece) 43
Sydney (Australia) 20
Seoul (Korea) 41

Beijing (China) 191

Source: World Bank 2004 and BBC 2008

Liberal Arts Science: Opposing the Darkness

2008-08-07T22:50:00.002-03:00

Teaching Science in a liberal arts university one often loses a bit of perspective. The reality is that we as a society have to come to some sort of agreement as to what basic level of science knowledge is necessary for functional adults. This is especially true for educated adults since we live in a world largely defined by its relationship with the products of science and technology. That is why we have science requirements for arts students ... the question haw effective a single isolated science credit is in a fourty credit degree. I don't know but I would hope our students would avoid the problem demonstrated in this video. One might even hope that their religious studies courses would explain mystery.

What is endearing about the video below is the completely unashamed attitude that personal assertion is equal to truth.

Christians Behaving Badly

2008-08-07T10:50:00.003-03:00

Pound for pound I would say that the weirdest person in the Old Testament is Elisha. Weird stuff just happened around him.

"Elisha Is Jeered 23 From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" 24 He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths. 25 And he went on to Mount Carmel and from there returned to Samaria."

What I find striking about this passage is the commonplace almost mundane reporting style. If we were blogging about a trip between Fredericton and Moncton we might mention the high price of corn at roadside vegetable stands in the same tone that our faithful biblical reporter indicates that 42 men get mauled by two bears (OK, I know the plausibility sensors are ringing on this incident but you must remember that people back then were addicted to cheap Kung Fu movies where the bad guys would willingly line up to get their faces smacked).

It would, as well, appear that Christians that travel are not always on their best behaviour. I, of course, like you all have been tailgated and passed dangerously by a maniacal person with "Honk if you love Jesus" bumperstickers (which is actually a quite clever way of making you NOT honk at a bad driver). It would appear that more recently the standards of Travelling Christians Behaving Badly has been raised by Victoria Osteen who apparently struck a flight attendant that got in her way down with hemorrhoids. It looks to me like a strange cross between Career Barbie and Harry Potter. What is that worship song we sing ... "Just Like in the Days of Elisha"?

LINK TO COMPLETE STORY

Science Under Your Skin

2008-07-30T15:17:00.004-03:00

Carl Zimmer is an author and writer that I enjoy reading. He is strongly anti-Creationist but writes in an even-handed rationalist way that avoids the mean spirited positions of Dawkins and his disciples. In fact he makes me think of Stephen Jay Gould.

For whatever reason, Carl took an interest in people who have science tattoos and has now collected images of these tattoos at the link below. I have to admit that I would never get a tattoo myself due to 1) a defining abhorrence of the idea of exposing more of my skin than absolutely necessary, 2) lack of faith in the hygiene practices in most tattoo parlours that I have seen and 3) no easy gloss that escapes this clear statement: Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD. Leviticus 19:28
Nevertheless I am impressed that some people would go to the expense and pain of having these ink drawings pushed under their skin. An amazing number are chemical in nature.

LINK

Something New I am Playing With

2008-07-23T23:44:00.002-03:00

I have found a program called CamStudio which is an open source facility that allows capture of audio along with screen capture. I am still working out how to use it but I am currently playing with the idea of posting a series of "videos" that show me solve a problem in real time and record my comments about logic and value. My first attempt is really choppy but I think I can see some promise as I hopefully get better at it.

There is a series of popular videos called "You Suck at Photoshop" that are really quite funny so for lack of a better name I have called this series "USuk@Chemistry" (LINK). That is also a bit of a shout out to a blog that used to exist about ABU Science called "Chem Sucks". I think that in this case my attempt to be funny might send the wrong message so I will probably give them some name like ChemPosts or ChemChats or DrMelHoldsYourHandWhileYouMeltDownatHomeStudyingForTomorrowsTest, you know something like that. Anyway, for those of you that are missing your Dr. Mel fix, here you go.

National Geographic Publishes Worlds Most Disturbing Photo

2008-07-23T09:56:00.003-03:00

A couple of posts ago I was on about how we regard some animals as different from others and the fads of the day dictate if we consider them as appropriate for food or commercial exploitation. In the same vein I think the people at National Geographic wanted to publish a photo that would shock people to make a point. It is a very disturbing image concerning the bush meat industry in Africa. It seems that the appearance of oil money in some parts of Africa has resulted in a demand for bush meat and apes appear high on the menu.

This image shows the body of an ape being prepared for market. It seems that the value of the meat is increased if the hair is removed before sale but the skin is intact so they burn it off with a blowtorch. That is the image below.

LINK TO ARTICLE

This image is disturbing to me on a number of levels and I think that the National Geographic Society is going to get a lot of outrage going over this. I hope their gamble pays off. The trade in bush meat that results in these kinds of images needs to stop. But then again I wonder how much meat we would eat if we could see the killing floors of the industrial slaughterhouses of North America. Perhaps it is time for the National Geographic to point it's lens at our own culture before it ignites outrage over other cultures even if it is justified.

Mentos and Diet Coke Blurs Physics and Chemistry

2008-07-22T14:56:00.004-03:00

You know, when it comes down to it Chemistry calls itself "The Central Science" because when you draw all of science as a Venn Diagram it overlaps with more sciences it than any other. For all that Chemistry is the most insecure science as well. Very few universities are creating pure chemistry departments now and are in fact rolling them into other disciplines such as biology and physics.

The line between Chemistry and the other sciences gets blurrier all the time. Take for example this recent publication by the American Journal of Physics ...

LINK TO ARTICLE

This is of course the famous reaction that spawned a 1000 YouTube videos and made these guys famous.

LINK TO EepyBird

The article has even been reviewed by the news magazine for the American Chemical Society [LINK] and it turns out that there are a number of factors that combine to make the Mentos / Diet Coke reaction explosive. It appears that the gum arabic used in the composition of the Mentos make the foam more stable and frothier. A microscopic analysis of the surface of the Mentos reveal that it is covered with gas bubble nucleation sites and that the density of the mint meant that it falls to the bottom of the bottle of pop. All useful insights.

But it is not physics. Indeed what exactly do the authors mean in their title when they say "physical reaction". Now I have a little physics in my background and as I remember my terminology a physical reaction is a response to a force (you know ... Newton's Laws and such). I think they are just trying to avoid the word "Chemical" as if it were a dirty word.

I think chemists need to protect their turf while it is still ours and this is not a physics paper. The problem is how do we protest? I mean, we all know the hierarchy ... if you are not smart enough to do math you do physics, if you are not smart enough to do physics you do chemistry, if you are not smart enough to do chemistry ... well you know how it goes etc. We will need to be careful and bide our time but we can't let them walk over OUR turf and pretend to own our ideas. Wait for the right time and remember the codeword (stoichiometry (it is the only science word that chemistry truely owns)).

Welcome to My World in Metaphor

2008-07-14T10:54:00.004-03:00

There is a remarkable passage in Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" that goes:

"Sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a spark--which was a candle in a cabin window; and sometimes on the water you could see a spark or two--on a raft or a scow, you know; and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of them crafts. It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened."

