tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-122615892024-03-21T15:22:30.341-04:00The Culture of Chemistry<b>The Who, What, When, Where and Why of Chemistry</b><br>
Chemistry is not a world unto itself. It is woven firmly into the fabric of the rest of the world, and various fields, from literature to archeology, thread their way through the chemist's text.Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.comBlogger269125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-30644192332941818702019-04-20T11:05:00.001-04:002019-04-20T11:05:13.014-04:00Easter fires: Rainbow demonstration rises again<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It the the custom in many Christian denominations to light a Pascal fire at their Easter rites. For Catholics, this is done after sunset on Saturday night. The fire is kindled outside the church and in many traditions a large candle and/or many candles are lit from the flames. Lighting the fire is often problematic, it should be visible to the people assembled, but confined to prevent hazards. It can be smoky. This weekend I became aware of an alternative to the traditional wood fire, replacing it with a rock salt and alcohol mixture. This sounds like a great idea. It is smoke free — you could do it inside — and that as <a href="http://www.vgdd.org/New%20Fire.pdf" target="_blank">these sets</a> of <a href="http://www.nationalaltarguildassociation.org/?p=254" target="_blank">directions</a> suggest, you can add other salts to make beautiful colors in the flames. It is, in fact, a TERRIBLE idea.<br />
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This is just a version of a chemistry demonstration, often called the rainbow demonstration, that is so dangerous it should not be done. Period. The rainbow demonstration has led to many <a href="https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/blog/eureka-lab/flaming-rainbows-pretty-dangerous" target="_blank">serious burn injuries in onlookers and teachers</a>, the Washington Post has an overview <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2015/11/11/this-chemistry-fire-demonstration-has-repeatedly-burned-students/?utm_term=.7c139333d6ed" target="_blank">here</a>. Under certain circumstances it can produce a flame jet. See this notice from the <a href="https://cen.acs.org/articles/92/i11/Safety-Alert-Rainbow-Demonstration.html" target="_blank">American Chemical Society</a>, and this longer article about the hazards at the <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/ipdf/10.1021/acs.jchemed.8b00152" target="_blank">Journal of Chemical Education.</a><br />
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The dangers is that vapors from the alcohol can travel out of the container or the salt/alcohol mixture and along the ground, then ignite in a ribbon of flame. I note that the National Altar Guild<br />
link with instructions recognizes the vapors might escape, but doesn't seem to realize the hazard this presents.<br />
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Some years back the American Chemical Society urged chemists to contact their local high school chemistry teachers about the rainbow demonstration to be sure the warnings reached them. It might be time to encourage chemists to reach out to their local churches to be sure they are aware as well. <br />
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Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-59791612525951642562019-03-26T17:56:00.001-04:002019-03-26T17:56:30.168-04:00The weight of water<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yORP6cxyCp0" width="560"></iframe><br />
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While writing a piece for <i>Nature Chemistry</i> about the hidden depths of the periodic table (the more than 3000 isotopes that could be stacked onto their elemental spots), I wandered across an interesting set of papers on heavy water and isotopic tracing, which led to another piece for Nature Chemistry (<a href="https://rdcu.be/bslmE" target="_blank">The weight of water</a>). In one of the papers, future Nobelist George de Hevesy deuterates goldfish by crowding some twenty (albeit tiny) goldfish into 60 ml of water, in another he reports making thousands of distillations of urine to recapture the water, measure its density and track deuterium through the human body.<br />
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Heavy water (D<sub>2</sub>O) is water where the hydrogens have been replaced with deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen that weighs about twice as much as standard hydrogen. Heavy water weighs just over 10% more than regular water, a tablespoon weighs only about a gram more, so it is probably not noticeable should you heft a glass of it.<br />
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And that's the question — should you heft a glass of it? In small amounts it is certainly safe to drink, and as I recently learned, used in human metabolic studies in doses of about 10 ml. An interesting question raised in the papers I read was about the taste of heavy water. One report suggests a burning sensation might be felt when drinking it, another (by Harold Urey, who discovered deuterium) suggests it tastes like undeuterated water. But other reports say it tastes sweet.<br />
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With a bit of help from my youngest son, I set up a repeat of Urey's blind taste test. And was surprised to find I could indeed taste the difference. It is sweet.<br />
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And for the next few weeks, until the last of the extra deuterium clears my systems, I'll be just a little bit heavier than usual.Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-16812288994079397842018-12-20T13:04:00.003-05:002018-12-20T13:04:43.530-05:00Elements of revengeI seriously can’t write fiction. I suspect it's not lack of imagination, but some odd form of writer’s block. Or perhaps it is too many years devoted to sifting defensible reality from experimental and computational data. Or is it that I’m unwilling to ask a reader to be confused about the real, the possibly real and the entirely imagined? Or maybe it is because the one and only piece of published fiction I wrote, <a href="http://aldianews.com/articles/pope-philly/conversation-imagined-meeting-science-and-faith/40608" target="_blank">came (almost) true within the year</a>? Would any <i>other</i> fiction I wrote become real? That’s clearly a flight of fancy, but even with one data point, do I want to take the risk?<br />
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I was invited to write a commentary on the elements that scientists thought they'd discovered (but hadn't) for Nature Chemistry's issue celebrating the International Year of the Periodic Table. The IUPAC guideline for element names says that you can't re-use names already in circulation in the literature, even if they were ultimately discarded. Which got me thinking if that could be a way for an unscrupulous scientist to crush the dreams of a competitor of having an element named for them. Despite my demonstrated inability to write good fiction, I drafted an introduction to the essay that played out this idea.<br />
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In the end, I wrote a non-fictional introduction to the essay (which you can read <a href="https://rdcu.be/bdZRY" target="_blank">here</a> if you are of the mind to do so). But if I were to write a piece of fiction about the elements, it might begin like this:<br />
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Prof. Exuvgen leaned back in her desk chair and wondered for the thousandth time why she’d ever signed that retirement agreement. Time was slipping through her fingers. In a month, she’d have to hand over the key codes and walk out the door. No access to her data and worse yet, no access to the tools she would need to analyze it, that idiot of a director had made it clear her account would be wiped — wiped — at midnight on the 30th, and anything left in her office trucked out to the dumpster. Tang Woh Kow, they maintained, was right. There were 243 elements in the universe and no more. When Tam Besper saw the traces of zuzenium in 2069, right in this building, that was the end of the era of the element hunters. The last chance to have your name remembered in every chemistry book in the solar system, if not the galaxy. Though if the Vulcans had their way, everyone would be using the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_element_name" target="_blank">systematic names</a>.<br />
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Running her hands through her short grey hair, she turned again to the data on the screen. She’d spent thirty years working toward puncturing Kow's ceiling on the elements, the last ten racing Sabaxoar’s extravagantly funded group on the moon. What was it Maxine had said at that last meeting? Oh, right. Time. That <i>she</i> wasn't in a hurry, she had years to work on this, given lunar life expectancies. And with that Maxine shook her blonde curls and floated off. Would the director take her more seriously if she looked less weary, grey and face it, old?<br />
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Time. It's running out, was there enough to say, now, without a doubt, that they’d turned up an atom or two of 244 Sym in that last run? Maybe, though maybe that oxide of muscovium was rearing its ugly head, this wouldn't be the first umbral element sunk by 115. Certainly there was strong evidence of a new isotope of 243. Time, there just wasn't enough time.<br />
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She tapped the bud in her ear, and started composing the manuscript of one last paper. “We present here evidence for the creation of the 616 isotope of 243 Zz, half-life 82 msecs, along with traces of element 244, Uuq.” She glanced up at the list of proposed names for 244 her group had kept on the whiteboard, derived from the names of birthplaces and long dead mentors and far-flung galaxies and grinned wickedly. “…for which we propose the name <i>sabaxorium</i>, symbol <i>Sx</i>, in honor of our respected and long time competitor in this hunt, Maxine Sabaxoar.”<br />
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Four months later, Maxine wakes up to a tweetstorm of congratulations for having the first trans-zuzenium element named for her. She pulls up the paper and seeing the unmistakable traces of MvO in the accompanying supplementary data dump, shrieks, "I've been robbed.”<br />
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<b>Notes: </b><br />
In the 1970s, Tang Wah Kow of New Method College in Hong Kong suggested (based on an odd theory about triads and octaves) that the upper level for an element was Z=243. Further, he proposed that when that element was ultimately discovered, it should be called zuzenium (Zz). The suggested name he said was, "...deduced from a Chinese idiom 'The name stands behind Zun Zen, who (Zun Zen) came last on the list of successful candidates in a royal examination." [In "An Octagonal Prismatic Periodic Table" <i>J. Chem. Ed.</i> <b>49</b>, 59 (1972)]<br />
<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-18287886361686487112018-11-06T21:34:00.002-05:002018-11-06T21:34:26.887-05:00Five Books: A short reading list for chemistry<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Only five books? And the five <i>best</i> books? Last month I did an interview via email with Caspar Henderson (who wrote a marvelous bestiary for the new century: <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Book-Barely-Imagined-Beings-Bestiary-dp-022604470X/dp/022604470X/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=" target="_blank">The Book of Barely Imagined Beings</a></i>) on the best five books I would put on a reading list titled "Chemistry." It's now up on the site — <a href="https://fivebooks.com/best-books/chemistry-michelle-francl/" target="_blank">Five Books</a>. But the hardest part was not answering the great questions Caspar posed, but figuring out what five books to list. What did I want this list to do? Teach you chemistry? Maybe. Or give you a sense of what I find fascinating and beautiful and compelling about chemistry? Definitely!<br />
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I thought about various friends, curious and readers, but who don't have much background in the sciences and math. What would I pull from my shelves for them to read? Something that teaches you to decode a bit of the chemistry, a biography - what is the life of a scientist really like. Something that is compelling, that drags you into a story you can't put down. Something that shows off the beauty of the world at the atomic and molecular level.<br />
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Something that teaches you to decode a bit of the chemistry:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Why does asparagus make my wee smell? And 57 other curious food and drink questions</i> by Andy Brunning of <a href="https://www.compoundchem.com/" target="_blank">Compound Interest</a>. A bold graphical look at the chemistry of what we eat, with lots of quick explanations of weird (but useful) words of science like chromatography. </blockquote>
