The laboratory facility that long ago won honors for doing research and development on the so-called “gay bomb” is casting a skeptical eye at widespread claims about oxytocin, a substance some people call “the love hormone”. The Neuroskeptic blog reports: A new study offers two reasons to be cautious about some of the claims made for the role of […]
Tag: chemistry
The chemistry of Breaking Bad, analyzed
Almost anyone who has seen the TV series Breaking Bad craves (or should crave) more knowledge of the chemistry presented there. This study helps supply some of that knowledge: IN ENGLISH: “The Chemistry of Breaking Bad,” Falk Harnisch [pictured here], Tunga Salthammer, Chemie in unserer Zeit, vol. 47, December 3, 2013, pp. 214-21. IN GERMAN: […]
Surface tension, obsessive-compulsively
Ian Hopkinson talks about the need to attend obsessively, compulsively to detail when measuring surface tension: Langmuir trough experiments are ideal for obsessive-compulsives: before you start your actual experiment you have to get the surface of the liquid you’re using absolutely clean. To do this you clean your trough, add in the ultrapure water, compress the […]
Jazzing up the Jabłoński diagram
Kenneth Janson reports, in the Chemistry Blog: The Jablonski diagram, first introduced by Aleksander Jabłoński in 1933, is a graphical depiction of the electronic states of a molecule and the transitions between those states. The y axis of the graph is energy, which increases from the bottom (ground state or S0) to the top (singlet […]
A longer look at the Four-Legged Periodic Table Table
The American Chemical Society made this five-minute video essay about Theo Gray and his invention: four-legged periodic table table. The 2002 Ig Nobel Prize in chemistry honored the inventor and the invention: BONUS: Theo Gray’s relatives’ “nauseatingly cute” version of Tom Lehrer’s classic song “The Elements”:
Teaser for the 23rd first annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony
Daniel Rosenberg, Al Crockett, and David Kessler made this twerk-allusive teaser for the 23rd First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony: Daniel and Al made a teaser last year, too:
Moronic acid
Yes, there is a moronic acid: “Moronic acid, a simple triterpenoid keto acid with antimicrobial activity isolated from Ozoroa mucronata,” M. Hostettmann-Kaldas and K. Nakanishi, Planta medica 37.12 (1979): 358-60. Unwhimsically, it is not unstructured. The structure looks more or less like this: (Thanks to investigator Deborah Blum for bringing this substance to our attention.) […]
Some say strychnine
Chemistry Blog muses about names: (4aR,5aS,8aR,8a1S,15aS)-4a1,5,5a,7,8,8a1,15,15a-octahydro-2H-4,6-methanoindolo[3,2,1-ij]oxepino[2,3,4-de]pyrrolo[2,3-h]quinolin-14(4aH)-one. Imagine if Agatha Christie had to write that every time she had to mention the poison used in the murder, or if Hitchcock’s leading man had to vocalise it in the courtroom. Well they’d never get the book or the film down to a manageable size. It’s much easier […]
The Heck Reaction vs. the Hell Reaction
Again this year, there is no winner in our essay contest to address the question: “Which Is Better, the Heck Reaction or the Hell Reaction?” The contest entrants and the more numerous potential entrants were uninspired by the two info sources we suggested: “Recent Developments and New Perspectives in the Heck Reaction,” Walter Cabri and […]
The Clever Lab’s Catalytic Coordination Chemistry
Few would say that the construction of multiple nano-engineered cavities for the immobilization of catalytically active transition metals was a non-trivial task. We are talking clever technology here. And appropriately perhaps, such is the domain of Junior Professor Dr. Guido Clever (of the Inorganic Chemistry Dept., Göttingen University, Germany) who has his own laboratory at the […]