WHY WE LIKE TO HANG WITH CHEMISTS
They are some wacky dudes.
(Thanks to Elizabeth Tenorio)
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They are some wacky dudes.
(Thanks to Elizabeth Tenorio)
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first post
Posted by: Andy | April 22, 2004 at 04:13 AM
First sentence: "Believe it or not, some chemists do have a sense of humour, and this page is a testament to that."
OK, good start. We're going to explode the myth that chemists are a buch of nerds who wouldn't understand humor if it bit them in the ass. These chemists understand humor! I can't wait to read on and see what hysterical stuff they've come up with!
Second sentence: "Here we'll show you some real molecules that have unusual, ridiculous or downright silly names."
Words fail me.....
Posted by: mike | April 22, 2004 at 04:19 AM
Oh, fucitol!
Posted by: LaguitoMojo | April 22, 2004 at 04:24 AM
I must have missed these when I was in college biology.
Posted by: MOTW | April 22, 2004 at 04:37 AM
I can attest to the fact that chemists have a sense of humor... I am indeed a chemist, and I am a Dave Barry fan.
Posted by: Leetie | April 22, 2004 at 04:37 AM
Leetie, how wonderful. The first step toward recovery is admitting your passion for Dave's wacky brand of humor. (humour for you U.K. readers)
Posted by: MOTW | April 22, 2004 at 04:41 AM
Hooray Leetie! I am a chemist too, but I was downsized a while ago. So now I am a stay-at-home mom which means that I work harder for a much lower income! I read Dave's column, blog, and books as often as I can so I must have some kind of sense of humor. Yesterday Dave used one of my contributions in a post!
Posted by: Jessica | April 22, 2004 at 04:56 AM
This is one of the saddest and geekiest things I've ever seen in my life.
Posted by: Jenny | April 22, 2004 at 05:02 AM
Jessica, I'm also a hard-working SAHM since my daughter was born.
Posted by: Leetie | April 22, 2004 at 05:03 AM
I'd like to add that Buckminster fullerines are also fondly called "bucky balls."
*hangs head in shame*
Posted by: Leetie | April 22, 2004 at 05:05 AM
Hi Jessica. Are you the "Trench Lady"?
This is how it all starts. Dave posts one of your submissions and you are hooked. Day after day you scour the web, occasionally firing off links for Dave and Judi to maybe review. And then, depending on their current states of mind, your item appears - but never as frequently as Clair's.
So you start reading every item and the associated comments, leaving the occasional comment yourself, and neglecting everything else until your life crumbles around you and - - who's there? Who let you in? What's with the white coat with really loing sleeves???!!??! (B@%&#@%*
YB %VY#&TB& G#C#............
Posted by: LaguitoMojo | April 22, 2004 at 05:06 AM
Oh, Laguito... so true... so true...
*shakes head and blinks for the first time in about an hour*
Posted by: Leetie | April 22, 2004 at 05:12 AM
I actually bathe in this chemical:
http://www.dhmo.org/
Posted by: Leetie | April 22, 2004 at 05:31 AM
I must be the only one left in this comment section... I'm such a freakin' geek. Here's a recipe only a chemist would love:
Ingredients:
1...... 532.35 cm3 gluten
2...... 4.9 cm3 NaHCO3
3...... 4.9 cm3 refined halite
4...... 236.6 cm3 partially hydrogenated tallow triglyceride
5...... 177.45 cm3 crystalline C12H22O11
6...... 177.45 cm3 unrefined C12H22O11
7...... 4.9 cm3 methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde
8...... Two calcium carbonate-encapsulated avain albumen-coated protien
9...... 473.2 cm3 theobroma cacao
10.... 236.6 cm3 de-encapsulated legume meats (sieve size #10)
To a 2-L jacketed round reactor vessel (reactor #1) with an overall heat-transfer coefficient of about 100 Btu/F-ft2-hr add one, two, and three with constant agitation.
In a second 2-L reactor vessel with a radial flow impeller operating at 100 rpm add four, five, six, and seven until the mixture is homogeneous.
To reactor #2 add eight followed by three equal portions of the homogeneous mixture in reactor #1. Additionally, add nine and ten slowly with constant agitation. Care must be taken at this point in the reaction to control any temperature rise that may be the result of an exothermic reaction.