What is the life of a scientist really like:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie</i> by Barbara Goldsmith. Of course there had to be Marie Curie. And this unsparing biography of her pulls the curtain away on what it can mean to plunge into research with all your being.</blockquote>
Compelling stories with chemistry at their heart:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York </i>by Deborah Blum. Some molecules are thugs, some turn witness for the prosecution. Real crimes, real molecules. (And her new book on the rise of food safety, <i>The Poison Squad</i>, which is in the stack on my desk, is just as good.) </blockquote>
The beauty of the atomic and molecular world:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>H2O: A biography of water</i> by Phillip Ball Chemistry laid out for the layperson with care and delight. Clouds are not what you think!<br />
<i>The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World</i> <i>from the Periodic Table of the Elements</i> by Sam Kean. There's a dark side to the periodic table.</blockquote>
Read the whole essay to find out more about what is fascinating about chemistry (at least to me), what I do as a chemist, and of course, about these five books. Want more book recommendations about chemistry? Want to know what the runners up were? Leave me a note in the comments!<br />
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Chemistry not your thing? Go read Caspar's bestiary about the wildly improbable creatures that inhabit the very real world, from sea butterflies to yetis (or at least yeti crabs), it's a wide ranging exploration of the corners of the biological world. To quote a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/23/book-barely-imagined-beings-caspar-henderson-review" target="_blank">reviewer</a>: "There is something lovely about a book that takes on so many disciplines and tackles them with confidence." There is indeed.<br />
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[Cross posted from <a href="http://quantumtheology.blogspot.com/2018/11/five-books.html" target="_blank">Quantum Theology</a>]<br />
<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-61955684312674278842018-07-15T16:12:00.000-04:002018-07-15T16:12:20.005-04:00Trying to explain earthing with atoms<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibZHpUgXh8vwj_OuLb5-2d6sPcjNu-F1UkFwnbyyrYnp4AFmiZlmuz5q2CDenvVGd8HyClxPajbFPJ4wVdyqzs9XUg4lSVvOIPfd-Diz8M88DZazBJ54jzi_GeGuDGm6zZP16u/s1600/boots+flood+feet.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibZHpUgXh8vwj_OuLb5-2d6sPcjNu-F1UkFwnbyyrYnp4AFmiZlmuz5q2CDenvVGd8HyClxPajbFPJ4wVdyqzs9XUg4lSVvOIPfd-Diz8M88DZazBJ54jzi_GeGuDGm6zZP16u/s320/boots+flood+feet.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My ungrounded feet in rubber boots.</td></tr>
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This week the Washington Post has an article headlined "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/could-walking-barefoot-on-the-grass-improve-your-health-the-science-behind-grounding/2018/07/05/12de5d64-7be2-11e8-aeee-4d04c8ac6158_story.html?utm_term=.629f2ccefa73" target="_blank">Could walking barefoot on grass improve your health? Some science suggests it can.</a>" The link itself is subtitled: The science behind grounding.<br />
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The article gets a lot of things right about atoms (they make up everthing!), but it confuses "free-radicals" with positive ions. (Free radicals don't have to be charged.) Then it tries to explain why negative ions can help. And while it is true that a positive ion and a negative ion can react in some circumstance to produce a neutral compound (think of hydroxide and hydrogen ions reacting to make water in an acid base reaction), random negative ions won't necessarily disarm a free radical. You need an antioxidant for that, a molecule that can participate in a reaction that can soak up extra electrons. You still need to eat your vegetable and wear sunscreen.<br />
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Negative ions and positive ions co-exist quite nicely in your body. You need those positively charged potassium ions, in fact, to keep your heart beating rhythmically. So on its face, the "science behind grounding" given in the article is bunk. If all those negative ions in the ground started neutralizing all the positive ions in our bodies, we'd be dead.<br />
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While I get this is a not a science news piece, but a perspective piece (a "[d]iscussion of news topics with a point of view, including narratives by individuals regarding their own experiences"), I wish someone at the Post had fact-checked the science. Yes, it feels nice to walk barefoot on the grass, or to be outside. I'm pretty certain the negative ions aren't the reason why.<br />
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<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-3745661566934886822018-03-25T16:08:00.000-04:002018-03-25T17:51:14.355-04:00Hunting up the ghosts of elements<b>This post originally appeared at the UNESCO International Year of Light's blog, in October 2015. The site is no longer available.</b><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_hO2oLkrgMOqJh4AuB0p16SjLwSX6wk1JFflgN_B9CK4mTgChehnmEVXKdRt8yeivDFkMfCnP5lyqJibIfzGmDFxiS40EOyHYuBu5tjURryAK0yJwIYi7kTXeOYomiHuvVuDS/s1600/Bunsen+spec+2nd+choice+MF.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_hO2oLkrgMOqJh4AuB0p16SjLwSX6wk1JFflgN_B9CK4mTgChehnmEVXKdRt8yeivDFkMfCnP5lyqJibIfzGmDFxiS40EOyHYuBu5tjURryAK0yJwIYi7kTXeOYomiHuvVuDS/s320/Bunsen+spec+2nd+choice+MF.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Interior of an antique spectroscope.</td></tr>
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If you’ve seen the flash of yellow-orange flames when a pot boils over on a gas stove, you’ve gotten a glimpse of the ghost of an atom. The color is part of the atom’s spectrum.<br />
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In the late 17th century, Isaac Newton used the Latin word for ghost, <i>spectrum</i>, to describe the bands of colors he saw when light shone through a prism. One hundred and fifty years later, Joseph von Fraunhofer noticed he could see bright lines instead of the bands of colors when looking at certain flames through a prism. He went on to develop an instrument to measure these spectral lines, called a spectroscope, and used it to catalog the lines seen in the sun’s light and in the light from other stars.<br />
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It would take almost another fifty years to figure out that Fraunhofer’s lines were the ghosts of chemical elements, when Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen (the inventor of the ubiquitous Bunsen burner) teamed up to create a spectroscope that used Bunsen’s new hotter, gas burner to ignite the samples. They noted that that each element produced a characteristic set of lines when burned, a spectral fingerprint, that could be used to identify it.<br />
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In October of 1860, Kirchhoff and Bunsen announced they had used their spectroscope to discover a new chemical element, which they named cesium, for the blue color of its principal line. Chemists quickly began to use Bunsen’s spectroscope to find new elements. A few months later Kirchhoff and Bunsen found two bright ruby red lines in an extract of a silicate mineral lepidolite, the spectral traces of another new element, rubidium.<br />
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Thallium’s ghostly green emanations were first observed by William Crookes, indium, ironically named for its violet lines by its color blind discoverer Ferdinand Reich. Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran spectroscopically identified element 66 in a sample painstakingly extracted from his marble hearth, and instead of naming it for the colors of the lines, called it dysprosium, from the Greek for “hard to get” — because it was.<br />
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Hunting for new elements spectroscopically meant you didn’t actually need to have any of it in your lab or even on your planet, as long as you could observe the light from a burning sample. In 1868 several chemists and astronomers independently observed a faint line in the spectrum of the sun, and assigned it to a new element, helium, which as far as they knew did not exist on earth. It would take nearly 30 years for two Swedish chemists to confirm that it was present on earth — by matching the spectrum with that of a gas found in a uranium ore. (The helium to be found on earth comes from radioactive decay.)<br />
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Spectroscopy certainly helped chemists fill out the periodic table, adding more than a dozen new elements to the collection. But it also played a significant role in confirming predictive power of periodicity. When Dmitri Mendeleev proposed his version of the periodic table, he left blanks for yet-to-be-discovered elements, underneath elements which should have similar properties. In 1875, Lecoq, the same man who had so patiently extracted dysprosium from his fireplace, sifted through 4 metric tons of zincblende to show that it contained traces of a new element which fit neatly into the space Mendeleev had reserved for it underneath aluminum. Lecoq named the element gallium, in honor of his home, France, and perhaps playing off his own name, as the Latin for le coq, the rooster, is gallus. It was a powerful demonstration of Mendeleev’s theory.<br />
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These ghostly lines produced by elements helped fuel yet another critical discovery that would have far reaching consequences for chemists’ understanding of the periodic table: quantum mechanics. Niels Bohr’s quantum mechanical model of the atom opened the door to explaining chemical elements line spectra. Though more accurate and sophisticated quantum mechanical models of the atom now exist, Bohr’s model showed the relationship between the lines and an atom’s electron by insisting that the electrons’ energies were quantized, that is, they could only have certain energies.<br />
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So why do atoms have ghosts? When an atom is heated to high temperatures, as in a flame, the energy it absorbs excites its electrons. You can think of the electrons in an atom as being on an energy ladder. They can only have energies that match the rungs of the ladder, and each type of atom has a unique arrangement of the rungs. When the atom absorbs energy, its electrons move to higher rungs. Excited electrons are unstable. They quickly return to their original arrangement, giving off some their excess energy in the form of light as they do. The color, the wavelength) of the light emitted depends on the difference in energy between the rungs. The colors of light emitted are the ghosts of the energy rungs. Since each element has a unique pattern of rungs, it will have a unique spectrum of emitted light and so revealing their presence to the sharp eyes of spectroscopists.<br />
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Chemists still use the light emitted and absorbed by atoms and molecules to identify their presence. We hunt for the structure of the universe in its ghosts.<br />
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<b>More Information</b><br />
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If you want a way to see the ghosts of atoms, try this <a href="https://publiclab.myshopify.com/products/foldable-mini-spectrometer" target="_blank">DIY folding spectroscope</a> you can attach to your phone. Use it to check out the light from a neon sign or from a street light!<br />
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For a wonderful description of the elements, including stories of how they were first discovered, read John Emsley’s Nature’s Building Blocks.Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-33825100112058773082017-06-27T17:34:00.000-04:002017-06-27T17:34:19.517-04:00#dayofscience<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVQhg7tQ9rFUBrAr-56ugRPZX3jKPIRoNxlSCtrZkqzY92HDZPLw00PCxGg7Sp_rRKA2UvUJfGVkQmMGOW-hiRhSphr7G78eEOnUofkbuIncAm1Zqbc1GF9cX9k6P-SnHH04Gz/s1600/Sikhote+Alin+meteorite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVQhg7tQ9rFUBrAr-56ugRPZX3jKPIRoNxlSCtrZkqzY92HDZPLw00PCxGg7Sp_rRKA2UvUJfGVkQmMGOW-hiRhSphr7G78eEOnUofkbuIncAm1Zqbc1GF9cX9k6P-SnHH04Gz/s320/Sikhote+Alin+meteorite.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Sikhote-Alin meteorite from Vatican Observatory's</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">collection</span></div>
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On July 13th, the Earth Science Women’s Network is hosting Science-A-Thon, in which participating scientists are chronicling a day in their life on Twitter and Instagram (follow #dayofscience and #scienceathon).<br />
<br />
Join me for the day! I'll be posting a photo every hour on a day when I'll be working from the Vatican Observatory in Albano Laziale, outside of Rome. Starting with my early morning stop at the espresso bar through a full day of science behind the walls of Vatican City. There might even be aliens from other worlds (of the inorganic variety). The observatory might seem focused on anything-but-earth science, but the meteorites that the earth sweeps up as she moves through the heavens are clues not only to the otherworldly, but to our own planet's history.<br />
