A Very Odd Chiral Separation

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

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

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)!

LINK TO CARTOON

Chemistry In the News: The Perils of Modern Life

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

LINK TO CARTOON STRIP

Ch-Ch-Changes

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

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

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?

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

With apologies to Jorge Cham ...

LINK TO ACTUAL COMIC

Warning! This Post Will Offend You.

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.

OR

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

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

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

Link to item

Christian Chemistry

People have either offered me the opinion or suggested that Chemistry is a pursuit of truth that is independent of any system of morals or ethics. They then challenge me to show them what "Christian Chemistry" would look like and how it would be different from "Secular Chemistry". I do not know, and in fact doubt, that the chemical engineer in this article is a Christian but the goal of his research, the selfless pursuit of that goal and the humble giving away of the valuable patent rights so that more poor people would benefit are all hallmarks of what Christians that happen to be Chemists should be doing. I was fascinated and challenged by the article. The chemistry is mundane and amazing at the same time. I have concerns that any significant increase in cost is a killer though.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080212.wsalt12/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/

Found on the Web: Sheldon

I like this strip. It seems to have been written by a nerdy liberal arts kinda guy.

Link to Comic Strip: Sheldon

Found on the Web

You know what? This is exactly how I felt until I graduated from grad school.

Continuing Thread: Periodic Tables

LINK TO SITE

I am going to start collecting these sites because they speak to the iconic nature of the periodic table and physical science. At this site a bunch of blissed out hippies felt they could bridge science and society by making prints that they labelled for the different elements. Some elements like Cu they had a grip on but some they just spoke to their "inner chemist" to make the panel.

Found on the Web: Different Kinds of Failure

I came across this link to a website that collects pictures of the different kinds of failure. Some of the pictures are political, some are lolcats and some are photoshopped but the one I like is this one (I remember when this happened):But this one made me laugh too:

LINK TO WEBSITE

And then there is this website that is similar but more focused on people like this who remind you that you are not REALLY having a bad day if your document won't print:

LINK TO WEBSITE

Made Me Think, Made My Head Hurt

There is a website that I stumbled across where intellectuals were asked if they have ever changed their minds about something important and asked them to write about it. It is astonishing the breadth of response and some of it is heavy reading but it all makes me think.

The question this year was framed this way:

The Edge Annual Question — 2008

When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that's faith.
When facts change your mind, that's science.

WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?

Science is based on evidence.
What happens when the data change?
How have scientific findings or arguments changed your mind?"

http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_index.html

Would the last ABU student to leave the Internet please turn off the light?

Really? It has come to this? What ennui? Malaise? Karma? .... Secrets?

Found on Facebook: Very Disturbing Images

A very serious issue has been raised on Facebook concerning the use of ABU lab glassware. What is most disturbing is that the image on the far left is the MOST RECENT image. We need to know ... are these the same E-flask?

Found on the Web

I liked this but the description makes the reaction more mysterious then it actually is.

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/01/video-of-a-beau.html