Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.   More posting tomorrow.

SWRM highlights.

I promised updates about the Southwest Regional ACS meeting.   I unfortunately missed a lot of sessions that I wish I could have made it to, due to being lost, and a resume review session, but I did get to see some.
My favorite research by far was looking at air mixing by radioactive isotopes, coming out of Arkansas.   They found troposphere and stratosphere mixing, and looked at things like time to see results from Fukishima.  Interesting stuff.   Also, some good green chemistry overview, but much of it seemed like just that-an overview, not new knowledge.   An interesting model of toxicity studies-preliminary at any rate-to be done on the computer.  
I did a lot of career events, because in part I was there looking for a job.  I heard excellent panelists talk about things that you can do with a chemistry degree other than labwork, which I'm looking hard at right now.  And about people's individual stories.   I heard about being the only woman at a water treatment plant.   I still hope to hang out with that speaker-she sounded very interesting.
I love getting to hang out in Austin, especially now, because I love warm weather.  It's cold outside.  

The Austin SWRM for the ACS

I am still here.  I didn't get anything up yesterday, because I was at this regional ACS meeting.   I will be here through the end of the week.   There will be posts about this, because I have already heard many interesting things, but I'd rather be listening than writing.   So until then, have fun listening to chemistry songs from the last post.   Or share some of your favorite chemistry jokes.  

Because everyone deserves chemistry fun

Okay, I enjoy fighting zombies as much as the next young person apparently does.   And I enjoy chemistry.   So what could possibly be better than an online game that combines the two?   Well, okay, there are things.   But this looks pretty fun.   zombie fighter.    It's all organic chemistry, which I'm more inclined to forget than just about anything else, because I haven't had to use it.   So play games!
Also, a comic just to add to the "older nerdy teacher" jokes that I love, even if I rarely use, like the Ferrous wheel.
H2O?

And songs.  chemistry songs
Enjoy!

Being a chemist without someone else's lab

People used to do this all the time. The chemist who had their home laboratories, and made discoveries in their spare time. Is that still possible today? I have to admit, I can't try much, because my husband and I rent, and I don't want to make permanent changes to the house, and am pretty risk adverse when dealing with someone else's property. But I try to collect resources, to make myself feel connected to chemistry, and that I am still doing productive things. I am still in the process of working on cosmetics, which, at least at the level I'm doing, are pretty low risk. I'm also looking at things/ways online to get chemicals/resources. I found a decent thread on about.com here . I wrote earlier about free full pdf resources. I can sometimes get friends still associated with schools to look up papers for me, particularly if I have a quick reference. Have I missed anything? What are other suggestions?

short new cool thing.

Three new elements named by IUPAC. I love this stuff. Check it out.  NY times link

Edited to add the link.

Now what?

So, I worked through much of my backlog. I am sure you're all blown over by the amount of posting that has happened in the last few days. Now what am I going to write about, you ask? well, I have a couple of plans coming up 1. A new book-The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements by Sam Kean. Has anyone read this? 2. a big new ACS meeting-the Southwest Regional meeting. I'm looking at relocating down here and looking to make contacts. If you're around here, say hi. 3. Then, later, a local section ACS meeting. At the Science Museum of Minnesota, which is a wonderful place. I'm excited.

Another meeting. Minnesota Chromatography Forum

On October 19th, I attended the meeting of the Minnesota Chromatography Forum(MCF). I had heard of this group-I know the secretary, and a past secretary-but never made it before. Part of why I felt I had to quit doing roller derby was not having time to do this sort of networking much. Which was fine, until I got laid off. The meeting schedule is still available online. Dr. Stevens was a very dynamic and interesting speaker, and I always like learning new widely applicable techniques. QuEChERS, Quick, Easy, Cheap, Effective, Rugged and Safe methodology does sound like a very widely applicable dream come true for a lot of industrial scientists. I won't go into the details of the chemistry here as I didn't get a chance to ask exactly what I can and can't put out in public. The method is relatively new-this millenium-but seemed to be very widely applicable, and very accurate. You can use a variety of types of analysis, mostly GC, LC or mass spec. There were some different formulations for different specific instrumental or sample conditions. The environmentalist in me always gets a little nervous when I see packs recommended with disposable reactionware, but I know that is an easy way to make things cleaner and to have less variation in cleanup and sample prep, so I can see why that was done. I have to admit, overall, I felt a little like I had come for a talk, and gotten a commercial, in a way that I usually don't even at other mostly industrial meetings, like the Society for Cosmetic Chemists. I am still very interested in the MCF though, and looking forward to taking a class from them in early December about HPLC.

American Chemical Society meeting

On October 11th I attended the Minnesota Local Section meeting of the American Chemical Society at Normandale College. The speaker was Dr. Sumita Mitra speaking about "The Essential Habits of Effective Innovators". I promised her I wouldn't put the list online, so everyone should get her to come and speak with you. She worked for 3M for 35 years, and has since formed a consulting business. I very much enjoyed her talk, even if I was less able to put a lot of it into practice right now. Much of my work wasn't synthetic, so there are some differences of focus as well. The link to the description still works . I felt that many of her points involved approaching research in a slightly more systematic way, with the idea that effective means getting what you wanted. So she seemed not to encourage the "happy accident" mode of discovery. I would suspect this is important in larger corporate settings like 3M, where meeting targets is important and can't wait for a happy accident. I very much embrace a lot of her organization ideas. Unfortunately, this will have to be a short overview, to make sure I'm not stepping on any toes. I always love attending these meetings and hearing what other people have done with chemistry.

Starting up the backlog

It has been a while since I published much here. A variety of job searching issues have come up. However, I do have a slight backlog of posts, so I will be a bit more prolific the next few days. Starting with the book I was reading. Very slowly. I was reading The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager. Here is a link to the book on Amazon if you're curious. The book is supposed to be the story of the discovery and use of the Haber-Bosch process for making ammonia. I have used this example in class many times to talk about why catalysts are useful and important. And to explain Lechatlier's principle. It's a good example. The process is also, frankly, hugely important in terms of feeding the world's population. As we recently passed 7 billion in population, feeding everyone requires finding ways to stretch our natural resources. I loved the historical bits and story. I find it sad to really get inside Fritz Haber's head, and imagine the disappointment he must have felt at the constant barriers of racism towards being a real German, before and after Nazi's came to power. I still want to know why historians don't consider his second wife a reliable source. I also hadn't realized how much of a story of the development of chemical engineering this book would be. So much had to be made from scratch for this process to work on the scale it needed to. That was an incredible achievement. What I didn't think this book would teach is much chemistry. That wasn't the point; I'm aware. The goal is history, not chemistry. And we can find descriptions of the chemistry elsewhere. But I felt that it was a bit of a lack, somehow.