<br />
Participants are <a href="https://www.scienceathon.org/meet-our-scientists" target="_blank">listed by country</a> — so far I'm the only one under "Vatican City"!<br />
<br />
____________________<br />
This is a first-ever fund raiser for the Earth Science Women’s Network, so if you are inclined to support them, you can donate <a href="https://www.crowdrise.com/science-a-thon/fundraiser/michellefrancl" target="_blank">here</a>.Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-72561392445214532522017-05-25T16:00:00.001-04:002017-05-25T16:00:09.215-04:00Hidden figures: 2.303, slide rules and classrooms mired in the last century<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "whitney"; font-size: 8.000000pt;">A five -place table of logarithms from my dad's CRC Handbook of </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "whitney"; font-size: 8.000000pt;">Mathematics (why is that set of values circled?)</span><span style="font-family: "whitney"; font-size: 8pt;"> and a circa </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "whitney"; font-size: 8pt;">1958 Hemmi 257 slide rule designed for chemical
calculations. </span></div>
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<br /> Wonder why random values of 2.303 are "hidden" in formulae? To make them easier to use with a slide rule.<sup>1 </sup><br />
<br />
A slide rule? The last slide rule slid out the door of Keuffel & Esser in 1975 (they sent their engraving equipment to the Smithsonian). You can still find them, used and even new - still packaged up to sell to engineers and scientists. The Oughtred Society has a <a href="http://www.oughtred.org/" target="_blank">online museum</a>, as well.<br />
<br />
We still have my mother-in-law's K&E, in it's leather case with her name impressed into it. Family history says she bought it with the money she earned tutoring Jackie Robinson in chemistry at UCLA. <br />
<br />
I have an essay out in this month's <i>Nature Chemistry</i>, "It figures", about how the computational tools we use shapes what we teach and not necessarily in good ways. Given that slide rules were obsolete by the time many of my student's parents were born, why does their use still linger in general chemistry book? (The 2.303's in texts are lowly going away. I checked texts running back about a decade.)<br />
<br />
More critically to my mind why, several decades after digital computing tools became ubiquitous on college campuses do many physical chemistry texts eschew any discussion of numerical techniques for solving the rate equations for a chemical reaction? I suspect the chasm between the computational tools used in the field and those used in the classroom is a result of apathy. We teach what we learned as we learned it. As I note in the article, I don't think it is defensible on intellectual grounds. <br />
<br />
Don't know how to use a slide rule? It's fun, it's geeky. No need to buy one to play, check out <a href="http://www.antiquark.com/sliderule/sim/n909es/virtual-n909-es.html" target="_blank">this simulator</a> and <a href="http://www.nature.com.proxy.brynmawr.edu/article-assets/npg/nchem/journal/v9/n6/extref/nchem.2788-s1.pdf" target="_blank">the instructions</a> at <i>Nature Chemistry</i>! <br />
<br />
You can read the article here: <a href="http://rdcu.be/sY5Q">http://rdcu.be/sY5Q</a><br />
<br />
<br />
<hr />
1. 2.303 is the natural log of 10. To change the base of logs recognize that<br />
x = b<sup>log<sub>b</sub>x</sup> <br />
so<br />
ln(x) = ln(10<sup>log<sub>10</sub>x</sup>)<br />
ln(x) = log<sub>10</sub>x ln(10)<br />
ln(x) =(log<sub>10</sub>x)(2.303)<br />
ln(x) = 2.303(log<sub>10</sub>x)Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-508149991436987552016-08-18T22:34:00.002-04:002017-05-25T16:49:53.154-04:00Implications of Charles law in a biological matrix: farts<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZOJadeZT0ODyM-ZkUHpKhmk_Vba2JoJIuMtxRNq7NsdB-pMAoGQs-hWiuh99kSkkoq11op-JNXEVngHXelfNL_UkAycNOqhUgmNry_JC57j0vGBnGPHje7VPVE-zSy5rR2vye/s1600/Screenshot+2016-08-18+22.02.18.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZOJadeZT0ODyM-ZkUHpKhmk_Vba2JoJIuMtxRNq7NsdB-pMAoGQs-hWiuh99kSkkoq11op-JNXEVngHXelfNL_UkAycNOqhUgmNry_JC57j0vGBnGPHje7VPVE-zSy5rR2vye/s320/Screenshot+2016-08-18+22.02.18.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">See note 3 for source.</td></tr>
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Maggie Koerth-Baker has a great piece up at the 538 blog: "<a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-big-is-a-fart-somewhere-between-a-bottle-of-nail-polish-and-a-can-of-soda/" target="_blank">How Big Is A Fart? Somewhere Between A Bottle Of Nail Polish And A Can Of Soda.</a>" It's well researched, digging into the biomedical literature with verve. And it's great that she gives the answer a context, it's easier to visualize a bottle of nail polish than a 17 ml blob for most people, me included. <br />
<br />
I'm not at all surprised at what you can find in the primary literature (I tracked down papers on <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3569892/" target="_blank">exploding people</a> and <a href="http://ajplegacy.physiology.org/content/201/2/357" target="_blank">deuterated dogs</a><sup>1</sup> for my introductory chemistry class last spring). The piece is the first in a series <i>Science Question From A Toddler</i>, though I suspect that people somewhat past the target age group (5 and under) would be interested in the answer to this question, too.<br />
<br />
In a footnote Koerth-Baker suggests that farts in the body would be smaller because the gas would be compressed inside the body. But the pressure inside the human colon is the same as atmospheric pressure. Farts and burps keep it that way. What's different is the temperature, higher inside the body by about 30<sup>o</sup>F (17<sup>o</sup>C). Gases expand at higher temperatures. You can use Charles' law to figure out by how much the volume changes with changes in temperature: V2=(T2/T1)V2<br />
<br />
The researchers measured the volume of the farts at room temperature (I read the paper!), so the volume of a fart should be slightly <i>larger</i> in the body than the reported numbers by a factor of (310/293) or about 6% larger. So how big is a fart? Just before exit, it's about the size of a 14 ounce ketchup bottle for the largest one in the 1997 study.<br />
<br />
<br />
<hr />
The details of the experiments are fascinating. The technique for <i>quantitatively</i><sup>2</sup> capturing flatus in the bathtub is elegant, and while a significant improvement over the method used for the studies in the 1860s<sup>3</sup> you have to wonder how they got volunteers for either experiment. And speaking of volunteers, the assessment of the "flatus perception threshold" was done by delivering 100 ml of an odorant mixture "from a large 250ml syringe in about 1s, 1 meter beneath the nose of the panel members, mimicking a flatus emission."<br />
<br />
And just in case you don't think this is serious stuff: "The common tendency to treat rectal gas as a humorous topic has obscured appreciation of the complex physiology that underlies the formation of this gas." Suarez et al. <i>American Journal of Physiology</i> <b>272, </b>G1028-G1033 (1997).<br />
<br />
1. The physiological effects of drinking heavy water, D<sub>2</sub>O, on dogs. If you've ever wondered what would happen if your poured that little vial of D<sub>2</sub>O into your coffee, the answer is not much. It's not great for the dogs as a steady diet, but a sip or two won't hurt.<br />
2. The fancy chemistry term for "we got all of it!"<br />
3. See the figure, from Tangerman, "Measurement and biological significance of the volatile sulfur compounds hydrogen sulfide, methanethiol and dimethyl sulfide in various biological matrices" <i>Journal of Chromatography B</i>, <b>877</b>, 3366-3377 (2009).<br />
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Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-61625541347723703802016-06-22T14:54:00.001-04:002016-06-22T14:54:41.243-04:00Chemists: Strangers to fiction<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFFodz2MQOqCg5J7aG4WbMbPZpOz9UK60u1jPlnq3fwPIZyA9vLTVNKpmjIQNIJyuWHj1oKUIEUIp_PmEd55Q22K16K_vZE7DZaJ4q-sQpyWR-LDXWirfQNdSmEjNTXaOIZol9/s1600/mars+habitat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFFodz2MQOqCg5J7aG4WbMbPZpOz9UK60u1jPlnq3fwPIZyA9vLTVNKpmjIQNIJyuWHj1oKUIEUIp_PmEd55Q22K16K_vZE7DZaJ4q-sQpyWR-LDXWirfQNdSmEjNTXaOIZol9/s320/mars+habitat.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">That Mars habitat?</td></tr>
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"The basement corridor is dim, I can hear pumps chugging, hoods noisily venting, and the solid-state physicist down the hall swearing. 'Welcome to Mars!' says the cheery sign outside my colleague’s door. Perhaps it is the pile of grading on my desk or the endless round of meetings on my calendar that is fuelling my escapist fantasy, but every time I pass Selby’s office, I imagine the door is a portal and if I were to walk through, I’d find myself in a habitat on Mars, its pumps working hard to compress the thin atmosphere." from "Strangers to Fiction" in <i>Nature Chemistry</i>, <b>8</b>, 636-637 (2016).<br />
<br />
I've been a sci-fi fan for going on five decades, imagining myself in labs on Mars, mining comets, and exploring strange new worlds. I don't read it for the chemistry, which is a good thing, because there isn't much fiction in which chemistry plays a key role.<br />
<br />
My latest <i>Nature Chemistry</i> Thesis column looks at chemistry and fiction, suggesting that there are good reasons to both read SF, particularly for young chemists, and for chemists to encourage the writing of chemistry-inflected science fiction. And if you have the talent for it (which I do not!) perhaps even give the writing of it a fly. <br />
<br />
You can read the whole thing <a href="http://rdcu.be/iX9K" target="_blank">here</a>. My list of fictional chemistry is <a href="http://www.nature.com.proxy.brynmawr.edu/nchem/journal/v8/n7/extref/nchem.2560-s1.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>. Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-22292293289690624052016-06-02T06:37:00.001-04:002016-06-02T06:37:23.319-04:00A matter of degrees: when low temperatures were hot<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5I5xHs9V2-cF3YyG5ImbeFBUNXdEdSGhYNHBJBCWGowD3tCR_7PTggyVUAxhQX48hDxcyfHtQ5L4nEazcCuFJATS1yDwAZGG6DvGuUN3rQrWOmHJtl_wrdZWNQmAOrY_PPxBH/s1600/L0044815.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5I5xHs9V2-cF3YyG5ImbeFBUNXdEdSGhYNHBJBCWGowD3tCR_7PTggyVUAxhQX48hDxcyfHtQ5L4nEazcCuFJATS1yDwAZGG6DvGuUN3rQrWOmHJtl_wrdZWNQmAOrY_PPxBH/s320/L0044815.jpg" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Diagram of a thermometer similar to</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">the one describe by Leurechon, c. 1638.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Note that </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">hotter temperatures </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">have </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">smaller magnitudes </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">degrees associated with </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">them. </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Image </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">from Wellcome collection, </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">used under </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">CC </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">license.</span></div>
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We say the mercury is rising to mean it's getting hot out, despite the fact that most home thermometers have no mercury in them anymore. Regardless of the liquid they contain, the level rises with increasing temperature in the iconic liquid thermometer. But this was not always the case.<br />
<br />
The word thermometer was first coined (in French) in a book of mathematical recreations written in 1626 by Jean Leurechon, SJ (writing as Hendrik van Etten). In his description he notes the thermometer you can construct from a glass tube and small container of water (or other non-viscous liquid) can be used to quantify temperature by placing marks on the glass, associating each with some fraction of the classical four (or eight) degrees of hotness. Such thermometers, he suggests, can be used to adjust the temperature of a room or a furnace, to record (and predict) the weather and to measure fevers in the ill.<br />
<br />
But Leurechon's thermometer (and similar designs) were constructed such that as the temperature increased, the water level in the tube fell. Increases in temperature caused the air trapped in the ball at the top of the tube to increase in volume, pushing the liquid down in the tube. (These are air thermometers, in contrast to the familiar liquid thermometers in widespread use today.) A reading of 9 degrees on the thermometer shown in the sketch accompanying Leurechon's thermometer problem was <b>colder</b> than that of 2 degrees (see also the one in Robert Fludd's diagram, in the figure.)<br />
<br />
