Archive for the 'Foolishness' Category

Just how hard is life in chemistry at Harvard? It’s brutal. Everything is done to the extreme, and sometimes, people crack under the stress. We lost a trusted friend this week when the DeuceGobbler 3000 was hauled out of our bathroom on a stretcher. All that remains is an empty stall—a constant reminder of the emptiness in our hearts:

Seriously…I hope we get a new toilet soon. The plumber “sealed” the sewer line by cramming a wad of TP into it (see above), and as you can imagine, this was not the best solution. The area around our bathroom smells like 3-methylindole and friends.

In other news, I can’t believe the toilet managed to beat me out of here.

I know making geysers by adding Mentos to Diet Coke is soooo 2006, but bear with me for this one. A couple of months ago, I gave a small talk that was sidetracked for 15 minutes while the room discussed the subject. The second-most embarrassing aspect of the story is that I was responsible for leading us into the tangent, and the most embarrassing aspect is that, at one point, I minimized PowerPoint and opened YouTube to show a video of the phenomenon.

I was surprised to learn that many people in the room hadn’t even heard of the experiment. The set up is simple: take a 2 L bottle of your favorite carbonated beverage and several Mentos breath mints. As soon as the mints fall into the liquid, you get an instantaneous violent eruption. The more mints you add, the more violent the explosion. You can check out videos here and here.

From what I understand, there is no chemical reaction taking place—just the physical process of carbon dioxide being outgassed from solution. For some reason, the Mentos brand of mints provide especially nice nucleation sites for the CO2 bubbles to form. I’ve always heard that diet sodas are best for this demonstration because they aren’t sticky (making the clean up easier), but the other solutes (sweeteners, caffeine, etc.) appear to be important, too. These compounds alter the surface tension of the liquid, affecting the solubility of the gas and how quickly it can be released. I understand Mythbusters ran a number of “scientific experiments” on these geysers, but I’d like to see a hardcore experimental physicist get in on the action. It seems like there’s plenty of science left to be done.

In another example of YouTube science, people supercooled bottles of water (or beer) in a freezer and then shock froze the liquids. This involves cooling the liquid below its freezing point, which can be done if you handle the bottle gently enough. When the supercooled liquid is shaken or tapped, it quickly and spectacularly freezes over. I’m told by someone who has studied this phenomenon that it’s unclear what exactly is going on. Maybe the bubbles that are produced from the tapping provide the initial nucleation sites for the crystals to form? It might be similar to the process of selective flocculation used to purify potash salts. In this technique, a surfactant is added to a concentrated solution of the raw mixture of salts extracted from evaporite mines and bubbles are passed into the solution. I’m not sure whether pure crystals form at the air-water interface or if suspended crystals are simply swept along by the bubbles, but the “floc” floats to the top where it is skimmed off and sold. I’d like to see if the shock-freeze experiments work when there’s no air in the bottle, minimizing bubble formation.

Anyway, it seems like there’s a limitless supply of interesting experiments here that could engage high school students and get them to do some real science. It reminds me of the materials chemist who showed that M&Ms pack more efficiently than gumballs. This ground-breaking study merited a Science paper and extensive coverage in the news media (NY Times, CNN, etc.). While you may lament the publication of this paper in such a respected journal, we chemists need to do a better job of engaging the public and convincing them that “chemicals” ≠ “bad”. Undertaking studies involving food and other brand-name products might just help with that.

I remember hearing about this a while ago, but it’s making another news cycle:

A professor at MIT began a hunger strike yesterday in protest of the university’s decision to deny him tenure. Alleging racism in the workplace, Associate Professor James L. Sherley ’80 has vowed not to eat until MIT offers him tenure and fires Provost L. Rafael Reif.
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“I will either see the Provost resign and my hard-earned tenure granted at MIT, or I will die defiantly right outside his office,” Sherley wrote in an e-mail to the MIT faculty in December.
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Sherley claims that he was unfairly denied lab space and was treated poorly throughout his career at MIT due to his race. Sherley is African-American.

Well, if that’s the way he’s going to behave, maybe MIT made the right decision on tenure.  Since March Madness is right around the corner, let’s have a warmup pool:

1.  Will Sherley starve to death?
2.  What date will he die or eat again?
3.  Will he get tenure at MIT?

I’ll take: 1. No, 2. Wednesday, and 3. No.  He’ll end his strike when MIT publically offers him a new hearing, but they’ll make that offer just so Sherley can live and save face.  He seems to be a talented guy, my guess is that another school will take a gamble and give him a position.

There’s more info in the Globe.

Here’s a video from Dick Wang’s group on inhaling ethanol using carbon dioxide as a carrier gas. The chemistry is a load of rubbish, but it’s fun to watch them inhale the mixture and act like it’s not burning their nostrils. Anyone who has ever taken a breath while leaning over a dry ice bin knows that their invention would never work.

Also, I love how these guys made a “Mentos + soda” fountain using regular soda instead of diet. I imagine that this made the clean up a lot less fun.

UPDATE:  It seems that visiting the Break site equates to playing Russian roulette with NSFW ads.  Try this link instead (thanks, Mike).

The First Annual Chemmy Awards will be announced here on ChemBark at a special ceremony on Boxing Day.  To supplement our undisclosed nominees, please use the comments to submit nominations in the following categories:

Best Organic Paper/Achievement
Best Physical Paper/Achievement
Best Inorganic Paper/Achievement
Best Biological Paper/Achievement
News Story of the Year
Comeback of the Year
Molecule of the Year
Villain of the Year
Worst Accident
Outstanding Academic Department
Good Citizenship Award
Lifetime Achievement Award

People interested in voting for the Best Chemistry Blog of the Year should visit Mitch at ChemicalForums.  My vote goes to Tenderbutton, even though it’s dead.  I also hope that Paul at TotallySynthetic is going to post a poll for Total Synthesis of the Year, but I’ve got no idea who should win that one.

This video of Sacha Baron Cohen (as Ali G) interviewing Boston College Professor T. Ross Kelly is excellent. After watching it a couple of times, I’m still not sure that Kelly knows exactly what happened.

The next time you expect to evolve a gas, please work in da hood and be sure to check your Hilfiger’s for contaminants.