ChemBark

Here are some interesting posts from last month that I meant to write about but never got around to doing so:

Excimer classified the chemistry advisors at his school into two schools, sparking passionate discussion.

Paul at TotallySynthetic wrote about some of the reasons that keep him excited about chemistry.  On this subject, I am surprised at how many of my classmates started out in love with chemical research but slowly decided to pursue careers away from the bench.  I guess a big part of any schooling is figuring out not just what you want to do, but what you don’t want to do.  Also, not everyone grew to hate research; some people simply found things that they enjoyed more.

Dr. Free-Ride examined whether blogging is a “service activity” in the context of academic contributions.  Hmmm…that reminds me.  I am no longer a blogger; I’m the editor-in-chief of ChemBark, an Internet publication that serves the public interest. (Zzzzzz….)

And A Synthetic Environment continues the enjoyable parade of Top 5 lists.  Please resist the urge to make puerile jokes about Ellen Swallow Richards.

Speaking of things I never got around to writing about, I’ve got to resurrect those remaining Chemmys.  Also slated for discussion: “Forgotten Genius”, my response to The Chem Blog, some tidbits of chemical grammar, and the upcoming Intel Science Talent Search.

And holy cow…here’s a late addition to the clippings from Everyday Scientist.

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Here are some interesting posts from last month that I flagged but never got around to writing about:

Excimer posted on parent-child pairs of chemists. I was kind of surprised that there aren’t more, considering how common father-son pairs are in the business and sports worlds.

Mitch wrote about Egon’s new chemistry blog aggregator, Chemical Blogspace, that keeps track of all sorts of statistics. Stat packages like this make me self-conscious…am I giving enough “outgoing bloglove”? (whatever that is)

Kyle of The Chem Blog hawked some pretty sweet Toste hoodies. It’d be awesome if professors signed endorsement deals for their own lines of merchandise. I’d love to see bottles of catalysts personally signed and numbered by Grubbs. Sets of colored lecture chalk designed and endorsed by Andy Myers would sell like hotcakes.

A Synthetic Environment tracked down the history of the Dean-Stark trap and other named condensers. Seeing that Dean-Stark paper reminded me of the time when I was a freshman and a procedure called for a flash column. Instead of asking someone to teach me about flash chromatography (I thought I should have known what it was), I looked up the original Clark Still paper in JOC. I was actually going to use a balloon until I saw someone else using a nitrogen tank.

Dr. Free-Ride broke down Nature’s article on some recent cases of scientific misconduct. For those interested, her post includes a discussion of the Sames-Sezen case.

Curly Arrow translated some common phrases used in research. It’s not just the English majors who BS their way through writing papers.

That’s all for this month. Great stuff.

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