A century later, Anders Celsius constructed a temperature scale based on water's phase changes which ran in the same direction. Water on Celsius' scale boiled at 0 degrees and froze at 100 degrees. This reverse run didn't last long, two years later Carl Linnaeus (of taxonomic fame) used the scale to describe conditions in a greenhouse, but flipped it to the form in which we know it today, where 100 is the boiling point of water.<br />
<br />
It is tempting to think that Celsius' scale ran in the direction it did because it mimicked the earliest marked thermometers. But Fahrenheit's scale, which preceded Celsius' by two decades, runs in the modern direction, things get hotter in the positive direction. This also parallels the classic notions of degrees of heat in play during the medieval period. There were four (or eight or six, depending on the source) degrees of heat, the first being more or less physiological temperature, the fourth being a blazing hot furnace.<br />
<br />
<hr />
The word <i>degree</i> has its roots in the Latin <i>degradum</i>, a down step. This matches Leurechon and Celsius' use - 9 degrees is eight steps lower (colder) than 1 degree.Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-66446116597347370872016-05-09T15:35:00.000-04:002016-05-09T22:05:17.237-04:00Chemical fiction<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic4fWbNk_gFGQmRT4Br7V6Nf5wCvfwzc1ktucxAWw-Sb0GsVaFJWFZ27GIJjfjv1-_mHzPkxI0qqGXUBA6Uj0v1t7_-dBz-lWIaDu0SU-BujwG7_UKXYgeqVMC079PlFmIaOzN/s1600/SF+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic4fWbNk_gFGQmRT4Br7V6Nf5wCvfwzc1ktucxAWw-Sb0GsVaFJWFZ27GIJjfjv1-_mHzPkxI0qqGXUBA6Uj0v1t7_-dBz-lWIaDu0SU-BujwG7_UKXYgeqVMC079PlFmIaOzN/s320/SF+cover.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Topi Barr's <i>Antithiotimoline</i> is in this vintage Analog</td></tr>
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Seven years ago, Andy Mitchinson, an editor at <i>Nature</i>, wrote at <a href="http://blogs.nature.com/thescepticalchymist/2009/07/putting_the_chemistry_into_sci_1.html" target="_blank">The Sceptical Chymist</a> (<a href="http://www.tor.com/2015/06/24/where-to-start-with-the-works-of-connie-willis/" target="_blank">Episodes II</a> and <a href="http://blogs.nature.com/thescepticalchymist/2009/07/putting_the_chemistry_into_sci_2.html" target="_blank">III</a>) about the dearth of science fiction that involved the science of chemistry in a substantive way. Why isn't there more of it?<br />
<br />
He pointed to a <a href="http://www.chymist.com/BIBLIOGRAPHY%20OF%20SF.pdf" target="_blank">list</a> put together by <a href="http://www.tor.com/2015/06/24/where-to-start-with-the-works-of-connie-willis/" target="_blank">Connie Willis</a>, an award winning SF author, and an article by Philip Ball in <i>Chemistry World</i>. <br />
<br />
I'm working on a column for <i>Nature Chemistry</i> about the ways in which chemistry and science fiction play off each other. Is science fiction more than escapist entertainment? Should chemists care that there's not more chemistry inflected fiction out there? Should we deliberately expose students to science fiction? Should we encourage them to write it?<br />
<br />
To go alone with the piece, I'm trying to create a periodic table of chemical fiction (not including articles called out by Retraction Watch). Are there pieces on my list you particularly love? Something I'm missing? I'd love to hear in the comments!<br />
<br />
For a full set of periodic science fiction short stories, I encourage you to browse Michael Swanwick's <a href="http://periodictableofsciencefiction.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Periodic Table of Science Fiction</a>. What really happened to the Hindenburg?<br />
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<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 36.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">As</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 36.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Asimov, Isaac</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 36.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Whiff of Death, The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline, Thiotimoline to the Stars, Pate de Fois Gras</span></td>
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<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Pb</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Ball, Philip</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">The Sun and Moon Corrupted</span></td>
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<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Ba</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Barr, Topi</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">“Antithiotimoline”</span></td>
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<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">B</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Bujold, Lois McMaster</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Vorkosigan series</span></td>
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<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Ac</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Christie, Agatha</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">"The Blue Geranium” in The Thirteen Problems</span></td>
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<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Cl</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Clements, Hal</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Phases in Chaos</span></td>
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<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Co</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Conan Doyle, Arthur</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Holmes</span></td>
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<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Md</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Dewar, Michael</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">“Temporal Chirality: The Burgenstock Communication”</span></td>
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<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">F</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Foster Wallace, David</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Infinite Jest</span></td>
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<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Ag</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Goodman, Allegra</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Intuition</span></td>
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<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">He</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Heinlein, Robert</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Glory Road, Have Spacesuit will Travel</span></td>
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<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Hf</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Hoffman, Roald</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Oxygen</span></td>
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<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Li</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">King, Laurie</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Russell & Holmes series</span></td>
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<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">U</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Le Guin, Ursula</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">“Schrödinger’s Cat”</span></td>
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<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Sn</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Lem, Stanislaw</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">“Uranium Earpieces” in Mortal Engines</span></td>
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<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">P</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Levi, Primo</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">The Monkey’s Wrench</span></td>
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<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Am</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">McCaffrey, Anne</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Pern series</span></td>
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<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">H</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Piper, H Beam</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Omnilingual</span></td>
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<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Kr</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Robinson, Kim Stanley</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Mars series</span></td>
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<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">O</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Sachs, Oliver</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Uncle Tungsten</span></td>
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<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Dy</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Sayer, Dorothy</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">The Documents in the Case</span></td>
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<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 23.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Sm</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 23.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Smith, Edward Elmer “Doc” </span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 23.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">“Tedric,” “Lord Tedric" in The Best of E. E. “Doc” Smith</span></td>
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<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Ne</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Stephenson, Neal</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Anathem</span></td>
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<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Br</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Stoker, Bram</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 12.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Dracula</span></td>
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<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Fr</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Vance, Jack</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">“Potters of Firsk”</span></td>
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<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">K</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Vonnegut, Kurt</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Cat’s Cradle</span></td>
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<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">V</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Vourvoulias, Sabrina</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">INK</span></td>
</tr>
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<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 24.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Hg</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 24.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Well, H.G.</span></td>
<td style="background-color: #efefef; border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 24.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">“The Diamond Maker” in The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 39.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">C</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 113.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">Willis, Connie</span></td>
<td style="border-color: #000000 #000000 #000000 #000000; border-style: solid; border-width: 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px 1.0px; height: 11.0px; padding: 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px 4.0px; width: 243.0px;" valign="top"><span style="color: black; font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 10px; font-stretch: normal;">The Sidon in the Mirror</span></td>
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</table>
Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-16945763142460651562016-04-25T16:27:00.001-04:002016-04-25T16:27:59.382-04:00A day in pchem lecture: NMR, lululemon yoga pants and tattoos<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8o-Ep8lYQVvqLMvAI0tV_EXrkvhKLb76z_Zc14S5tn0FBHJE5f8-yaE4zYs_yJU9z-xd_WG27hVu2V5WPUSc-YPbappUBvHH8KoIwPRvY6MWGzAUZN8worLE0Cx0fq6pSFA_X/s1600/Yoga_Sorpion_3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8o-Ep8lYQVvqLMvAI0tV_EXrkvhKLb76z_Zc14S5tn0FBHJE5f8-yaE4zYs_yJU9z-xd_WG27hVu2V5WPUSc-YPbappUBvHH8KoIwPRvY6MWGzAUZN8worLE0Cx0fq6pSFA_X/s320/Yoga_Sorpion_3.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">By lululemon athletica<br />
(Flickr: Yoga Journal Conference)<br />
