chemistlife

[chemistlife]

Switching Blogs!

Hey everybody, apologies and whatnot, but I am switching blogs to chemagical.tumblr.com . Technically, this is my "secondary" blog and my "primary" one hasn't been used for a while and isn't relevant so I figured I'd just have to make a whole new one. If you like what I do, follow me there. If not, all the best anyway. Bear with me as I repost stuff from this blog to there. Thanks!

[chemistlife]

Transitive property of cartoons

Mark Hammill = Fire Lord Ozai = Luke Skywalker = The Joker = Bender = Jake = John DiMaggio

[chemistlife]

And don't forget your PPE! (A girl in my lab was asked by the safety inspector what PPE she uses and she must have misheard because she said, very offended, "EXCUSE ME?!")

[chemistlife]

Happens ALL THE TIME

[chemistlife]

Tumblr likes

That happy feeling when someone likes your post being instantly crushed when you realize that that person is a spammer trying to "give you an iPhone 5."

:-(

[chemistlife]

Chemistry tag and PSA

Flipping through the chemistry tag on tumblr is downright depressing. A good deal of it is young students (secondary school or starting university) freaking out about how much they hate chemistry and how they feel like they're going to fail it hardcore or are just trying to get it over with, and all I can think of was a poster that my first chemistry teacher had on the wall which read:

"What in the world ISN'T chemistry?"

I'm continually disappointed with how much students despise chemistry. Chemistry is everything, from how we drive cars to how we can tell our muscles to move; everything in the world is founded on these core principles that students utterly hate to learn (and in many cases I can't blame them because there are some teachers out there who make the subject seem like a living hell with no relevance to everyday life).

Anyway, so let's get into the PSA part of it: if you are a student (or even just an interested person) and you are confused about something chemistry-related, ask me. I've been teaching chemistry for more than three years and have done research in inorganic, organic, and biochemistry: I know my stuff, and if I can get others as interested in the amazing stuff that goes on in science and chemistry as I am, then I will be thrilled.

tl;dr: don't hate on chem. It rocks, and I'm here to help if you need it.

[chemistlife]

Resisting the urge to point out that "Merica" were the ones who sold all those dictators weapons and trained their military for decades.

Just a friendly reminder that when it comes down to it, U.S. policies almost always favor money over freedom.

(P.S. If you're ever trying to remember who the biggest arms dealers/manufacturers in the world are, just look up who the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are. Amazing that those we entrust most to protect our world stand to gain the most from its destruction.)

[chemistlife]

Found in a presentation that senior chem/biochem majors are giving to freshmen about the different areas of chemistry. We are so classy.

[chemistlife]

Things to ask in the middle of the night

Apparently, a couple nights back I woke up abruptly, shook my wildlife ecologist significant other awake next to me and demanded, "Do flamingos alternate legs when they sleep?!" before promptly falling back asleep. I have no memory of this.

(Spoiler: they do.)

[chemistlife]

Today in Physical organic...

We were talking about different important features of catalysts in physical organic chemistry, and I mentioned transition state energy lowering. My professor said:

"Wow, that tells you something about [me], thinking of Linus Pauling."

And I haveno ideawhat she meant!

Yeah, Linus Pauling was a BAMF: worked on everything from the chemical bond to hemoglobin and everything in between, won Nobel prizes in chemistry for his research and in peace for his anti-proliferation activism, partied with Einstein, and was an all around boss for decades, but I have absolutely no clue what that says about me, and it's really bewildering me.

[chemistlife]

Proctoring

Proctoring chem exams is, on occasion, hilarious. One girl was staring so intently at the back of the person in front of her for so long that I could have sworn the answers were written there.

[chemistlife]

Raging so hard right now.

Apparently, according to this guy, gay comes in two flavors: natural and artificial. Men also only come in one flavor: they wear dark suits and like "manly things," like fist-fighting, football, and disregarding the legitimate concerns of others.

Dear sir, I am not at all sorry that you are "offended" by the way gay people (or anyone else) act when it has absolutely nothing to do with you. Thank you, privileged guy, for making yourself the victim while victimizing others. Your options are the following:

1. Go back to the 1940's where your ideas belong

2. Shut up until you learn some goddamn human decency. Go back to kindergarten to learn how you're supposed to treat people, and figure out some facts (http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/sexual-orientation.aspx) before you spew any more of your ridiculously offensive drivel.

Sincerely,

The Civilized World

[chemistlife]

So I teach a general chemistry workshop for biology majors, most of whom have zero interest in chemistry, and when it comes down to it, zero interest in biology: 80% of bio majors at my university drop out of the program in their second to third year when they realize "Oh crap, I can't get into a medical school in this country with less than a 3.5 GPA, and microbiology ishard."

Anyway, this one kid missed two of the last three mandatory workshops. He emailed me, explaining that he'd really like to make up for them, so I gave him a shot. This was the assignment:

"Write a short paper (~2p) on something chemistry-related in everyday life that interests you and email it to me by Tuesday night."

Now, I didn't care if he wrote about what made soda bubbly (carbonic acid), what Drano was made of (mainly salts, NaOH, and Al), or why farts smelled (various thiols and sulfides), as long as it was chem-related and interesting to him. Seemed like a good way for him to get interested in chemistry.

What I received Monday night was a paper, less than one page, more than double spaced, on chemical weapons. Fine. Whatever. I started reading through it and not only is it written in the first person ("I am interested in...", big science no-no), the multiple uses of "I" were not capitalized. Irritated me a bit, but I can deal with that. I read on. The grammar and syntax were terrible, and commas were thrown around like seed in a chicken yard; the true purpose of a semicolon was clearly an enigma to this kid. Still, to be expected that some students might not be the greatest writers. I've graded worse lab reports from first-years. No biggie. The paper also contained zero chemical information about the composition of chemical weapons or the chemistry behind them. The fact that it had the word "chemical" in it was enough for him.

Then I realized: the use of vocabulary and the sentence structure across the three paragraphs varied tremendously. I did a quick google search on one of the sentences and lo and behold: about 90% of the paper was copied and pasted verbatim from about.com. Obviously, I was pissed. I gave the kid a second chance, and he chucked it in my face, saying "Not only is your assignment not worth thinking about, I think you're such an idiot that you can't even do a Google search."

Thus, I was forced to call in the Academic Integrity Ninja.

[chemistlife]

Pseudacris? Ludicrous!

[chemistlife]

trans-isomers

Filling out all these graduate school applications makes me feel really bad for trans/genderqueer people: under "gender" options, most of the schools have only "male" or "female" and make it a required question. A couple have had "prefer not to answer," which is a little bit better, but I've also seen "None" and "Unknown." Get a little bit more insensitive, why don't you?

Queer and trans people are people too: they may react differently than the stuff we're used to, but when it comes down to it, they've got the same number of carbons and hydrogens as their cis- analogs.

[chemistlife]

Chemistry Research

How can you tell when a professor's chemistry research is absolutely evil? "This work was highlighted in The Economist"

(The work done was "the power of cocrystallization to make better explosives," so yeah.)

[chemistlife]

"That's DOCTOR Timmy to you!"

TIL: Children under 13 can't apply for the Chem PhD program at UCSD because they're not allowed to fill out the online application. Don't ask me why they listed that information, but there you go.