My intellectual world occurs at a level far below our technical ability to "see" what we are doing. Oh yes, we can use some very elaborate methods , such as atomic force spectroscopy, to visualise the positions of atoms but only in crystals of heavy atoms.

Any so, if we want to "see" what we are doing in chemistry and biochemistry we sink to metaphor and simile. Whenever we reduce macroscopic objects and even ideas to the microscopic level we lose important information in the simplifications. I don't know how many times I have tried to use a simplified simile to explain a chemical reaction only to end up fighting with students that cannot get past the simile to the concepts taught.

With that all said as a preamble I see a new company has entered the market for industrial animation of science - biochemical - chemical processes. They have a sampler / demo reel at this site:

LINK TO DEMO REEL

There are some moments captured in the demo that I like. Such as the moment when an micelle / vesicle carrying a drug molecule contacts a cell wall and submerges like an asteroid into the ocean.

Or this moment that shows a fist full of pills dropping out of the pyloric sphincter an into the acid bath that is your stomach (thankfully a clear colourless liquid in this image, I know I have seen stomach contents in my life and it does not look like this). The pills begin to disintegrate as they travel leaving a drug plume.

And this image captures the moment in time just before a protein touches a glyco-protein receptor on a cell surface.

It is not my intention to get drawn into the whole irreducible complexity debate. I do however appreciate how these kind of images place an accessible window on the microscopic world of biochemistry that exists in my head. We are all large, salty bags of water with amazing and complex chemistry going on in our cells all the time. These images are nothing like what really happens but until we can see with our own eyes they will have to do.

It does not matter if you believe it was made or just happened. It is astonishing how little we know about the complexity of what happens below our skin. Every step towards humility in our discussions on complexity is a step forward.

Made me Laugh

2008-07-09T12:05:00.004-03:00

What can I say? Both of these made me laugh but one of them shouldn't have I suppose ... I guess on second thought one of these isn't funny ... can you guess which one?

They Shoot Elephants Don't They?

2008-07-08T16:17:00.005-03:00

It seems everytime you turn around some poor country in Africa is being over run by herds of elephants and the whole discussion of herd culls occur. Most recently, Kruger National Park is thinking of reducing the size of its herd. Link to Article. The issue is that 100 years ago there were about 6000 elephants left in Africa and a century of conservation means that there are currently about 600,000 and they are straining available resources.

Of course there is a very emotional response, the elephant is iconic for Africa in the same sense that the polar bear is iconic for Canada. There is also a real appreciation that elephants are long lived mammals with strong family ties and apparently real emotions. No one would say they are sentient or conscious but some would argue their intelligence.

The question needs to be asked though, what makes an animal off limits for killing? It would appear that a human emotional response to the animal (kittens and puppies which we kill by the thousands each year) scarcity due to human activity (whooping cranes) and perceived intelligence or kinship (the great apes) all mean that an animal should not be killed.

That brings us to the whales. If I understand the biology, whales are huge, long lived mammals (altho Herman Melville calls them fish and he saw a lot of them) that for the most part we hunted to edge of extinction. And yet, just like the elephants, we left them alone for a century and I tell you, you could walk around the island of Newfoundland on the backs of the whales and not get your feet wet. They are everywhere and are responsible for almost any positive news in tourism for the Atlantic Provinces.

We allowed the elephants to recover and their numbers justify both hunting and culling now. We allowed the buffalo to recover and if you go out west you can get a buffalo burger. We have allowed the whales to recover and some populations could easily accommodate a profitable "fishery" (doesn't it bug you to hear of the fur seal "fishery" each spring but "mammalry" sounds too similar to something else).

Link to Cartoon

Now, I like the cartoon "The Other Coast" it is gentle humour with a social and environmental consciousness. I am sure that they would be appalled to find that I have linked their cartoon to this discussion. But it was their cartoon today that got my mind thinking on this topic.

But I have to ask, if the biologists tell us that the populations are large enough and stable enough to allow a monitored whale hunt then why not? What is special about the whales as a species that puts them in the same class as the great apes? It would seem to me that Canada has a significant potential natural resource off its shores that it could be exploiting.

This is a photo I took a while ago when we lived in Newfoundland, a friend had taken us out in his boat and this is a whale in the mouth of St. John's harbour. The towers that you see on the horizon are the St. John's Basilica. What is strange about this is that St. John's harbour is essentially a huge sewer and if you go out at the right tide the water coming out of the harbour is brown with "suspended solids". Even so, there you have a whale frolicking in the harbour. Indeed, you can get an often spectacular live view of the harbour from the other side at this link.

And this one is waving good-bye from the waters of Freshwater Bay close to Cape Spear. Like I say, unless we can articulate a reasoned argument for continued protection I fail to see why limited hunts similar to the ones we have for polar bears, elephants and buffalo should not be allowed.

I have no idea where this came from. It is horrifically hot and muggy here and I guess I am feeling a bit like a beached whale and had to release a conservative rant or start biting people.

Summer Internet Surfing

2008-07-04T08:03:00.003-03:00

I stumbled across this website that made me laugh ...

Created by OnePlusYou

and these are questions that have been bugging me as well ...

Created by OnePlusYou

$5190.00

Created by OnePlusYou

POSTSCRIPT

So it turned out that this site is not as benign as I first thought. I came across the link in a theology blog that I monitor and just went to the widget site. It figures that the link embedded in the images above in FACT sends you to a Russian "dating" website. I have told these people how old I am, my height and weight and some of my personal preferences in filling out the "questionnaire" to determine how many cannibals I could feed or how much my body is worth. I would assume that the email associated with this website is currently being bombed by "offers" of companionship by busty ladies named Svetlana. I have disabled the links as best I can now and all I can say is that I am glad that I use an Internet pseudonym for this blog. If any of you managed to get caught in this before I posted this warning you have my apologies.

Now, I have all these new email messages from Nadya to read ...

Something New Under the Sun

2008-06-25T22:25:00.002-03:00

Every now and then you see something that just makes you go hmmm.

There is an abstract for a paper published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society that just pokes you in the eye and says "Not only is this amazing chemistry but traditional publishing just doesn't fully show the awesomeness of the reaction".

LINK TO ABSTRACT

At it's simplest level they created a molecule that reversibly breaks a bond when exposed to light. What is cool is the video that goes along with the paper.

Now, photochromic bond dissociation is the cornerstone of the whole discipline of photochemistry (essentially the whole area can be summarized by the statement "Look! We took expensive pure starting materials and shone harsh UV light on them to make complex sewage, we then spent years extracting components from the sewage"). What makes us chemists all giggly about this molecule is the speed of UV capture, bond dissociation and re-association and the fact that the molecule does NOT degrade to sewage. That and the fact that there is the uber cool video showing the whole process.

Why do you care? You know that irritating commercial with the smug near future family that walks outside and their sunglasses immediately turn dark? Now connect the dots and see the bunny. The future is now.