Using a screw extrude attached to a #4 nodulizer place the mixture piece-meal on a 316SS sheet (300 x 600 mm). Heat in a 460K oven for a period of time that is in agreement with Frank & Johnston's first order rate expression (see JACOS, 21, 55), or until golden brown.
Once the reaction is complete, place the sheet on a 25 oC heat-transfer table allowing the product to come to equilibrium.
Posted by: Leetie | April 22, 2004 at 05:43 AM
You have to love Moronic Acid. Now that wbagnfarb! Lucifer Yellow isn't bad either.
Wasn't Curious Chloride a kids' book? Is Vaginatin the women's answer to V!Agr@? Or was that Urospermol? Erotic Acid? I'll stick to the Dickite, thank you very much.
Constipatic Acid? Let's definitely not go there.
Posted by: Jeff Meyerson | April 22, 2004 at 05:46 AM
Leetie--chocolate chip cookies with nuts.
One issue--a chemist would NEVER measue ingredients by volume, as an American cook would. A chemist would measure by weight, as the British do (not sure on other countries). A chemist would know that, for instance, the amount of flour in a given volume could vary vased on how finely it's sifted, and so volume would not necessarilly ensure repeatable stoichiometric ratios.
I was briefly a chem major...
Posted by: mike | April 22, 2004 at 05:51 AM
*Mike one-ups the geek who was really only a bio major*
Posted by: Leetie | April 22, 2004 at 05:56 AM
I can just hear a Dr. Frink-like voice saying:
"Another name for it is vitamin B13. Apparently, if you add another carbon to it, it becomes homo-erotic acid..."
"heh heh heh glaaaay-vin"
Posted by: JT | April 22, 2004 at 06:07 AM
***stops playing with hydrogen bubbles to sneer in disdain***
All you chemistry geeks remind me of why I am a physicist. (I still get to blow things up, but then I get to say "and on a quantum level, nobody really understands why")
***returns to playing with hydrogen bubbles, looks for lighter***
Posted by: elfbrains | April 22, 2004 at 07:34 AM
On the subject of Chemisty all I have to say is...I should not have passed the last six weeks of it my Sr. year seeing as how senioritis had set in and I did nothing...NOTHING. But because I was a sr. and behaved, I believe the teacher gave me grades because I ended up passing.
Posted by: MeL | April 22, 2004 at 07:48 AM
Techinically, you would never ever ever ever weigh something in chem. You don't care about its weight, that can vary with such paltry things gravity. You want its mass, or if you want to get really fancy, its molecular mass.
(And, yes, I am a total geek. I graduated with high honours, B.Sc. Chem Major, English Minor).
Posted by: marlodianne | April 22, 2004 at 08:11 AM
What's a chemist's favorite guacamole ingredient?
Avogadros
Two hydrogen atoms bumped into each other recently.
One said: "Why do you look so sad?"
The other responded: "I lost an electron."
Concerned, One asked "Are you sure?"
The other replied "I'm positive."
Why do chemists like nitrates so much?
They're cheaper than day rates.
Remember if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Posted by: Leetie | April 22, 2004 at 08:26 AM
... and marlodianne one-ups one on mike!!!
Posted by: Leetie | April 22, 2004 at 08:28 AM
**hanging head in shame**
... I think I'll just go back to the banana protector section now...
Posted by: Leetie | April 22, 2004 at 08:46 AM
1. elfbrains,
A physicist's answer to the explosion, "All things tend to chaos; so it HAD to blow up."
2. Thanks for the recipe and the jokes, Leetie. I am glad to find so many fellow scientists/geeks here.
3. No L.M., I am not Trech Lady, I am Jessica R.
4. I had to go run errands. I hope that some of you are still following this thread.
5. Is there a chat room somewhere on this blog?
Posted by: Jessica | April 22, 2004 at 08:47 AM
ahhh. I get it. yep, that happened here in my county. Sorry, I didn't realize that was a link to the article; I thought you were referring to a moniker.
Posted by: Jessica | April 22, 2004 at 09:27 AM
message thread chatting is too time consuming.