[<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0">CC BY 2.0</a>], <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AYoga_Sorpion_3.jpg">via Wikimedia Commons</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It's the end of term, two more 90 minute lectures left in my introductory quantum chemistry and spectroscopy course. We've done the basics of wave functions and expectation values, we've looked at linear variation theory and written code to do Hückel MO calculations, we've covered rotational and vibrational and rotational-vibrational spectroscopy. So what to do with these last few days? The quantum mechanics of NMR.<br />
<br />
I kicked off today's lecture by looking at magnetic field strengths, what's the earth's magnetic field (5 μT) or of a refrigerator magnet (5 mT), compared to the superconducting magnets used in NMR, which are on the order of 10T. (1T is one tesla.) This led to a quick review of the risks in MRI, which aren't about the energy of the radiation used (which is billions of times lower than X-rays), but more about the interactions of the high magnetic fields, the radiofrequencies and metals.<br />
<br />
A hand shot up and student who is an EMT describes a patient whose tattoo started burning during an MRI. I pointed out this is a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3445217/" target="_blank">known phenomenon</a>, and while <a href="http://www.fda.gov/downloads/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/UCM143401.pdf" target="_blank">most inks don't pose an issue</a>, it should discourage you from DIY tattooing. Then a student asked, "Is it true you can't wear lululemon pants when you have an MRI?"<br />
<br />
I admitted this was out of my zone, but promised to follow up. <br />
<br />
I can now report that yes, wearing lululemon pants — or any clothing with metallic microfibers, such as those great antimicrobial t-shirts — in an MRI can lead to <a href="http://www.ajnr.org/content/early/2012/03/01/ajnr.A2827.full.pdf" target="_blank">serious burns</a>, particularly in patients that have been sedated or are otherwise unconscious and unable to signal their discomfort. Even non-ferromagnetic materials presents problems in the MRI as eddy currents can develop around them, creating little induction heaters. Loops of all sorts, even skin to skin contact between a patient's own body parts can lead to heating and subsequent burns. And tattoos with large loops in them? They can heat as well.<br />
<br />
<hr />
Other things I learned this afternoon. You can <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15420771.600-frog-defies-gravity/" target="_blank">levitate a frog with a 16T field</a> (thank you Wikipedia), and neutron stars have magnetic fields on the megaTesla scale.Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-86485663790943423812016-03-15T22:17:00.001-04:002016-03-17T10:54:50.167-04:00Marketing molecular fear<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/C15qwUkv8M0" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />
"A woman can recite the most complicated recipe, but how many can name the ingredients in a headache tablet? If you don't want drugs you know nothing about, take Bufferin...."<br />
<br />
This short commercial by actress Joan Fontaine aired in the mid-1960s, an era when Tylenol (acetaminophen) was just gaining market share in the US as a painkiller for adults. I'm fascinated with the way in which it foreshadows the modern trope of avoiding chemicals you can't pronounce, already marketing the molecular fear that now fuels the largely unregulated, 12 billion dollar a year vitamin and nutritional supplement market in the US. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring had appeared in 1962, starting a shift towards seeing <i>chemical</i> as a synonym for <i>poison</i>.<br />
<br />
Much like the material put out fifty years later by Jospeh Mercola, Dr. Oz and The Food Babe, this ad tacitly assumes people are incapable of understanding science and must rely on experts of some sort. Who you should not trust. And women, no matter how competent within their limited domestic sphere, are even less capable.Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-14470284651079000182016-03-13T16:40:00.000-04:002016-03-17T10:53:57.438-04:00All natural! Removes burned on food! Magic chemical concoctionsI steamed a batch of dumplings for lunch yesterday, which never had time to cool before being wolfed down by the spring break crowd in my kitchen. So I pulled another set from the freezer which someone in the scrum popped into the steamer. In the confusion, no one checked to be sure there was still water in the steamer. Fast forward eight minutes, the dumplings are stuck to the steamer and the smoke alarm is shrieking. <br />
<br />
The dumplings were edible, but the bottom of the pan was pretty badly scorched. My mathematician spouse wondered if I had some special chemical that would magically clean the pan. I said I did and that I'd already applied it. "What did you use?" he said, peering into the blackened pot. "Water." <br />
<br />
Water is sometimes called the universal solvent, and though many things will dissolve in water, it's not clear that more things are soluble in water than in any other solvent (or how you would undertake such an inventory). And it's absolutely a chemical, though it is so ubiquitous we have a hard time thinking of it as such. Even chemists.<br />
<br />
The pot soaked overnight, and with the application of a bit of elbow grease (physics, not a chemical) and a finely ground mixture of low volatility chemicals (feldspar, limestone, sodium carbonates with a dash of soap - aka kitchen cleanser) is as shiny as ever.Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-55168373541877236092016-01-28T20:08:00.002-05:002016-01-29T10:51:54.776-05:00A universal hotness manifold<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaV97kVh0mBtCwBVJCFcVXtCzXSiu0-5JRCsTF_aGAwjIvKHvGnOG50jzRhAqXHUmSuYV-GdQOC5agLHOARLQooJMwWZjQc1PVLOnL6rNDvzmrQBYJwOz87QhINyzzmBQfW1an/s1600/Slothful+thermometers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaV97kVh0mBtCwBVJCFcVXtCzXSiu0-5JRCsTF_aGAwjIvKHvGnOG50jzRhAqXHUmSuYV-GdQOC5agLHOARLQooJMwWZjQc1PVLOnL6rNDvzmrQBYJwOz87QhINyzzmBQfW1an/s320/Slothful+thermometers.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Slothful thermometers.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I'm working on a column for <i>Nature Chemistry</i> about temperature, prompted by the incredible collection of early thermometers and thermoscopes at the Museo Galileo in Florence. (Can't get to Florence and visit it and the amazing gelato spot <i>Perché no! —</i> they have an <a href="http://catalogue.museogalileo.it/index.html" target="_blank">incredible online virtual tour</a> of the exhibitions.)<br />
<br />
The question of how one can be assured that two objects, well separated in space and/or time, would be in thermal equilibrium with each other should they be brought into contact — that is, can you be sure that two objects are at the same temperature — is not quite as simple as it sounds. <br />
<br />
First you need a measuring device, then you need to agree on a way to quantify the output of the device. And it would be nice if your colleague who lives across an ocean could set up her apparatus in such a way as these quantities are the same. In another words, you need a calibrated thermometer.<br />
<br />
There's a wild and wonderful history to figuring out how to create this basic piece of lab equipment, including what you mean by zero, how big should degrees be, and how to to tell if water is <i>really</i> boiling. But my favorite find is in a paper by mathematician James Serrin, in which he defines a thermometer by formally stating the zeroth law of thermodynamics [1]:<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP6J0xagrKpx8mvLB4n1BEqcn2ClYqLthrITQe7KR9oSTfpbe9p3qY0kczm7M682HcME3iraK_GiS-XXD0ZmmzBHqt2Spc6EkRrXFfkOcLJ7bOZEinfyLIf5_n8Sb-YH1OUogh/s1600/thermometers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP6J0xagrKpx8mvLB4n1BEqcn2ClYqLthrITQe7KR9oSTfpbe9p3qY0kczm7M682HcME3iraK_GiS-XXD0ZmmzBHqt2Spc6EkRrXFfkOcLJ7bOZEinfyLIf5_n8Sb-YH1OUogh/s320/thermometers.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Manifolds, M, marked in with L, hotness levels (the black<br />
enamel dots). Or,<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">17th century Florentine degree thermometers.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
"There exists a topological line <b><i>M</i></b> which serves as a coordinate manifold of material behaviour. The points <b><i>L</i></b> of the manifold <b><i>M</i></b> are called 'hotness levels', and <b><i>M</i></b> is called the 'universal hotness manifold'."<br />
<br />
I'm trying to imagine standing up in front of a classroom of students and talking about hotness levels. <br />
<br />
And those slothful thermometers? They tell the temperature by little balls that float or sink...slowly, very slowly. Lazily, you might say.<br />
<br />
Just reading the paper brought back memories, the collection of conference papers this quote is pulled from are reproduced from typed (double-spaced, with a typewriter!) manuscripts, complete with the typos you might expect before word processors and spell check arrived on the scene ("physcis"). In the late 1970's this was one way to inexpensively and rapidly get proceedings and reviews into print.<br />
<br />
<br />
<hr />
<br />
1. "The concepts of thermodynamics" in <i>Contemporary Developments in Continuum Mechanics and Partial Differential Equations. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Continuum Mechanics and Partial Differential Equations</i>, Rio de Janeiro, August 1977, edited by G.M. de La Penha, L.A.J. Medeiros, North-Holland, Amsterdam, p. 416.Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-90710816154343889652015-12-30T17:14:00.000-05:002015-12-30T17:14:01.179-05:00Weird words of science: scientist<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVlbkxF1iQzG1llHDSkr4BDXIYqYn1H2mZm9uqQt6n_AsL7yhO0UaLfQEB6wPx06R8O94GUQ0oYDaxd75Tsd9XminkWn01jKVoUvja9QPaNDH1rz74uhdgOqOVswop2sQ9TUxe/s1600/Woman_teaching_geometry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVlbkxF1iQzG1llHDSkr4BDXIYqYn1H2mZm9uqQt6n_AsL7yhO0UaLfQEB6wPx06R8O94GUQ0oYDaxd75Tsd9XminkWn01jKVoUvja9QPaNDH1rz74uhdgOqOVswop2sQ9TUxe/s320/Woman_teaching_geometry.jpg" width="289" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Woman teaching geometry to men<br />illus. 14th century copy of Euclid's Elements</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Scientist may not sound like a weird word, but when it was first coined, it was thought "unpalatable," along with (understandably) "nature-poker." Recently my sister tagged me in a Facebook post linking to a series of articles on women in science. She thought it interesting that the word had been coined to honor the work of a woman in science. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Not only did Scottish mathematician, science writer, and polymath <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Somerville" target="_blank">Mary Fairfax Somerville</a> (December 26, 1780–November 28, 1872) defy the era’s deep-seated bias against women in science, she was the very reason the word “scientist” was coined: When reviewing her seminal second book, On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, which Somerville wrote at the age of 54, English polymath and Trinity College master William Whewell was so impressed that he thought it rendered the term “men of science” obsolete and warranted a new, more inclusive descriptor to honor Somerville’s contribution to the field." — from Maria Popova and Lisa Congdon's 2013 project <i><a href="http://thereconstructionists.org/post/59444876063/mary-somerville?utm_content=bufferc89d7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer" target="_blank">The Resurrectionists</a></i></blockquote>
Oddly enough, I'd read William Whewell's review of Somerville's <i>On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences</i> while writing an essay about the public conception of scientists, and my recollection was that the coining of scientist, while reported in this review, was not in fact spurred by Somerville's work. So I went back and read it again.<br />
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Whewell was certainly impressed with Somerville and her book, but his tale of the creation of the word 'scientist' makes no mention of honoring Somerville or her contribution. About the only person Whewell seems impressed with in this context is the "ingenious gentlemen," thought to be himself!<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A curious illustration of this result maybe observed in the want of any name by which we can designate the students of the knowledge of the material world collectively. We are informed that this difficulty was felt very oppressively by the members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at their meetings at York, Oxford, and Cambridge, in the last three summers. There was no general term by which these gentlemen could describe themselves with reference to their pursuits. <i>Philosophers</i> was felt to be too wide and too lofty a term, and was very properly forbidden them by Mr. Coleridge, both in his capacity of philologer and metaphysician ; <i>savans</i> was rather assuming, besides being French instead of English; <b>some ingenious gentleman proposed that, by analogy with <i>artist</i>, they might form <i>scientist</i>,</b> and added that there could be no scruple in making free with this termination when we have such words as <i>sciolist</i>, <i>economist</i>, and <i>atheist</i>—but this was not generally palatable; others attempted to translate the term by which the members of similar associations in Germany have described themselves, but it was not found easy to discover an English equivalent for <i>natur-forscher</i>. The process of examination which it implies might suggest such undignified compounds as <i>nature-poker</i>, <i>ornature-peeper</i>, for these<i> naturae curiosi</i>; but these were indignantly rejected." [from the <i><a href="https://books.google.com/books?dq=quarterly+review+1834&pg=PA58&id=uWsJAAAAQAAJ#v=onepage&q=quarterly%20review%201834&f=false" target="_blank">Quarterly Review</a></i>, 1834, emphasis mine]</blockquote>