Let the Bitter Howling Begin

2008-06-20T13:46:00.005-03:00

If there are any students out there that monitor this blog ... this message is for you. I have decided to allow cheat sheets for my tests and exams in first year chemistry. I know, I know, I fought you guys long and hard on this issue. Our debate always went:

Arguments for Pro -Cheat Sheets:

1) chemistry should be about understanding not memorization
2) memory aids would lower the stress of testing so that the student can do his/her best work
3) creation of the summary sheet is itself an excellent learning process

Arguments for Anti-Cheat Sheets:

1) this course is not a democracy so if I say you need to memorize some basic formulae and logical problem solving sequences suck it up and march like a soldier ... you know what? When I was a student we had to memorize the entire periodic table AND the isotopic masses IN LATIN. I don't care what the professors in OTHER universities are doing, if all the other chemistry professors jumped off a cliff would you expect me to as well? Hmm? Why are you smiling? Did that image make you happy in some way? Well, just for that smarty pants the formal report is due tomorrow ... hand it in just before the unscheduled mid-term.

And at some point in the debate the two sides would descend to childish name calling and secret scheming for retaliation.

So, I have decided to roll over like an old dog. The kicker was a low key investigation at the recent conferences that I attended where the dominant logic was that cheat sheets give the illusion of help but if the student doesn't know the chemistry they will fail anyway.

By the way, I came across this link to a spectacular online periodic table:

LINK TO PERIODIC TABLE

I like this quote for the way it makes the causal link between philiosophy and morality:

"To say that a man is made up of certain chemical elements is a satisfactory description only for those who intend to use him as a fertilizer."
Hermann Joseph Muller

And as I have discovered while on sabbatical ... Jesus may take the wheel but He doesn't do paperwork. My office is a disaster and the lab looks like a combination yard sale - toxic waste dump. I am trying to get things back to "Normal" and I like the attitude in this cartoon:

A Sunday Quote

2008-06-08T21:43:00.002-03:00

I came across this quote today in an article that I was reading and I thought a paraphrase to change "poet" to "scientist" would actually be more an accurate reflection of the goal of science in the liberal arts tradition.

"To a poet, nothing can be useless. Whatever is beautiful, and whatever is dreadful, must be familiar to his imagination: he must be conversant with all that is awfully vast and elegantly little."

Samuel Johnson

A Very Odd Chiral Separation

2008-06-07T13:08:00.003-03:00

There are symmetry laws written into the basic code of the Universe that we live it. If indeed Nature abhors a vacuum it is positively fanatical about breaking symmetry. The more one reads about them the more one is amazed by how basic symmetry rules control so much of what we know about anything.

Simply put breaking symmetry in any fundamental kind of way is strictly forbidden. When symmetry is broken the consequences are pretty amazing. Indeed, if you read Singh's "Big Bang" it is argued that the Universe itself is the result of a symmetry breaking event.

That said, in my discipline of chemistry the most important symmetry rules are written into the nature of tetrahedral molecular substructures in a phenomenon we call chirality. In terms of geometry, if you have a molecule with any point in it where there are four unique molecular bonds to the same atom there are two distinct spatial arrangements that are possible. For simplicity we call them left handed and right handed. It just so happens that the proteins in our bodies are, in fact, long chains of substructures that all have these tetrahedral atoms (pretty much each one an amino acid). What is remarkable (and amazingly improbable) is that each one of these atoms is the left handed version.

McMurry, 5th Ed.

Why is this amazing or improbable? The universal symmetry laws say that when molecules or atoms that are not left handed or right handed form a tetrahedral atom that there must be a 50:50 mix of left and right handed products. That is why scientists and chemists in particular are obsessed with Escher prints. Escher was an artist that made his money creating images where left and right handed images generated each other ...

In fact the only way we can separate handed molecules is with another handed molecule. The question of course is where the broken symmetry comes from but that is an issue for another day. Suffice it to say that chemists have a unique interest in any sort of process that is capable of sorting left and right handed objects.

Well a new one has surfaced.

It was in the Globe and Mail today that another right sneaker has washed up on a beach in British Columbia. What makes that odd is that the foot was still in it. What makes it odder still is that this is the fourth right foot sneaker with a foot still in it to wash up in recent days.

LINK TO GLOBE AND MAIL ARTICLE

In the absence of a real twisted murderer loose on the West Coast it would appear that this is the result of a natural process of some kind where accidents or suicides result in bodies washing down river and out into the ocean where natural dismemberment results in the feet separating from the bodies but that the right handed foot / sneaker combination follow a different path than the left handed sneakers. The importance of the sneaker is to provide protection for the foot so it stays intact and the natural buoyancy of the sneaker makes the dismembered foot float.

All in all it would appear that a right handed object floating in the ocean is somehow polarized and separated from an equivalent left handed object. The proof of this theory would be to go back to the river source of the bodies and examine the coast in the opposite direction from where the right handed sneakers were found. If this theory is right there should be a stretch of BC coastline where the left footed sneakers accumulate. You heard it here first.

I'm just sayin'.

I Have a Bad Case of Piles

2008-06-04T11:22:00.003-03:00

I have always been a "clean desk" kinda guy. I have always believed in organization as a second religion and it is foundational to my day to day work as a professor. On the other hand I really did a "Jesus take the wheel" thing with the ABU Science Department this past year and I let a lot of things slide. That has resulted in several piles of paper on my desk next to the piles of textbooks I need to review for the fall semester courses. I hate piles of paper so i have been methodically plowing my way through them dividing them by priority and interest. At the bottom of one pile I found my 2006 - 2007 student evaluations.

Student evaluations have always been difficult for me. At no other time of my year am I brought so close to the question of why I am here at ABU. At Dalhousie, Saint Mary's and Memorial I had spectacular student evaluations that were always better than the departmental averages. But here at ABU it is very different. In fact, my evaluation numbers are all much worse than the ABU averages even on the question of organization and enthusiasm where I figure I should shine. I know all the rationalizations and explanations about why my evaluation numbers might be poor. But it still brings me back to what am I doing here if the students do not understand or appreciate the effort.

So I read my evaluations and they are pretty much the same as ever. There are some students that clearly "get" what I was trying to do and some other students that clearly hate me on an irrational level (disturbingly they are Science majours). The hate filled group are pretty easy to cope with because it is doubtful that I would be able to reach them anyway. But it is the continuing poor marks and negative comments by the middle group of student that cause me to pause. I guess I need to be more intentional in trying to reach that group of students. The problem is that I feel the issue may not be me so much as the content of the courses that I teach. I have a very clear understanding of the necessary content of my courses and I can't change that without making ABU chemistry courses non-transferable. I don't know, sometimes I just don't know.

And so, I deeply appreciate on a different level the kindness of several students for a card they gave me last fall. At moments like these it really helps. Thanks again.

Honeydew from the Land of Oilrigs and Cowboys

2008-05-28T16:29:00.003-03:00

I have been in Alberta attending chemistry conferences this last week. I made three presentations to good attendances and kind comments. Did some networking (I actually had people sliding their business cards into my hand in passing and giving me the "call-me" gesture) and re-newed some old friendships.

But most of all I attended seminars and lectures.

All about chemistry.

All of them using Powerpoint.

From 8 AM to 8 PM.

For five days.

Man, my brains are dribbling out my earholes.