Posted by: Jessica | April 22, 2004 at 09:28 AM
Yes, it is...hard to keep up with the *active* thread- - - especially in a straightjacket. Have you tried typing with your habds constrained behind your back?
Posted by: LaguitoMojo | April 22, 2004 at 09:33 AM
no, but I have tried typing with a toddler on my lap.
Posted by: Jessica | April 22, 2004 at 09:35 AM
and walla (or is that voila?), we're chatting!
Posted by: LaguitoMojo | April 22, 2004 at 09:37 AM
Someone has set up a chat (I think it's Mel) at
http://chat.psychoses.org/
I'll see y'all there
Posted by: Leetie | April 22, 2004 at 09:41 AM
psychoses - that's appropriate!
Posted by: LaguitoMojo | April 22, 2004 at 09:54 AM
I've been a fan of cummingtonite since I discovered it as a young man...........in a geology class, jeez........
Posted by: Russell | April 22, 2004 at 12:13 PM
Oh, Leetie that recipe is perfect. I have to send it to my Dad who is also a chemist. I miss being in the lab since I had my kids but cooking isn't so bad, if the kids will eat my experiments. Honk if you passed P-chem!
Posted by: Webmom | April 22, 2004 at 12:21 PM
I always thought Adamantine was named for a certain super-hero.
How horribly disappointed I am. Heh, Adam Ant...
Posted by: crash | April 22, 2004 at 12:34 PM
There's another Andy! And he posted first. Sad. I was just going to mention that this page should have the "Don't open at work" warning, as there is a picture of a butt.
Posted by: Andy | April 22, 2004 at 12:38 PM
Two layers of dickite
Posted by: Andy | April 22, 2004 at 12:41 PM
"Angelic acid isn't very angelic at all - it's a defence substance for certain beetles"
Hey! This must be whatBomby the Bombardier Beetle
uses to ward off evolutionists! Fight the good fight, Bomby!
Posted by: barbiguinness | April 22, 2004 at 05:44 PM
i found out just the other day that my Grandfather on my mother's side had the first name "Vyvyan." He always hated it though and went by his middle name his whole life. There's a male character in an 80's Britsh sitcom named Vyvyan, and I always wondered if that was a guy's name or if it was just a joke. Who woulda thought the answer was in my own family?
Posted by: barbiguinness | April 22, 2004 at 07:41 PM
Leetie,
My freshman chem teacher liked to tell the "positive hydrogen" joke. Except for his version involved a bar and an angry Ernest B. Rutherford with some radiation cannons.
I found the precipitate joke all too funny. I'm going to bed now.
Posted by: V-Square | April 22, 2004 at 10:43 PM
Webmom,
honk, honk! Who was your prof for P-Chem? My Prof., Dr. Nichols , used to say that all the time!
Posted by: Jessica | April 23, 2004 at 04:58 AM
Jessica, my prof for P-chem 1 was Dr. Jones. During grad school I actually had a bumper sticker on my car that said Honk if you passed P-Chem. I still have a coffee mug that I got from the ACS that reveals the chemical structure of caffeine when a hot liquid is poured into it. You can take the girl out of the lab but not the lab out of the girl!
Posted by: Webmom | April 23, 2004 at 11:15 AM
That was the toughest class ever. I loved seeing how everything connected there - Chem+calc+physics, but I had serious trouble making everything fit in my poor head. Now maybe, if I hadn't had another lab class plus a real chemistry job to pay for school going on at the same time, I might have had more time to get everything properly poked into my brain, but hey, I passed and graduated what more do you need!
Posted by: Jessica | April 24, 2004 at 05:05 AM
Chem + Calc + Physics = (good God, are you serious?)
I didn't have all those in the same semester, and I can only imagine the suffering if I did.
Posted by: alex | April 24, 2004 at 06:19 AM
It was one class alex. It is called physical chemistry. Mostly you study a lot of quantum mechanics in which you answer the question, "Where is the molecule?" So you derive a calculus equation to prove where the molecule is. The trouble is if you actually went to the location that you calculated; the molecule won't be there! Pesky molecules! Is that right, Webmom? P-chem was very long ago. It may be that you derive where the electrons are.
Posted by: Jessica | April 24, 2004 at 04:27 PM