Interestingly, Wherwell does tackle the issue of women in philosophy/science: "Our readers cannot have accompanied us so far without repeatedly feeling some admiration rising in their minds, that the work of which we have thus to speak is that of a woman." It's a fascinating read, in which you can see the threads of imagery that is still current (and still unsupported by data) about the innate differences between the minds of men and women.<br />
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And in the end, scientist would catch on, by the early 20th century it was far eclipsed "natural philosopher" as the preferred general term.<br />
<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-2741800477575139692015-12-10T14:32:00.002-05:002015-12-10T14:32:34.959-05:00Science at Play<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EZ__7fg1m0Y?rel=0" width="420"></iframe><br />
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The Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia's latest exhibit is called "Science at Play" — and even if you can't get to Philadelphia, you can browse some of the materials on <a href="http://scienceatplay.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Tumblr</a>, including animated videos of experiences — good and bad — with chemistry kits. <br />
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When my kids were young, I encouraged them to play with science stuff. I wanted them to be willing to get messy, to make mistakes, to think about stuff where it wasn't perfectly clear what was going on and to begin to understand that protective gear wasn't a ritual or a costume, but part of thinking through how to reduce risk. That you could make your own equipment.<br />
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Though kits have gotten far more tame over the years — no more uranium ore or <a href="http://cultureofchemistry.fieldofscience.com/2012/07/handheld-chemistry.html" target="_blank">instructions for making ammonia in your hand</a> — there are still commercial kits that let kids play not only responsibly, but productively, with chemistry. The new <a href="https://melscience.com/en/" target="_blank">MEL kits</a> that Todd Bookman's piece on chemistry kits for The Pulse (listen <a href="http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/the-pulse/88229-a-modern-twist-to-that-old-fashioned-chemistry-set" target="_blank">here</a> - full disclosure, I was interviewed for this segment) highlights are particularly cool in that they plug into another important skill for budding scientists: how to share your work. The kit comes with a lense that you can snap over a cell phone camera, giving you an up close look at what you are doing, and enabling you to share it via social media.<br />
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But as important as kits are, I think the ad hoc experiences of doing science are equally critical. They hone the ability to read instructions (and reveal how much is not revealed in the methods sections of any science communique), encourage a sense of scale and quantitation (how much is 1 gram of something, as opposed to pour in this packet) and help novice scientists get comfortable with tinkering to build apparatus when they don't have exactly what they need. And when tackling a new research problem, do you ever have precisely what you need? <br />
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While you can make do with measuring cups and kitchen scales, I'm with the Chemical Heritage Foundation's Erin McLeary, who notes the appeal of having the real stuff in your hands. These days you can easily and inexpensively acquire a few real beakers, graduated cylinders and other lab equipment -- along with gloves and other protective gear.<br />
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So if you're looking for an interesting and unique gift for a kid interested in science, try assembling a small kit and including the instructions and materials for a couple of experiments. For starters, <a href="http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/labs/extraction/howto/" target="_blank">extracting DNA from dried peas</a> or <a href="http://www.instructables.com/id/High-Quality-Copper-Plating/" target="_blank">copper electroplating</a> (yes, it uses something you shouldn't eat - don't and wash your hands) or even the infamous <a href="http://www.education.com/science-fair/article/water-electrolysis/" target="_blank">water electrolysis</a> (sans smoldering splint and thereby less risk of singed eyebrows). Offer to help supervise or be the videographer.<br />
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To read more of what I've written about chemistry kits and doing chemistry outside the laboratory see:<br />
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"<a href="http://rdcu.be/fgoP" target="_blank">Homemade Chemists</a>" in <i>Nature Chemistry</i><br />
"<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/05/kiera_wilmot_s_chemistry_explosion_is_she_more_like_oliver_sacks_or_dzhokhar.html" target="_blank">Felony Science</a>" at <i>Slate</i><br />
"<a href="http://cultureofchemistry.fieldofscience.com/2012/07/handheld-chemistry.html" target="_blank">Handheld Chemistry</a>" on the blog, about the making of ammonia in your hand<br />
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<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-7343564651961220262015-12-02T15:18:00.001-05:002015-12-02T15:18:23.804-05:00Polysemy and Polyphony: Listening to Messiah<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4I8JSHPDK2MyixWzfdAYpos9GZcAhoAGIhymG28WuKROWBy69bYGIH3ZB33RJZDC7imZapKBWZiHWGghTsl6alas2XEYCw6i7oVG3X0DZRBArqbxlnphTQ5gw5L1iUSqUH9IJ/s1600/quantum-mechanics-albert-messiah-1-638.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4I8JSHPDK2MyixWzfdAYpos9GZcAhoAGIhymG28WuKROWBy69bYGIH3ZB33RJZDC7imZapKBWZiHWGghTsl6alas2XEYCw6i7oVG3X0DZRBArqbxlnphTQ5gw5L1iUSqUH9IJ/s320/quantum-mechanics-albert-messiah-1-638.jpg" width="247" /></a></div>
Last spring I wrote <a href="http://rdcu.be/e8ZJ" target="_blank">a piece for <i>Nature Chemistry</i></a> on polysemy — the phenomenon where words take on quite different meanings in different contexts. The iconic chemistry example might be <i>mole</i> (the quantity versus the animal versus the verb<sup>1</sup>), but there's <a href="http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/v7/n7/extref/nchem.2288-s1.pdf" target="_blank">a long list</a>.<br />
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So you might think that when I ran into a homograph<sup>2</sup> on Twitter the other day, I'd be alert to the possibility. My first thought when the conversation between two chemists about the insights they find in Messiah showed up in my feed they were talking about the classic quantum mechanics text by French physicist Albert Messiah. Actually, not. Handel's Messiah was the text under discussion. Polyphony crashes into polysemy. And evidence I really am a science geek first and foremost.<br />
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The text is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Mechanics-Dover-Books-Physics/dp/048678455X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1449083170&sr=8-1&keywords=albert+messiah" target="_blank">still in print</a>, though Albert Messiah died in 2013 at aged 92. I used Messiah's text when I took a year long course in quantum physics as a graduate student (from the physics department, have exhausted the chemistry offerings as an undergrad). We pronounced his name "mess-ee-uh" rather than "mess-eye-uh," making this technically a homograph (though not a capitonym<sup>3</sup>). I wondered today how he might have pronounced his name, is it really a homograph, or did my professor simply choose to pronounce it this way to avoid sounding like an evangelical preacher when he assigned reading? I dove into the interwebs to see if I could uncover any clues. I discovered Messiah had been part of the French Resistance in World War II (joining at age 19, the age my youngest son is now), worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton with Niels Bohr and eventually returned to France to teach and write this text.<br />
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I also <a href="http://www.xresistance.info/article-30049282.html" target="_blank">listened to a few minutes of a presentation Messiah gave</a> in 2009 at Le Ecole Polytechnique. It was oddly moving to hear the voice of someone whose written words I had spent so much time wrestling with almost forty years ago. And at the end of the questions, I learned how he pronounced his name. <br />
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And, on the Sceptical Chymist, Reuben Hudson has a <a href="http://blogs.nature.com/thescepticalchymist/2015/12/avoiding-redundant-tautologies-in-scientific-writing.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+chemistry%2Frss%2Fthe_sceptical_chymist+%28The+Sceptical+Chymist+-+Blog+Posts%29" target="_blank">post</a> responding to my column on a different kind of doubling-up in chemical language.<br />
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1. Yes, <i>mole</i> is a verb, to mole a garden is to remove the moles.<br />
2. Homographs are words that have the same spelling, but different pronunciation (<i>lead</i> and <i>lead</i>).<br />
3. Capitonyms are homographs with different capitalization. DEFT and deft.Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-9941435034228938022015-10-21T06:20:00.001-04:002015-10-21T06:20:19.902-04:00Shedding some light on chemistry: Mole Day and the Year of Light<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBKmshVCJfr_qqR561EUIjdIH2XoArQ5H3S_0Vwgb770XJN5zX6_JQWrZBf6obcvf_CgZFsmQYII4ZcAprsO3uyP9_k8BFWbZooyDHRsxUrUjfp2VRxBmKAf-F9Ipn7cHE7wYV/s1600/Bunsen+spectroscope+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBKmshVCJfr_qqR561EUIjdIH2XoArQ5H3S_0Vwgb770XJN5zX6_JQWrZBf6obcvf_CgZFsmQYII4ZcAprsO3uyP9_k8BFWbZooyDHRsxUrUjfp2VRxBmKAf-F9Ipn7cHE7wYV/s320/Bunsen+spectroscope+2.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
<b>[If you want to participate in some science about science blogs, see the bottom of this post!]</b><br />
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It's October and there is lots of science to celebrate. Chemists in the US and elsewhere are celebrating Mole Day on Friday (October 23 at 6:02 pm) to honor Avogadro's number (6.02 x 10<sup>23</sup> items are in a mole -- it's the chemist's version of a dozen). It's also the International Year of Light, and while you might think that light is the purview of physicists, it's an element of chemistry as well. I suggested in a recent essay that one might want to celebrate the year of light on the 10th October at 3 in the afternoon (3 x 10<sup>10</sup> is the speed of light in cm/sec)<br />
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I've written two pieces on the relationship between chemistry and light for the celebration. The first for <i>Nature Chemistry</i>, The Enlightenment of Chemistry, looks at the two-way relationship between chemistry and light. Light is not just an energy source for doing chemistry, but the production of light in various ways has pushed chemistry forward. The full text is <a href="http://rdcu.be/eulB" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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The second, for the UN's Year of Light blog celebrates the October 27th <a href="http://cultureofchemistry.fieldofscience.com/2011/03/bunsen-and-quantum-mechanics.html" target="_blank">anniversary of Bunsen's and Kirchhoff's</a> publication on the spectroscope and atomic emission spectra — and the role the spectroscope played in not only filling out the periodic table, but in confirming the periodicity of the table.<br />
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"Hunting for new elements spectroscopically meant you didn’t actually need to have any of it in your lab or even on your planet, as long as you could observe the light from a burning sample. In 1868 several chemists and astronomers independently observed a faint line in the spectrum of the sun, and assigned it to a new element, helium, which as far as they knew did not exist on earth. It would take nearly 30 years for two Swedish chemists to confirm that it was present on earth — by matching the spectrum with that of a gas found in a uranium ore. (The helium to be found on earth comes from radioactive decay.)" — read the rest <a href="http://light2015blog.org/2015/10/09/hunting-up-the-ghosts-of-elements/" target="_blank">here</a>.