I must admit to not really adjusting to the Alberta lifestyle so well. It seems to largely feature driving fast and recklessly in large pick-up trucks. Yes, gas is $ 1.30 a liter out here but I guess that is just part of the package. I just left Taco Bell reflecting to myself that I had just come to Alberta to purchase "Mexican" food prepared entirely by Chinese immigrants (they had one designated English speaking woman who shouted orders at the crew in Mandarin). Welcome to the wild west.

I spent the better part of one day listening to the Green Chemistry / Petroleum Chemistry people. I pass for clever in some parts and God-like omniscient in some others but I had a hard time cutting through the language of some of those folk. In one talk it came out that the Petroleum industry has just committed one billion $ for sequestration of CO2. Even in Alberta that is the kind of money that makes people slow down to look. Sequestering CO2 is collecting it and hiding it in mineral formations either chemically as carbonates or under pressure. What is amazing is that after listening to some of the best scientists in the area I could only conclude:

1) at this time we do not have a process that works for any more than 0.1% of (*current*) CO2 emissions

2) that China is currently bringing a new dirty coal fired electrical plant online everyday (yes kids, e-v-e-r-y-d-a-y)

3) if we were to discover a process today that worked, the industrialisation, ethics and environmental approval process in North America would mean that viable use could not occur for 10 years. We do not have such a process.

In terms of CO2 we are totally screwed. The genie is out of the bottle. We have lived a blessed and extravagant lifestyle in front of a watching world for several generations now and they feel entitled to the same thing. Very soon every family in China, India and Indonesia will want a computer, a car and a refrigerator.

After listening, talking and thinking I was only able to conclude one thing. The ONLY short and long term solutions that we have to atmospheric CO2 are to stop emissions and to plant trees. We seem to be socially incapable of the former but I have hopes for the latter. It was therefore amazing to read an article in the New York Review of Books by Freeman Dyson (LINK) that essentially says that we do not have the time or ability to create new industrial processes to solve the CO2 problem once we emit CO2. Dyson said that we DO have the ability to genetically manipulate trees to make them "carbon eating". In my opinion that is brilliant. The only working process that we know of that gets rid of atmospheric CO2 is the natural plant carbon cycle. We just need to tweak the genetic thingees in the trees and they will save us. Tolkien was right, our salvation rests with the ents. We will all soon be tree - huggers.

I'm comin' home.

PhD Gets it Right (Again)!

2008-05-18T08:42:00.004-03:00

LINK TO CARTOON

Chemistry In the News: The Perils of Modern Life

2008-05-17T21:50:00.006-03:00

Canada has a list of industrial chemicals that it considers "toxic" [Link to gov't site]. It has been announced that the list has been just increased by 11 more. It is somewhat alarming that some of the chemicals listed as cosmetics additives or additives to plastics that are in your house right now. Actually the whole cosmetics industry has not covered itself with glory from the get-go. I mean the reality of the cosmetics industry is two-fold: 1) to give a false impression and 2) to achieve goal #1 at any and all cost. There are people out there who would gladly trade a shorter life for "looking good". The illusion of a healthy glow has been achieved for centuries by coating the face with compounds of mercury or antimony and 11 doctors out of 10 will tell you that is a bad bad idea. Indeed, the plastics industry has always tweaked the properties of the pure plastics with additives to suit the end use and the attitude has always been that the additives have not been mobile once Incorporated in the plastic. That would appear to have been an assumption of disputable validity.

The whole moving to a shack in the woods and living off the land is looking better all the time.

LINK TO GLOBE AND MAIL ARTICLE

The Additions to the Toxic List
(Links to mostly Wikipedia (click on name))*

1] Acetic acid ethenyl ester [Vinyl acetate] Linked to cancer. Used in products such as abrasives, fragrances, perfumes and deodorizers.
Now this is just unfair, it is a nice volatile compound with a pleasing odour and has served us well for centuries and now we turn our backs on it for causing cancer.

2] 1,3-Butadiene, 2-methyl [Isoprene] Linked to cancer. Used in rubber and plastic manufacturing. But, but, but ... it's a NATURAL compound! Nature wouldn't hurt us would it? I mean just who is in charge here maybe we should just show Nature who's the boss. Yeah, that's what we will do. We will kick old Nature right where it hurts, we will pollute the ground, water and air and spit in Nature's eye and tell it to do its best. I mean really what can it do if we drag chemicals out of all natural chemical contexts and use the chemicals in ways that Nature never intended?

3] Thiourea Linked to cancer. Used in electronic products, mining, textiles, dry cleaning and hair preparations and cosmetics. I like this compound I like it alot. I can think of chemical reactions I would like to do with this chemical if I had a nice dark lab and a warm retort (look it up kids it only sounds dirty).

4] Oxirane Linked to cancer and persistent in the environment. Used in epoxy resins for paints, coatings, adhesives and other products, and to produce synthetic glycerin. This has just gotta be the coolest compound on the toxic list. No organic modelling kit will allow you to build this simple molecule because three membered rings are supposed to be rare and unstable and yet I can bet that you have driven down the road and have been passed by a tanker transport of this stuff. Cool but it will tear into organic compounds like a rabbit into wet sand.

5] C.I. Pigment Yellow 34 [chromate yellow] Contains chromium and lead. Linked to cancer. Used as colorant in plastics, inks, paints, coatings, adhesives, textiles and sealants, artists' supplies, cars, vinyl packaging, toys.

I got nothing on this one I would have thought eliminating lead and chromium would have been taken care of years ago. I guess traditional use trumps risk. If you tried to bring something like this on the market now as a new compound you would never get it onto the North American market except in Thomas the Tank Engine toys.

6] C.I. Pigment Red 104 [molybdate orange and molybdate red]
Contains chromium and lead. Linked to cancer, a developmental and reproductive toxin. Colorant for red to orange. Used in paints, coatings, dyes, inks, plastics.

7] Benzenesulfonic acid [Acid Blue] Deemed an environmental hazard. Used in cleaners and disinfectants.

8] Cyclotetrasiloxane, octamethyl [D4]
Deemed an environmental hazard. Used in construction, textiles, leather and hide tanning, paper products, plastic packaging, household appliances, computers, motor vehicle parts and cleaning compounds.

9] Cyclohexasiloxane, dodecamethyl [D6] Deemed an environmental hazard. Used in cosmetics, beauty supplies, perfumes, personal care products, pharmaceuticals and drug products, paper bags and paper products, rubber products, medical equipment and supplies, cleaning compounds, polishes, foods, paints, coatings and adhesives. Building blocks of silicone, application includes breast implants.

10] Cyclopentasiloxane, decamethyl [D5] Deemed an environmental hazard. Used in health and personal care products, footwear, automotive parts, construction, mining and oil/gas extraction, transportation, warehousing and storage, pharmaceuticals, toiletries and cosmetics. Building blocks of silicone, application includes breast implants. This is one fancy family of environmentally hazardous chemicals. The cyclic siloxanes have an amazing and surprising chemistry and the fact that they went from lab to industry so fast is a measure of the niche that they occupy. Makes me wonder what they have to replace these guys. I got to say that this really makes me reconsider the pectoral and butt implants I was thinking about.

