"The memory is stil with me - the most sickly and sweetish smell of rancid gasoline combined with rotten water melons, with undertones of stale sweat, pig carcass, a hint of garlic, moldy oranges, russian-made aftershave and a cheap household air freshener… its a whole package, and rather sweet one – like isonitriles or cyclopentadiene but magnified thousand times. A whiff of that thing and you feel that your nose just suffered a stroke and will hopefully die and peal off so that you never smell that thing again." A young lab tech, whose absent-mindedness in the lab gets him nicknamed "“Bořivoj” (”the one who tears down the places”), meets
PhePHMe, the worst-smelling compound in the world. Things happen.
posted by escabeche
on May 9, 2013 -
36 comments
How Not To Do It: Chromium Trioxide Back in grad school, I had an undergraduate assistant one summer, a guy who was pretty green. I'll refer to him by an altered form of his nickname, henceforth as Toxic Jim. I shouldn't be too hard on him, I guess: I was a summer undergrad in my time, too, and I wasn't a lot of help to anyone, either. But TJ did manage to furnish me with some of my more vivid lab stories in his brief time in my fume hood.
One morning I showed him how to make PCC. That's pyridinium chlorochromate for the non-organic chemists out there, an oxidizing agent that doesn't seem to be used as much as it was 15 or 20 years ago. Even in '85, you could buy it, but the freshly-made stuff was often better. It certainly looked nicer. Like all the Cr(VI) salts, it has a vivid color, in this case a flaming orange. I shouldn't say "flaming;" that's getting ahead of the story. . .
posted by the man of twists and turns
on Mar 23, 2013 -
30 comments
With a database of over 5,000 scientists, from Nobel prize winners to postdocs and PhD students,
Sense About Science works in partnership with scientific bodies, research publishers, policy makers, the public and the media, to change public discussions about science and evidence.
They make these scientists available for questions from civic organizations and the public looking for scientific advice from experts,
campaign for the promotion of scientific principles in public policy, and
publish neat guides to understanding science intended for laypeople. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb
on Feb 28, 2013 -
9 comments
Operation Delirium. "The military’s secret Cold War experiment to fight enemies with clouds of psychochemicals. Decades after a risky Cold War experiment, a scientist lives with secrets."
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Dec 10, 2012 -
44 comments
"I'm banned," he says. "By whom?" I ask. "My landlord," he says. "And the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority." Jon Ronson on
DIY science.
posted by fearfulsymmetry
on Feb 4, 2012 -
33 comments
Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life, in which the author, Erik Andrulis, proposes an "axiomatic, experimentally testable, empirically consistent, heuristic, and unified theory of life." He also claims to be able to unify physics.....ahem. All this is done using the chemistry notation you learned in highschool.
[more inside]
posted by AElfwine Evenstar
on Jan 27, 2012 -
53 comments
So you wake up tomorrow morning to find almost everyone on Earth missing.
The Internet will continue to work for a few hours: what information could you download to ensure your survival and rebuild civilization? A few suggestions:
The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics.
Third Word Development (18 GB of information on agriculture, livestock, food processing, construction, water, sanitation, health and much more).
The Global Village Construction Set (previously). Copies of
Gray's Anatomy,
Where There Is No Doctor, and
The Ship Captain’s Medical Guide.
A few more that might be handy even in ordinary times: all of
Wikipedia, or perhaps
just a portion. (Ideally, of course, you’d already have a
bound, printed copy),
Offline Google Mail (Chrome) to save correspondence;
SiteSucker to download sites you’d like to keep around while offline.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul
on Jan 5, 2012 -
89 comments
There must be a recognition of the self in its relation to the profession one proposes. If we do declare our profession, we must also keep the epistemological awareness. That is, if we are our profession,
we must know it. [more inside]
posted by curuinor
on Dec 11, 2011 -
10 comments
Larry Gonick is a veteran American cartoonist best known for his delightful comic-book guides to science and history, many of which have previews online. Chief among them is his long-running
Cartoon History of the Universe (later
The Cartoon History of the Modern World), a sprawling multi-volume opus documenting everything from the Big Bang to the Bush administration. Published over the course of three decades, it takes a truly global view -- its time-traveling Professor thoroughly explores not only familiar topics like Rome and World War II but the oft-neglected stories of Asia and Africa, blending caricature and myth with careful scholarship (cited by
fun illustrated bibliographies) and tackling even the most obscure events
with intelligence and wit. This savvy satire carried over to Gonick's
Zinn-by-way-of-
Pogo chronicle
The Cartoon History of the United States, along with a bevy of
Cartoon Guides to other topics, including
Genetics, Computer Science, Chemistry, Physics, Statistics, The Environment, and (yes!)
Sex. Gonick has also maintained a few sideprojects, such as
a webcomic look at Chinese invention,
assorted math comics (
previously), the
Muse magazine mainstay
Kokopelli & Co. (featuring the shenanigans of his
"New Muses"), and
more. See also
these lengthy interview snippets, linked
previously. Want more? Amazon links to the complete oeuvre inside!
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 6, 2011 -
29 comments