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Want to participate in some science to celebrate? <br />
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<b style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Help us do science!</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"> I’ve teamed up with researcher </span><a href="http://www.scilogs.com/from_the_lab_bench/" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" target="_blank"><span class="il">Paige</span> Brown Jarreau</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"> to create a survey of the Culture of Chemistry's readers. By participating, you’ll be helping me improve the blog and contributing to SCIENCE on blog readership. You will also get science art from </span><a href="http://paigesphotos.photoshelter.com/" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" target="_blank"><span class="il">Paige</span>'s Photography</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"> for participating, as well as a chance to win a t-shirt, a $50 Amazon gift card and other perks! It should only take 10-15 minutes to complete. You can find the survey here: </span><b style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><a href="http://bit.ly/mysciblogreaders" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/<wbr></wbr>mysciblogreaders</a></b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">. </span>Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-89456277069041306462015-09-16T23:06:00.003-04:002015-09-16T23:06:50.832-04:00Building scientists #istandwithahmed #kierawilmot<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkGOHGf9bGTcIi2RABPSRl2OQitr1O2CdYL7e_FNSZAf6MEBO6koT0v242q5L3l9uZYX9DFBN86g3GouABJNiSBbbdSMCeSXYP8FVSNy30FGVOXG7XhbzWoEtPADfY9nU_eNTK/s1600/2014-03-07+18.20.31.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkGOHGf9bGTcIi2RABPSRl2OQitr1O2CdYL7e_FNSZAf6MEBO6koT0v242q5L3l9uZYX9DFBN86g3GouABJNiSBbbdSMCeSXYP8FVSNy30FGVOXG7XhbzWoEtPADfY9nU_eNTK/s320/2014-03-07+18.20.31.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
So what's this kid doing in the high school auditorium after school? He's drilled holes and put pipes into a cooler, there's some kind of heating device or trigger. Wires. And it looks like a boat load of some sort of chemical in that bowl that he's dumping in there. And then...and it shoots out some kind of gas. Kids scream. The gas begins to cover the stage. <br />
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"What's happening?" wants to know the teacher who hears the commotion from the hallway. "I'm testing a fog machine I built for the class play."<br />
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Yes, at first glance the situation looks potentially perilous. But a quick question, followed by a bit of common sense and the teacher is reassured that all is well.<br />
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Now that everyone is sure that there is no bomb, what should happen to the kid?<br />
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A. Pull the child into the principal's office and demand that he sign a statement admitting his guilt.<br />
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B. Call the police, who will arrest him and charge him with building an explosive device.<br />
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C. Call the police, who will arrest him and charge him with building a "hoax bomb"<br />
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D. Nominate him for a theater award for special effects, for having designed and built an inexpensive fog machine to use for the school's upcoming production of Grease.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjScvVNyDsxrlkx1IS7GfMBiwNxDVde1Ypu-IBcSMg75RIDvuq5GROxKrI-lZ87nWHFg6jjEi1FrmqRBEw9LtkgJDL1bINTHB8XmbqbfN1gS14GJ5ZqgBGheFH8WYZlxAd8YDZe/s1600/2014-03-07+18.20.32.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjScvVNyDsxrlkx1IS7GfMBiwNxDVde1Ypu-IBcSMg75RIDvuq5GROxKrI-lZ87nWHFg6jjEi1FrmqRBEw9LtkgJDL1bINTHB8XmbqbfN1gS14GJ5ZqgBGheFH8WYZlxAd8YDZe/s320/2014-03-07+18.20.32.jpg" width="240" /></a>The kid is my kid and the school's response was D. But imagine if my kid wasn't white and male. If his name were <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/us/texas-student-is-under-police-investigation-for-building-a-clock.html" target="_blank">Ahmed Mohamed</a> or <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/05/kiera_wilmot_s_chemistry_explosion_is_she_more_like_oliver_sacks_or_dzhokhar.html" target="_blank">Kiera Wilmot</a>? There might have been handcuffs, felony charges, letters home to parents about "the incident". If someone had called the police, would they have arrested him because he couldn't explain why he'd built one, when they could have rented a fog machine? (The police thought it suspicious when Ahmed Mohamed couldn't tell them anything more than his device was a clock.) Why would you build a fog machine, or a clock? He must have built it for a purpose, nefarious almost certainly.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZmX95TYXQhYhahVLsuxZoyn5BEZT21sPJwsszlERuylG4kGDfBreBX_Zarlw8_0F3rAiNEByIubhf6e9NnmDF5ZYAS-3NqPiSV9zashEZY3byXuXICV5aVdkj5nVQaakFVXGV/s1600/2014-03-07+18.20.36.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZmX95TYXQhYhahVLsuxZoyn5BEZT21sPJwsszlERuylG4kGDfBreBX_Zarlw8_0F3rAiNEByIubhf6e9NnmDF5ZYAS-3NqPiSV9zashEZY3byXuXICV5aVdkj5nVQaakFVXGV/s320/2014-03-07+18.20.36.jpg" width="240" /></a>Perhaps the purpose was to understand how these machines work? There is an amazing amount of joy in showing that you understand something well enough to build a working apparatus. To tweak and fix.<br />
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As a parent, I want the school to exercise an abundance of caution. But once you're sure it's just a clock — or a fog machine — perhaps it's time to slow down, and engage some common sense. Is there anything else that suggests this kid would build anything danger? Besides his name, or the color of her skin, or his religion.<br />
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Scientists and engineers are not hatched full grown from eggs in labs. As kids, they tinker and think and build and design, with Legos and parts from Radio Shack and Home Depot. They are in theater and on robotics and Science Olympiad teams. We need to get as excited about what they do as we are about how the football team is doing.<br />
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<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-67538830708743671772015-09-14T12:16:00.000-04:002015-09-14T12:23:14.695-04:00From the portals of hell to built-in fire protection: intumescents<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9k_NmB3_pMg" width="560"></iframe> <br />
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A friend posted the link to this demonstration, wondering if it was safe. (Do listen to the children in the background - their cries of "kraken" at 1:02 are worth it. Science is great fun!)<br />
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The caption that came with it noted that it was a mixture of ammonium dichromate ((NH<sub>4</sub>)<sub>2</sub>Cr<sub>2</sub>O<sub>7 </sub>)and HgSCN (mercurous thiocyanate).<sup>1</sup> Mercury and chromium, probably not something you want to eat I told my friend. The whole thing made me curious, just what were those tentacles come out of the burning pile? And what chemical reactions were driving it?<br />
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It's a coupled set of decomposition reactions. The volcano comes from the decomposition of ammonium dichromate<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
(NH<sub>4</sub>)<sub>2</sub>Cr<sub>2</sub>O<sub>7</sub>(s) → Cr<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>(s)+ N<sub>2</sub>(g)+ 4H<sub>2</sub>O(g)</div>
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The reaction produces a lot of heat, which makes the particles being thrown off by the rapid expansion of the two gases (nitrogen and water vapor) glow.<br />
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The heat then triggers the decomposition of the mercury compound:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
2 Hg(SCN)<sub>2</sub>(s) → 2HgS + 4CS<sub>2</sub> + carbon nitrides</div>
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The erupting tentacles are an example of intumescence<sup>2</sup>, a property of mercury thiocyanates noted long ago by the venerable Friedrich Wöhler<sup>3</sup>. It's a well known demonstration, often called Pharaoh's Serpents. Many material intumesce when heated, and thus produce their own insulation. Some passive fire protection systems rely on this property of polymers, by which they essentially rapidly produce their own insulating layer upon heating, or by swelling up to block air ducts to prevent smoke and other gases from spreading too quickly through a ventilation system.<br />
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It works with mercuric thiocynate as well (Hg(SCN)<sub>2</sub>) — by some accounts even better — and better yet if you toss a bit of potassium nitrate and a bit of fuel in the form of sugars. In other bits of historical trivia, the mercuric thiocyanate was originally made by the aptly named Otto Hermes.