11]Phenol, 2,4,6-tris [1,1-dimethylethyl][2,4,6-tritert-butylphenol]
Deemed an environmental hazard. Used as a fuel additive.

OK, now just wait a minute, this is super mesityl phenol. I mean how can you list a chemical with "super" in its name? Who is going to protect us now when we really need an organic oxidant?

* I am well aware that I have gone on record that Wikipedia is a bad source but it is late and I have been assimilated.

Comic Strip Wisdom

2008-05-04T22:51:00.003-03:00

All I can say is ... Amen

LINK TO CARTOON

And then there is this spin on guy behavior

LINK TO CARTOON

The Marvels of SulPHur

2008-04-24T22:40:00.002-03:00

It would appear that some students in England got tired of the pedagogical / pedantic / infantile nature of the videos that came with their chemistry text and decided to do their own. You have to stay with this one for a bit as it takes a while for them to hit their stride but I must admit I learned a lot from this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmw7JfsNzoY&eurl=http://selenized.wordpress.com/

"Natural" Chemistry

2008-04-23T19:12:00.002-03:00

I see that an "all natural" desert restaurant chain named Pinkberry in the States has fallen afoul of reality. "Natural" ingredients will rot, decompose or go rancid in an hour to a day or so. For that reason we created the whole industry of food additives so that we can make a donut in 1990 and have it still be "fresh" in 2008.

The harsh reality is that the food industry is designed to sell us water, salt, sugar, fat and air for as high a mark-up as possible. In order to make us to pay for these cheap foods the industry flavours them with "natural" or "synthetic" additives.

So what we mostly pay for is flavoured water, salt, sugar, fat and air that can't go bad. The "best before" date on these foods are mostly made up to make people throw the food away and buy some more not because the food has changed in any significant way. Anyway, welcome to reality Pinkberry. What I like about this article is that they took the time to completely chemically deconstruct the ingredient list for the desert. If fact you could pretty much find the same list for everything from Twinkys to Pogos.

Link to NYT Article

PS I think this is the first post possibly ever where I didn't use ellipses ... but then again I may have overused quotation marks as an indication of dubious meaning.

New Scientist Asks a Great Question

2008-04-21T18:00:00.002-03:00

The editors of New Scientist asked 17 of the leading scientists in the world what books shaped their worldview or changed the course of their lives and the results are below. It is interesting how many selections are "adult / academic" selections where I would suspect that the truth is that their paths were shaped much earlier in their lives by textbooks or magazines. I also notice that philosophy or religion really do not make any impact in the list either. I guess I now have a reading list for the summer since I have only read five of the texts listed.

1. Farthest North - Steve Jones, geneticist
2. The Art of the Soluble - V. S. Ramachandran, neuroscientist
3. Animal Liberation - Jane Goodall, primatologist
4. The Foundation trilogy - Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist
5. Alice in Wonderland - Alison Gopnik, developmental psychologist
6. One, Two, Three... Infinity - Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist
7. The Idea of a Social Science - Harry Collins, sociologist of science
8. Handbook of Mathematical Functions - Peter Atkins, chemist
9. The Mind of a Mnemonist - Oliver Sacks, neurologist
10. A Mathematician’s Apology - Marcus du Sautoy, mathematician
11. The Leopard - Susan Greenfield, neurophysiologist
12. Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior - Frans de Waal, psychologist and ethologist
13. Catch-22 / The First Three Minutes - Lawrence Krauss, physicist
14. William James, Writings 1878-1910 - Daniel Everett, linguist
15. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Chris Frith, neuroscientist
16. The Naked Ape - Elaine Morgan, author of The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis
17. King Solomon's Ring - Marion Stamp Dawkins, Zoologist

LINK TO ARTICLE

Now an interesting question would be what selection(s) shaped my life and my worldview. There is no doubt that the one book that I have read and thought about the most would be the Bible and most specifically the writings of Paul. After that would come the Tolkien Grand Tour from "The Hobbit" to the "Book of Unfinished Tales" (which I read about every two years) but that was more for entertainment rather than thinking or changing my life.

When I was a teenager the non-biblical books would have to be both the science fiction and non-fiction selections from Isaac Asimov. What I learned from that experience was that science was one of the few areas where one could stand on solid ground and imagine at the same time.

As I got older I can still remember the electric joy I felt reading Boorstin's "The Discoverers". More recently, "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" is a book that has become dated but still engages my mind.

What am I reading now? I am currently reading another one of the genre of science history books that are popular now. It is Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and it is a great read but it falls into the trap of giving the illusion of narrative history while in fact mostlydescribing the personal eccentricities of notable scientists. In my opinion Singh's "Big Bang" is much better at combining science, history and personality.

In chemistry there is only one book that stands out in my mind and that is "The Chemistry of the Elements" by Greenwoood and Earnshaw. It is well written and comprehensive if dated. It was shamelessly plagiarized in Housecroft's "Inorganic Chemistry" which at least updated the information.

Chemistry Builds Character, Courage and Creativity ... Who Knew?

2008-04-17T11:59:00.002-03:00

So I am flipping through the Daily Gleaner the last time I was up to Fredericton and my eyes fell upon this add ...

It is about time that when they want to show students facing a true challenge that they don't airbrush some stock photo of some kid climbing Everest. No, in this case the Haley Joel Osment look-a-like is facing the true test of character, courage and creativity ... the titration of acids and bases in graduated cylinders. It wouldn't be character building to do it like everyone else in Erlenmeyer flasks, it wouldn't show courage if he didn't part his hair down the middle like they did in the 70's and as for creativity ... the dude is recording data even though there isn't any liquid in the buret. Perhaps he sees dead chemists. On top of all that the kid is left handed no wonder he had to go to a "special school" ... left handed people are sinister.*

* a joke you won't get until you take organic chemistry and even then some levo people won't think it funny.

Big Pharma Take a Hit

2008-04-14T09:59:00.003-03:00

Between all the failed drug trials recently and the problems with side effects in so many prescription drugs this cartoon is a bit like kicking a guy when he is down but it does get to the heart of modern medicine's defining methodology of drugging every problem out of existence. Man that was a long sentence. I mean how many of us have heard of a friend or relative that was on such a complex drug regime that they end up in the hospital because of incompatible prescriptions?

Link to strip

PS How does Forrest Gump know if penguins have nipples or not anyway?

The Chemistry Student's Nemesis

2008-04-08T14:01:00.004-03:00

We got this catalogue in the mail today and it made me think of stiochiometry.

Moles are actually killed using the unusual poison zinc phosphide. It seems the poison is an effective rodenticide and the rodents find the chemical attractive. The label claims they will die in their tunnels within a day of ingesting the poison.

The reaction to produce zinc phosphide from the elements makes for an interesting balanced chemical equation. I will give an appropriately geeky / nerdy prize to the first ABU student that gives me a correct balanced chemical equation in the comment section of this post and tells me what mass of mole killer they could make from 40 grams of phosphorus.

