chemistry
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Catalytic
You are viewing stuff tagged with chemistry.
I like to keep patients safe. I like to work on clean, isolated teeth. My endless (ask Mykala) reading of primary literature makes me love what is called a “dry field” to work in (no saliva, no tongue). So, I’m in favor of rubber dams. Very much in favor. Here is one of my favorite photos, ever:
First, last, and only time I’ll ever laugh while reading about chlorine trifluoride… Sand Won’t Save You This Time:
There’s a report from the early 1950s of a one-ton spill of the stuff. It burned its way through a foot of concrete floor and chewed up another meter of sand and gravel beneath, completing a day that I’m sure no one involved ever forgot. That process, I should add, would necessarily have been accompanied by copious amounts of horribly toxic and corrosive by-products: it’s bad enough when your reagent ignites wet sand, but the clouds of hot hydrofluoric acid are your special door prize if you’re foolhardy enough to hang around and watch the fireworks.
Mykala and I saw some great science demos on Jay Leno; they were centered around a chemical called sulfur hexafluoride. Heretofore, I hadn’t heard of it. It has some really unique properties - for one, it’s a super dense gas, and so it flows like an invisible liquid. You can float boats (well, makeshift aluminum foil rafts) on it when it’s in a fish tank, and it puts out fires like no one’s business (which is the reason it is used in electrical installations). It is extremely non-reactive, not unlike Teflon or other perfluorinated hydrocarbons (though, it’s a sulfur compound). Anyhow, I got to looking it up on Sigma Aldrich, which is the chemical company I ordered chemicals from when I worked organic synthesis at St. Thomas. So, the 99.75% pure form of sulfur hexafluoride clocks in at a smidge over a dollar per gram. Mykala estimated the fish tank filled with the stuff was about 50 liters. So, let’s see… at STP, one mole of an ideal gas takes up about 22.4L… which means they probably used about 3 moles of the stuff. It weighs about 146 grams per mole, sooo that’s north of $450 in sulfur hexafluoride. I guess they don’t skimp for Late Night science demonstrations.
Q: What do you call magnesium sulfate with a shotgun?
A: A salt with a deadly weapon.
Source: Slashdot comment thread.
The chemistry faculty presented us with round bottom flasks filled with treats - plus, we got to keep the flasks! Glassware like this is pretty expensive, so the gesture was very nice. Unfortunately, mine cracked when I tried to remove the candy from it …
Hot on the heels of my extensive discussion on happiness, I must change topics a bit and point out a 2005 study by the American Chemical Society, specifically, “Senior Research Associate Janel Kasper-Wolfe of ACS’s Department of Member Research & Technology under the general guidance of the ACS Committee on Economic & Professional Affairs.” Fascinating, you say. Read on! So … what in this study could be so interesting, you ask? Well. This is an analysis of the starting salaries received by chemistry graduates in 2005. Possibly an ironic subject matter given my last post? Yes. Interesting? Without a doubt.
Scientists Create World’s Largest Novelty Atom - The best thing about the Onion is their ability to keep funny turns of phrase flowing throughout an entire article like this.
As soon as the image of that atom came on the screen, everyone just lost it. I nearly knocked over my model of a constitutional isomer, I was laughing so hard.
I’m back from the American Chemical Society National Meeting in Chicago. There were 15,000 chemists there, with endless events, awards (our Chem Club (well, Student Affiliate Chapter) earned “Commendable” (place 2 out of 3)), and a whole pile of food. Plus, Chicago is a pretty neat place. McCormick Place is huge (how does 2.2 million square feet of space strike you?).
I am scared of p-chem. Literally scared. It is not only difficult, but sometimes it makes almost no sense at all. This is the first class where I have sat in lecture and thought “this makes little to no sense.” I guess I’ll have to try even harder.
Back to it, then.
After eleven months of chemistry research, and with the help of my esteemed (and much more experienced) colleague … I have succeeded in making step two of my six step antibiotic synthesis! There was no sarcasm in that previous statement, either. I am psyched. It’s going to be a good summer of research.
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