The sale of mercuric Pharaoh's Eggs ceased after some kids ate them with deleterious (fatal) effects.<br />
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If you just want to see the snakes minus chromium salts or mercury - try <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTGw5YzQZO8" target="_blank">this demonstration based on calcium gluconate</a> instead or check out pyrotechnic expert Tenney Davis suggestions in the Journal of Chemical Education.<br />
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1. From the Latin verb "to swell" — related to thumb and tuber (as in root vegetables like potatoes)<br />
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2. The chemist who showed in 1828 that compounds made by nature do not have some "vital essence" that distinguishes them from the same structure crafted by a chemist from inorganic (never living) materials. Something the Food Babe and hawkers of 'bioidentical' hormones do not get.<br />
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<b>Read more:</b><br />
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Brian Clegg at <a href="http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2014/05/ammonium-dichromate-vesuvian-fire-podcast" target="_blank">Chemistry World</a>. A <a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ed017p268" target="_blank">paper on the demonstration</a> from <i>Journal of Chemical Education</i> in 1940, by Tenney Davis of MIT who taught courses in explosives way back when ($).Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-36948842532329005772015-08-28T14:42:00.001-04:002015-08-28T14:42:32.621-04:00A chemistry decoder<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC-9w8I5ChxjHGzmayLP2zi5y001Rmlv3dr-sZ2HXUAFhcxsOkZ5c6ej2m3Ngd7jITG7-1JXNGgSf5ZoQA1Ndwv3QpNlaf6PQbpDTKRyTnx6DMPMKu5F05Ajfyq_BqxZ9zhgUO/s1600/A-Basic-Guide-to-Decoding-Organic-Compound-Names.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC-9w8I5ChxjHGzmayLP2zi5y001Rmlv3dr-sZ2HXUAFhcxsOkZ5c6ej2m3Ngd7jITG7-1JXNGgSf5ZoQA1Ndwv3QpNlaf6PQbpDTKRyTnx6DMPMKu5F05Ajfyq_BqxZ9zhgUO/s320/A-Basic-Guide-to-Decoding-Organic-Compound-Names.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><a href="http://www.compoundchem.com/2015/08/27/org-comp-names/" target="_blank">A basic guide to decoding organic compound names</a></i><br />
© Andy Brunning/<a href="http://www.compoundchem.com/" target="_blank">Compound Interest</a></td></tr>
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The August 17th edition of C&EN — <i>Chemical and Engineering News</i>, the American Chemical Society's weekly newsmagazine — was devoted to the intersection of chemistry and the internet. I have a piece in there on <a href="http://internet.cenmag.org/how-to-fight-the-spread-of-pseudoscience-online/" target="_blank">the ways in which the internet allows pseudoscience to spread and what chemists might do to counteract the spread</a>. I point to <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2846379/" target="_blank">Andrew Noymer's work on the mathematical modeling of rumor spread</a>, which suggests that rumors and autocatalytic reactions such as the classic <a href="http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Lotka-VolterraEquations.html" target="_blank">Lotke-Volterra</a> systems are not dissimilar.<br />
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Noymer's results suggest that damping down the spread of rumor requires both persistent debunking and increased resistance among the susceptible population. Though at first glance it seems counterintuitive, just periodically debunking rumors leads to a steady state situation, where there is always a (not so small) part of the population who believe. Debunking needs to be strong and regular, and even then, if you don't have a resistant population, you land in a steady state regime. The best you can do is to reduce a rumor to something that periodically breaks out. Like the "<a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/08/11/mars_big_as_the_moon_not_in_2015_or_ever.html" target="_blank">Mars will be as big as the Moon in the sky!</a>" meme which you see circulating on social media every summer like clockwork. (Spoiler alert: It wasn't. It won't be. Ever.)<br />
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What does it take to make a population resistant to pseudoscience? Some tactics are not unique to the pseudoscience issue: teaching critical thinking (as Phil Plait <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/08/11/mars_big_as_the_moon_not_in_2015_or_ever.html" target="_blank">points out</a> and Joel Achenbach implies <a href="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/science-doubters/achenbach-text" target="_blank">here</a>). Slower fingers when it comes to hitting "share." But it also means giving the population some basic tools for reading science. After the Royal Society of Chemistry released a large study of the public awareness of chemistry, I wrote that it might be helpful if instead of periodic tables, chemists handed out a cheat sheet for decoding chemical names. I wished and voilà, the brilliant Andy Brunning of <i><a href="http://www.compoundchem.com/" target="_blank">Compound Interest</a></i> created <a href="http://www.compoundchem.com/2015/08/27/org-comp-names/" target="_blank">this graphic</a>. Print it out and post it in your kitchen. Link to it on Facebook. Browse the rest of his collection. Buy his <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Does-Asparagus-Make-Your-Smell/dp/1409156613/" target="_blank">forthcoming collection</a> about the chemistry of food and give it to the family member who keeps sending you links to the Food Babe.<br />
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Most all, talk about what you do as chemist, debunk garbage science when you hear it, swiftly and without mocking, and grab as many opportunities as you can to help people learn to decode chemistry on their own. Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-33428041886273530762015-07-23T16:10:00.003-04:002015-07-23T16:19:58.096-04:00Eating periodically: is there thallium in your wasabi?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjigJl4WlZvEI6_-3heVfnpIxHKfR-3lTN9JMUvZd5wFKucIo_mHXR-CmldS4jkHscSAoD9W4_VTTBdNdmWxDLIx_ZgcTdq6mbQsCFCNRzBTPdgaA1_Bc9rpRU3ol-4CmgZpQR/s1600/Wasabi%252C_Iwasaki_Kanen_1828.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjigJl4WlZvEI6_-3heVfnpIxHKfR-3lTN9JMUvZd5wFKucIo_mHXR-CmldS4jkHscSAoD9W4_VTTBdNdmWxDLIx_ZgcTdq6mbQsCFCNRzBTPdgaA1_Bc9rpRU3ol-4CmgZpQR/s320/Wasabi%252C_Iwasaki_Kanen_1828.jpg" width="222" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wasabi, Iwasaki Kanen 1828<br />
via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wasabi,_Iwasaki_Kanen_1828.jpg#/media/File:Wasabi,_Iwasaki_Kanen_1828.jpg" target="_blank">Wikimedia Commons</a> </td></tr>
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Could your wasabi peas be poisoning you? Short answer. Maybe.<br />
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<a href="http://www.delish.com/food/a43162/kale-poison-thallium/" target="_blank">Delish</a> recently posted an article on thallium — a highly toxic metal — in kale, the quintessential healthy green. The Internet relished the irony of finding toxic metals in the highly touted greens. The piece points to an article in <i><a href="http://craftsmanship.net/the-vegetable-detective/" target="_blank">Craftsmanship</a></i> magazine, which attempts to make a link between consumption of kale and thallium levels. This is not new news. There are dozens of reports, going back two decades, in the scientific literature of thallium in cruciferous vegetables, such as kale and brussell sprouts — and wasabi.<br />
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Thallium is definitely a nasty element, and has an infamous history of use as a poison in fact and fiction, starting with Ngaio Marsh's <i>Final Curtain. </i> Read Deborah Blum's hair-raisingly fascinating <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Poisoners-Handbook-Forensic-Medicine/dp/014311882X" target="_blank">Poisoner's Handbook</a> (or her short article at <i><a href="http://www.wired.com/2013/07/the-chemist-as-murderer-a-thallium-story/" target="_blank">Wired</a> </i>about a recent murder case in Princeton). But as with everything, dose makes the poison, and the amounts of thallium in plants vary widely depending on the concentrations in the soil. In highly contaminated soils, plants can contain enough thallium to be hazardous. But if such highly contaminated soils were widespread, we'd have seen the effects already. (See <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1081/PLN-100106976#.VbFGEuhVikp" target="_blank">this paper</a> for some background.) (Also, you can leverage this ability and use it to clear out the thallium from a contaminated area.)<br />
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So how does thallium get into the plants? There is some evidence that thallium ions travel the same pathways as potassium ions (which play key roles in plant metabolism), and so might find their way into plants (and animals) though similar processes. <br />
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Thallium is also in the same column as boron, and elements in the same column of the periodic table often have similar behaviors, because their electrons are arranged in similar patterns. For example, strontium, which is underneath calcium, sneaks into the body by way of the same processes calcium does. Boron is found in plants (coffee is a good source, and plants in the same family as kale are also heavy absorbers of boron); it is believed to be critical to cell wall formation.<br />
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And if there is boron and thallium, indium - in the same column is another likely companion. And yes, indium has been detected in plants in the cabbage family. <br />
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As always, eating a wide variety of things is good advice, and it's key to remember that "natural" is not the same as "safe."Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12261589.post-42522956906127849762015-07-13T22:48:00.000-04:002015-07-14T16:29:24.250-04:00First woman in 'space'<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rU5U4JLUcXk?rel=0" width="560"></iframe><br />
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I keep checking to see how far away New Horizons is from Pluto (459,770 km at 0235 GMT) even though I know there's nothing to see at the moment, but I am a space junkie.<br />
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The first space launch I can remember seeing is the last of the Mercury missions, launched in May of 1963. I was 5 and I was hooked on space. In retrospect, I suspect my hours watching rockets erect on their launch pads, the vapor streaming off the only sign this was live TV, fed my desire to do science as much as the biography of Marie Curie I chewed through while ill one summer or my parents' careers. <br />
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I'd be glued to the TV for every launch I could for the next decade, and I confess I can still be found streaming a launch in the corner of my screen while grading. I'm still hooked on space.<br />
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S o I was delighted to discover the first woman to leave the atmosphere — at least the breathable part of it — was both a chemist and an alum of the college where I teach. In October of 1934, Jeannette Ridlon Piccard, a licensed balloon pilot, flew a balloon with her husband on board to an altitude of 17.5 km, well into the stratosphere. Her altitude record (for women) would not be broken until Russian astronaut Valentina Tereshkova's flight in June 1963. You can watch the Piccards take off in this video and see the wreckage of the gondola after they crash landed. Her first person account of the trip was <a href="http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1934/10/24/93647736.html?pageNumber=3" target="_blank">published in the <i>New York Times</i> the next day</a>, including her chagrin at such an inelegant landing.<br />
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Ridlon's entry in Bryn Mawr's Undergraduate Catalog of 1916, she<br />
would concentrate on chemistry and physics over the next 2 years. </div>
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Piccard was a Bryn Mawr College graduate, class of 1918, taking course work in chemistry and physics, as well as psychology and philosophy. She went on to get her master's degree in chemistry from the University of Chicago and later a Ph.D. in education from the University of Minnesota. All wonderful preparation for being an...executive secretary (those were not the days), pilot and stratospheric explorer. Piccard's papers are the Library of Congress and I'd love to go read the experimental notes from that epic flight.<br />
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Piccard's grand-nephew Bertrand Piccard is one of the pilots on the Solar Impulse, a solar powered plane attempting to circumnavigate the globe.<br />
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My thanks to Bryn Mawr College's registrar, Kirsten O'Beirne, for figuring out how "majors" worked in the early 20th century.<br />
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<br />Michellehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12617476463347663364noreply@blogger.com1