Classroom Chemistry Demonstrations

2008-04-05T23:34:00.003-03:00

The story is in the news this weekend about a chemistry demonstration in a High School science class here in New Brunswick where a routine demonstration resulted in the injury of a student. Without a doubt this is the worst case scenario short of burning down the school. No teacher would accept any chance that a student could get hurt as a result of a demonstration. But accidents happen. We need to hope that this was a true random accident and pray that the student has a full recovery. It is clear that the teacher is an exceptional, caring teacher and that this incident has deeply affected him, we need to pray for him as well.

It is my position that there is just not enough information out yet to allow us to make anything other than the most general comments. We need to be careful not to overreact or make assumptions.

The link below to the CBC article has some interesting comments in addition to the article from students in support for the teacher. That is very revealing.

LINK TO CBC ARTICLE

LINK TO TEACHERS WEBPAGE

LINK TO FIRST ARTICLE ON DANGERS OF SCIENCE DEMONSTRATIONS

LINK TO SECOND ARTICLE ON DANGERS OF SCIENCE DEMONSTRATIONS

LINK TO THIRD ARTICLE ON DANGERS OF SCIENCE DEMONSTRATIONS

This is all part of a cost-benefit calculation that every science teacher has to make. The primary consideration is always "Can I do this safely?" after that comes "Will the students learn anything from the demonstration", "Will the time and effort spent setting up, conducting and cleaning up the demonstration be justified by the facilitation of learning or am I just amusing the students?"

In my case I really agonize over this. I have always used a chalkboard because I felt that writing on the board slowed me down and showed the students that I too had to cope with how to write and draw scientifically. I have always stopped and told stories because I believe that for a lecture to work there must be "intellectual rest periods". I have always done demonstrations both to create breaks in the lecture and to emphasize points that are best learned by observing not being told. In the back of my mind however the rational part of my brain is always yelling "you have 36 hours to teach this material and you are going to blow 30 minutes on a demonstration? ... you do not have time for this".

In my experience demonstrations are an academic highwire where the teacher can look really stupid in front of his students and if something goes wrong people might get hurt. I remember that I used to burn small amount of sulphur in class to show them the cool blue flame. Then one year one of my students turned out to have an extreme allergic reaction to sulphites and she just barely made it to the hallway to escape the slight fumes from the reaction.

I can only see this going one way when it comes to the public schools. All classroom demonstrations will be stopped and the students will be shown videos of the demonstrations. I just do not see the public accepting any risk that when they send their children to school that they might get hurt in a classroom. I hope not, but I really feel that is where we are going.

Risk is one of those things that we have hardwired into our minds. We are usually well aware when we are doing something risky and the response to stress is heightened awareness and more deliberate action. The thing is that we are also conditioned to cope with stress as it becomes a routine part of our lives. In some peoples lives the riskiest thing that they will do during a day is drive down a highway. In spite of that years of coping with the stress of driving now allows them to eat, talk on the phone and drive all at the same time. It is not that they are better drivers ... they are simply conditioned to cope with the stress. Some people would argue that this leads to complacency and accidents. I hope that was not the case this time.

Friday Science Cartoon

2008-04-04T11:41:00.005-03:00

I recently came across the comic strip Grand Avenue and there are occasional academic strips that make me laugh.

LINK TO COMIC STRIP

I found this YouTube video amusing as well in a low tech chaotic way.

LINK TO VIDEO

Interesting Clippings from Globe and Mail

2008-03-26T00:13:00.002-03:00

I read the Globe and Mail over the weekend and there were some interesting articles that caught my eye:

A] Taking Christ Out of Christianity [LINK]

"There is no authoritative Big-Godism, as Rev. Gretta Vosper, West Hill's minister for the past 10 years, puts it. No petitionary prayers (“Dear God, step into the world and do good things about global warming and the poor”). No miracles-performing magic Jesus given birth by a virgin and coming back to life. No references to salvation, Christianity's teaching of the final victory over death through belief in Jesus's death as an atonement for sin and the omnipotent love of God. For that matter, no omnipotent God, or god."

This is amazing, what they want is the comforting tradition and religious sentiment. One could argue then that if we want a "true" Christianity we need to remove the comforting traditions and religious sentiments and we might approach what Jesus intended. In my opinion, the Church is here for comfort. That is comfort in the old military meaning of the word ... to bring back strength to the wounded so they can return to the battlefield (not fort-up and shoot tracts at the lost).

B] God's Sugar Daddy [Link]

This biographical article is written by a freelance writer that normally writes a modern life column for the style section of the GandM. That said, she is a literate and insightful young woman who does her work.

The article is about John Templeton who as an investor was able to make billions by the old "Buy-low-sell-high" mantra but who is so frugal that while he owns a significant part of Kia he refused to buy a Kia automobile because he thought they were overpriced.

The point is that John Templeton has personally financed a wide spectrum of prizes in the Science and Spirit research. In fact the Templeton Prize is larger than the Nobel Prize. This has fostered a research culture that is a small mirror of the kept scientists that work for the secular research funding agencies. This really has ticked off the secular scientists. It all comes from the heart and mind of a very rich, very curious and very aware old man. One wonders what will happen when he eventually passes away and the source of this reviving vision fades with him.

C] Jesus the Jew and the Christian cover-up [Link]

"The short version of Wilson's thesis, which he calls the "Jesus Cover-Up Thesis," is this: The spiritual figure that billions of Christians worship worldwide as the Son of God was, in fact, a Jew, a rabbi, and a revered teacher of the early first century who obeyed and championed the Torah. Jesus (or more accurately in Hebrew, Yehoshua or Yeshu) prayed in synagogue and urged his followers to adhere strictly to Jewish law. Only in this way, he promised, would the Kingdom of God become a reality. Wilson probes the Jewish roots of the Lord's Prayer, the Sermon on the Mount and the Last Supper (which is more commonly recognized as a Passover seder, although there were likely many more people in attendance than the 12 disciples portrayed in Leonardo da Vinci's celebrated painting). In Wilson's view, Jesus wanted to improve Jewish life, not abolish it. He did not proclaim himself to be a "Christ" figure or a "Son of God." That came later."

The Bible says that there is no new thing under the Sun and I have heard this message in a number of forms since I was young but is seems that it is being refined and becoming more "fashionable". Keep an eye on this one I think it is going to grow.

Science Cartoons of the Week

2008-03-22T14:20:00.003-03:00

LINK TO CARTOON STRIP

Ch-Ch-Changes

2008-03-18T23:08:00.004-03:00

I have used Raymond Chang's Text "General Chemistry" since the fall of 2000 for Intro Chem 1013 and 1023. The publisher had managed to keep the cost down and I could live with the content and pace. I had issues with how boring the text was and the constant tension that students had when I taught something a bit differently from the text.

So that is why I spent Monday and Tuesday of this week visiting Dalhousie University. The chemistry department at Dal has developed an in-house chemistry textbook written by almost the entire faculty. The intention was to strip everything from the text that wasn't actually taught in the lectures, to support the lectures with tutorial help and to test concepts and content as taught in the lectures. The text was designed to function as a lecture notebook in addition to the text itself so that a third of each page is available for notes and the binding allows the book to be opened so that each page will lie flat. Finally instead of chapters the content is divided into much shorter sections designed to be less intimidating to cover.

