Killer Bean is back!

The earlier version totally blew me away (back in college). This is even better.

The World is One's Oyster

Drawing By Edward Monkton

Tales from the Lab III

Someone stuck this bumper sticker to the lab door's window:

Biodiversity is Nature's way of telling us it's OK to be different.

*

My lab has an Aldrich bottle labelled "Synthetic Sea Water". I am more familiar with seeing "Distilled water" or "Deionized water" bottles lying around.

*

A couple of grad students and postdocs in my department and allied ones are starting an "Organic Reaction Mechanisms" club.

Dear colleagues,

In order to keep our synthetic chemistry skills sharp, Dr. X is going to start a mechanism club. The point is to broaden our synthesis knowledge through mechanisms. It will be an informal thing, and we will try to make it fun. If necessary, we may even lure you with beer.

Several of you have already expressed interest, and I would like to invite all of you to join. It seems that Wednesday evening would be a good day/time, but I encourage input from all of you. Please let me know if you are interested, and if Wed. evening would work for you (of course I'm not talking about tomorrow). I know that there are people that I forgot to include, so feel free to tell your coworkers.

Thanks,

Imagine that. A group of students and postdocs starting a club that attempts to make understanding reaction mechanisms fun. Talk about having geeky fun.

Woohooo!

Presidential namesake

One of the new grad students in my current group has the same last name as a former US president (from the 20th century, now deceased), although I am not sure if they are related. There might be a chance though, given that she attended the same highly selective university (for undergrad) as him, hailed from the same state, and that the surname is quite rare in this country.

No Secret Service agents hanging around though, and I doubt federal protection will cover the great-grandchildren.

Hmm...I will ask soon, once I get an opportunity to do so.

Edit (9.30pm): Turns out she is not.

More Tales from the Lab

Over the Halloween weekend:

A friend was running this life/death assay on (some mammalian) cells. Cells which are dead will stain red; live ones will stain green. Then what she got was two sets of cells - one group staining both red and green, and the other doesn't stain at all.

We called the first set the living dead, and the second the ghosts.

Later she found out that she didn't add enough of the fluorescent dye.

Diet Coke and Mentos: Soda-Candy Explosions

Tonya Coffey and her students reported "an experimental study of the Diet Coke and Mentos reaction (made famous in a 2006 Mythbusters episode), and consider(ed) many aspects of the reaction, including the ingredients in the candy and soda, the roughness of the candy, the temperature of the soda, and the duration of the reaction." (Am. J. Phys., 2008, 76(6), 551 - 557)

Basically,

1. The Mythbusters correctly identified potassium benzoate and aspartame as key ingredients in the Diet Coke–Mentos reaction. (Static water) Contact angle measurements were used to show that these ingredients reduce the work required for bubble formation, allowing carbon dioxide to rapidly escape from the soda. The small amount of caffeine in Diet Coke is unlikely to contribute significantly to the reaction.

2. The Mythbusters also correctly identified the roughness of the samples as one of the main causes of the reaction. The importance of sample roughness was shown by comparing SEM and AFM images of the samples to the explosive power of the reaction. Increased surface roughness implies a higher surface area to volume ratio, meaning that more growth sites should be present on per unit volume.

3. Samples which encounter less viscous drag and hence fall more quickly through the soda will cause a more explosive reaction. Also, for the same amount of mass lost, the eruption will be more dramatic when the reaction takes place over a shorter time.

4. Finally, hotter beverages result in a more explosive reaction. (A direct illustration of Henry's law and Le Chatelier's Principle)

The kinds of things researchers do...like popping candy into sodas and watching them fizzle and frazzle.

The Science Comedian - Brian Malow

This guy rocks! Three of his classic jokes:

a. Some helium gas drifts into a bar. The bartender says, 'We don't serve noble gases here.' Pause. The helium doesn't react.

b. Says the bartender to a superconductor that walks in: 'We don't serve superconductors here.' The superconductor then leaves the bar, putting up no resistance.

c. Women have passed through my life like exotic particles through a cloud chamber, leaving only vapor trails for me to study for clues to their nature.

There's more in youtube where you can watch his performances.



*

Unrelated: Chemical Party by EU. (via lancerlord)

My Intelligences

The Rogers Indicator of Multiple Intelligences created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as Logical/Mathematical You like to work with numbers and ask questions. You learn best by classifying information, engaging in abstract thinking and looking for common basic principles. People like you include mathematicians, biologists, medical technicians, geologists, engineers, physicists, researchers and other scientists. Logical/Mathematical 93% Verbal/Linguistic 82% Visual/Spatial 71% Intrapersonal 64% Bodily/Kinesthetic 54% Interpersonal 43% Musical/Rhythmic 21%

This is like so...duh.

Another geeky moment

Over the weekend, we were in a car driving towards our St. Patrick's Day destination. A fellow passenger (AP) was describing her recipe for baking chocolate muffins. I asked her about the type of chocolate that she used.

AP: No, it's not chocolate powder. It's like those you see coated on donuts in Singapore.
tk: Oh, you meant like nano-rods.
AP: OMG, you are so geeky! It's called chocolate rice, duh.

I am (still) amazed by my descriptions.


TEM image of gold nanorods, aka my description for chocolate rice

The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test

My results and the website's comments (not surprising):

Your Score: Pure Nerd

78 % Nerd, 43% Geek, 43% Dork

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.

The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.

Congratulations!

A pity really. I prefer to give my next SO this T-shirt for her birthday. Ha!



*

The Ultimate Nerd



“It’s le-vi-O-sa, not le-vi-o-SA.”

*I spent 8 hours two Saturdays ago reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from start-to-finish. On Halloween, I wanted to dress up like Harry, and ended up exchanging charms, jinxes, curses and hexes with my co-worker, who is also a HP fan.

I was labelled a nerd....:(

Friends from the company came over to my place for dinner and (board) games last night. We played 'Taboo' and 'Cranium'.

Taboo:

When it was my turn, one of the words I picked was 'saddle'. I couldn't say 'horse' or 'riding', and so I tried to lead my group by saying..."When you have y = x^3, what is the point at (0,0) called? Or the valley between two peaks in a 3D plot?"

They looked at me blankly. Then the time was up.

"It's a saddle point!"

"OMG, you are such a nerd!"

This came from a group of fellow engineers. Everyone started laughing.

---

Cranium:

My group rolled 'red', aka 'data head/fun facts'. The question was "So what two countries fought the War of 1812?"

Me: "US and UK."

"Do you memorize history books or something?"

Another question: "Which country is Timbuktu located in?"

Me: "Mali"

"Do you memorize the World Map?"

I suck big time for "Star Performer" though. I can't act, and I can't sing.

---

tk:
So what did you think of my responses to the games? Good right? I wonder why the others looked at me like I was nuts

S says:
yah..it's good..but usually people don't think like that.

S says:
hehe..I know! Go read this book "the know-it-all"

tk says:
and what about it?

S says:
the author attempted to read the entire encyclopedia britannica

tk says:
lol

S says:
yah. Then you'll know why explaining facts like this is unorthodox

tk says:
tsk...!