All in all I was very impressed. They are teaching about 1000 students in classes of about 120. We sat in on one regular lecture given by my post-doctoral supervisor. It was clear that the students had bought into the whole concept of the text and most were recording their notes directly into their textbooks.

So, I have pretty much decided to use the Dalhouse text here at ABU this coming academic year. The text should cost less to the student and we will cover everything in the text and test that content only. It is an experiment and the only difference will be the amount of tutorial support that I will have to offer in support of the lectures. I am looking forward to the change.

The Long List of Chemistry Professors Cooler Than Me

2008-03-15T23:51:00.003-03:00

This is a link to a video that my son made from some raw tape of a demonstration that I did a while back. This may be the only proof in existence that I can move faster than a slow walk.

Link to gas demonstration video

Now, there are tons of chemistry demonstration videos out there and there are two sites that I think have done the best job of collecting them. They really are worth an evenings look for your typical science nerd or geek.

Link to Wired Science

Link to Edward Kent's Webpage

It's Only There if You Look

2008-03-14T17:26:00.003-03:00

There have been some cool articles recently on pharmaceuticals in our water. The pharmaceuticals get there by two means 1) we take too much and it is excreted into our sewerage or 2) we just flush unused drugs. Now, it should concern us that there is a clear link between sewerage and our drinking water. I mean if Jane up river from you is taking birth control pills and is excreting the excess drug in her urine why is it showing up in my drinking water and more ominously I only know of the birth control drugs because I looked. What else is there?

In the Chemical and Engineering News article (LINK) I like the statement:

"FOR THREE SUMMERS, Kidd and her colleagues spiked a lake in Canada's Experimental Lakes Area with 17α-ethinylestradiol at a concentration of 5 ppt—a concentration that has been measured in municipal wastewaters and in river waters downstream of discharges. During the autumn that followed the first addition of the estrogenic compound, the researchers observed delayed sperm cell development in male fathead minnows—the freshwater equivalent of a canary in a coal mine. A year later, the male fathead minnows were producing eggs and had largely stopped reproducing. The minnow population began to plummet. The decline continued for an additional three years until the fish had all but disappeared from the lake."

These are the ones that seem to be everywhere in small amounts that you need to think about when you drink your glass of water:

17alpha-Ethinylestradiol (synthetic birth control)
Carbamazepine (anticonvulsant and mood stabilizing drug)
Diclofenac (nonsteroidal, anti-inflammatory drug, there is a cool back story on this one concerning the vultures that "clean-up" dead bodies in India)
Fluoxetine (Prozac, antidepressant)

Now, we need to couple alarm with common sense. The concentrations are very low and far below any known toxic effect. But on the other hand, while it is true that the concentrations of birth control drugs are not going to kill fish but it will make the male fish grow eggs. I think I'd rather die. Still I will leave the risk-benefit discussion to the experts:

""The treatment processes we have are highly effective," Snyder concludes. He points out that we're seeing more pharmaceuticals in our environment because we're getting better at detecting them, not necessarily because there are more of them. It's therefore important, he says, to develop toxicologically based limits for pharmaceuticals in our water. "If we ignore concentration and say presence or absence is our litmus test, then there will be no end to that," Snyder says. "Detection does not infer health risk and nondetection does not ensure safety.""

Friday Post: But is it Cheating?

2008-03-14T17:10:00.002-03:00

We have both chemistry and academic dishonesty in the news these days. Seems that a chemistry course at Ryerson prompted some students to create an online exchange of solutions for course quizzes and labs. When the faculty found out the host student was charged with academic dishonesty.

In the classic rationalization of this generation the main argument by the student is that since this is no different from students exchanging answers in the library they are blameless. It just doesn't sink in that when you pass in work that you claim is your own you are expected to have done it on your own. Yes, other students may be cheating by other means but you were caught.

Being open about cheating does not absolve you from cheating ... one might argue that zebras learn to run from lions not because they all get caught but because every now and then one of them gets caught.

CBC Posting / Interview on the Ryerson Case

Globe and Mail Article on Issue

Friday Cartoon

2008-03-06T21:47:00.002-04:00

With apologies to Jorge Cham ...

LINK TO ACTUAL COMIC

Warning! This Post Will Offend You.

2008-03-06T16:24:00.006-04:00

OK, I am going to get in trouble for this but it has to be said. Environmentalists as a group tend to be self righteous and inconsistent. Take Jabba the Hut ... I mean Al Gore and his Nobel Prize for Environmentalism. It seems that his movement itself does not seek carbon friendly alternatives for transportation and he has not significantly changed his own mansion or lifestyle to be more environmentally friendly. It is always easier to harangue others and make them feel shame then to change ones own behaviour. Perhaps that is why the modern media take delight in pointing out hypocritical inconsistencies in the lives of evangelists. Life is hard in the unblinking light at the top of the pedestal. So, there is a chemistry blog that I monitor and the young man that maintains the site has been blessed with a child. This prompted a debate on the disposable versus cloth issue.

LINK TO BLOG

Now, thankfully our family has ceased to be blessed with children and ours are graduating high school and getting drivers licences. I would expect that the next time we have to discuss the whole disposable vs cloth debate will be when the children have children or when I become incontinent (probably a close race). I do remember however the horror and pain inflicted on my wife and I when we openly (and one might say gratefully) mostly used disposable diapers. It seemed that people we did not know would go out of their way to let us know the damage that we were inflicting on the environment by using the Devil's Nappies.

Now, there is a whole articulated debate out there about the issue and if one counts the "whole cost" of cloth diapers they seem to not be as benign as originally advertised. And that is one point that bugs me about environmentalists. In any accounting they make of the cost of an item they endorse they assume that time = $ 0. I mean, they invoke an earlier, simpler time when rural folk naturally "reduced-reused-recycled". What they forget is that that ethos was developed between the twin grinding stones of Poverty and Necessity.

You can see them in your churches. They are dying out now, in the same way that our war veterans are passing from society. They are older women who have lived the "simple life". And while it absolutely consumed them the pressure also changed them into the beautiful saints that they are now. (Of course, that also means that they cannot throw out a bread bag or moldy food but that is another point for another day). No these women, and reduce-reuse-recycle always depended on the women, lived in a time when there wasn't money for new anything. They had to make babies, fix meals, clothe the babies and chop wood (more often than not on the same day). This task consumed them and their bent and quite often broken bodies are testament to the harshness of their lives. This was also the reason why a lot of farmers where I grew up buried three wives before they died. Mormonism is just parallel not serial, I would like to know if Mormon wives in polygamous marriages lived longer.

My point is that labour is never free. Environmentalists always assume that people will forgo luxury and pleasure AT THEIR OWN COST for the warm glow of environmentalism. That gets me to me second point on inconsistency.

Let's take the disposable diaper and assume that Junior soils five diapers a day for a year and half (about 600 days) so that means the "waste load" = 3000 soiled diapers. Each soiled diaper might have the mass of half a kilogram (we had big babies) so that is 1500 kilograms of waste.

Now, let's examine the issue of consistency (and this is where you WILL be offended). I want to address an issue that no man may discuss. As any man has thought (but never said for this is one of those things that cannot be discussed) ... Have any of you ever noticed the similarity between advertisements for diapers and "feminine protection". They use the same words and the same illustrations. When they want to show how absorbent a diaper is they pull out a graduated cylinder with a blue liquid in it and pour it onto the diaper while extolling the "absorbency and dryness" of the item in question. Then the feminine napkin ad comes on and they do the exact same thing. I must confess the idea of a thick blue liquid coming out of my body creeps me out but this wouldn't be the first day that I thanked the good Lord for making me a stand-up pee-er. Any man that has gotten lost in Shoppers and wandered into "The Valley of the Pads" knows that in fact there is an amazing complexity to "feminine protection" that we can never understand or even contemplate. Then of course there is the napkin versus plug debate that again most men can't think about.

In essence a feminine napkin is a small diaper. Now then let's do some math. If we assume that a woman needs "protection" for 13 weeks a year over 40 years (from age 12 to 52). By the way, does anyone else think that the word "protection" in this context is a bit odd? So anyway, if we have a woman using an average of 3 pads a day for 7 days for 13 weeks a year for 40 years we have a total of 10,920 pads. Math rocks.

Now, I know that pads are smaller than diapers but I would assume that 3000 soiled diapers are at least somewhat in the same ballpark as an environmental problem as 10,920 pads. And ask yourself the garbage man's question: which would you rather stick your hand into ... a used diaper or a used pad?

So here we are ... why have the environmentalists not taken on the feminine protection industry in the same way they have the disposable diaper industry? My guess ... PMS.

How do you tell the difference between a woman with PMS and a terrorist?
You can negotiate with a terrorist.

How do you tell the difference between a woman with PMS and a pit bull?
Lipstick.

I got a million of them, I'm here all week ... try the fish.

I mean, imagine you are an environmentalist and you have a choice between making a woman feel guilty about being a lazy mother who uses disposable diapers and telling that same woman just before she needs them that she shouldn't use disposable napkins. Well, no one ever accused the environmentalists of being stupid, just mean and inconsistent. It is always easy to make women guilty and insecure about motherhood ... and it is always heartless.

No, the environmentalist lobby will go a long way towards consistency when they start spreading the news that 13 weeks a year a woman needs to be closeted with cloth napkins and a bucket of hot water. Until that day, let's agree to leave the whole disposable versus cloth diaper debate behind us (if you will forgive a little joke at the end ... oops I did it again there didn't I ... sorry about that shout out for Brittany ... now there is a lady we can all get behind ... ugh that was really bad, maybe I will just settle for Good night and Good luck).

PS. A quote on diapers that I like.

Reason says “Why must I rock the baby, wash its nappies, change its bed, smell its odour, heal its rash? It is better to remain single and live a quiet and carefree life. I will become a priest or a nun and tell my children to do the same.

Christian Faith replies: The father opens his eyes, looks at these lowly, distasteful and despised things and knows that they are adorned with divine approval as with the most precious gold or silver. God with his angels and creatures will smile – not because the nappies are washed, but because they are done in faith.”
Martin Luther, Concerning Married Life

Motto for the Year: Screw the Polar Bears

2008-02-26T12:29:00.006-04:00

I have never liked being manipulated and I feel that the environmental movement is using the lovable polar bear to make us do their bidding. My reading of the situation is that a) there will always be more northern cold refuges where the polar bear populations will be able to survive they just won't be down by the tree line rummaging through our dumps and b) polar bears have survived in warm climates before (Link to warm climate polar bears).

So if we are not talking about the extinction of anything other than local populations of polar bears why are they the poster children of the environmental movement? Affection and shame are causing us to do what the environmentalists say. And that is exactly what the environmentalists want. Sort of like a young woman messing with the head of her fiance so that when they get married he will be so confused that all he can do is anything she says.

As a for instance, a hundred or so years ago some guy (twasn't Edison) discovered that if you put a whacking amount of electricity through metal it got hot. Thus was born the electric toaster. Later work indicated that if you pushed even more electron through the metal that it would get so hot that it would melt. But, there were some metals that when outrageously pure would have such high melting points that the metal would become incandescent if protected from oxygen in the air. One such metal was wolfram, or as we call it, tungsten. Suddenly a metal with no earthly good was crucial to modern society. What was nice about tungsten was that it was pretty much benign in the environment.

Then again, there was the issue of efficiency, as any girl with an Easy Bake oven knows light bulbs throw off a huge amount of heat and that heat is wasted energy. So the environmentalists, remember the environmentalists? This is a posting about environmentalists so don't forget them. The environmentalists used the polar bears to convince us that we should not use our old incandescent bulbs but should switch to more energy efficient compact fluorescent bulbs. They are more efficient because they generate light by electrically exciting metal atoms dispersed in a vacuum tube. Oh yeah, the metal atoms are Mercury.

You know what? There is a fascinating math concerning compact fluorescent bulbs. Each bulb contains 30 mg of Mercury so the one billion compact fluorescent bulbs out there now mean that we have inserted 30 billion milligrams of mercury or 30 million grams of mercury or 30 thousand kilograms of mercury. The metric system rocks.

Now, in the good old Victorian days you could wander down to the local pharmacy and purchase 5 pounds of liquid mercury and swallow it. The liquid slug of metal would rocket through your system until it reached the "back door" where it would politely knock and ask to be let out. As if. That five pound slug of mercury would hit the "back door" like the famous stop motion shot of the bullet and the apple.

This was one of the Victorian remedies for constipation and was advertised as a way to "untwist the gut". You know what is most disturbing about this story? They captured the mercury and used it for the next customer. Eewww. They must have been seriously afraid of constipation in those days to slam down "recycled" mercury.

Anyhoo, we have discovered over the years that mercury is a very dangerous metal. In water systems where there are minerals and organic materials a complex chemistry occurs that gives organo-mercury species that in even trace amounts can cause serious neurological damage. This is also true for mercury that gets into the lungs and gets trapped. So the two things that we should avoid are: 1) mercury in our water and 2) mercury in our air.

Back to the compact fluorescent bulbs. How do they work? They have gaseous mercury atoms excited in an electric field. Where do you suppose those mercury atoms go when you break the tube? Hmmm? And now we have 30 million grams of mercury in small lots spread all over this great land. Man, I am glad I am not walking around with the next generation of mankind in my pelvis.

You know how you are not supposed to throw away rechargeable batteries because they contain nickle and cadmium (or at least they used to) on the idea that we should keep heavy metals out of the environment? And What do you suppose was the rate of return for batteries? Yeah, I would be surprised if more that 10% escaped the garbage. Now think about the compact fluorescent bulbs. Well, we knew all this before the polar bears got involved and the environmentalists knew it too.

So now that we all feel virtuous about changing to compact fluorescent bulbs a new study comes out exposing the environmental danger of the stupid things. I guess we just need to wait to find out what the environmentalists and the polar bears will make us do next. I'm thinking candles.

LINK TO ARTICLE ON HAZARDS OF COMPACT FLUORESCENT BULBS

Professor H knows what he wants for his birthday

2008-02-22T17:01:00.003-04:00

Oh yes, this is the graduated cylinder that I have waited for my entire life.

Link to item