Category Archives: Science Education

Eat Venter’s Dust

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I gave a talk in a morning I&EC session last thursday at the Denver ACS National meeting. During an interlude provided by a no-show speaker, a member of the audience began to quiz down a hapless speaker who earlier presented on the filtration of plasmids. The gentleman’s concern was this- We are continuing to develop conventional processing technology while fellows like Craig Venter are devising step-change techniques for genomic analysis and synthesis. People like Venter have their names mentioned in the same sentence with “synthetic biology”.  Why do we bother with the more primitive methods of research when the real action is with folks like Venter?

The inquisitive fellow was asking a rhetorical question to all of us. But the point he skipped over was the matter of intellectual property. He kept asking why don’t “we” just switch the paradigm right now and use such technology? Why continue with highly manual R&D?  The problem with his question was in the assumption that Venter’s technology was something that “WE” have access to. Venter’s technology does not automatically translate into a community tool. It is more like an item of commerce. In reality, this will likely represent a major uptick in productivity to the financial benefit of the intellectual property owners and licensees and their stockholders.

How the scientific workforce will fare is a different matter. Increased productivity usually means reduced labor per unit of output. I suspect that Venter’s technology represents a higher entry barrier to those who want to be in the market.  It may be that the outcome will be a broader range of diagnostic and treatment services available to a shrinking pool of insured people able to afford it.

Is this as good as it gets?

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I’ve had this notion (a conceit, really) that as someone from industry, I should reach out to my colleagues in academia in order to bring some awareness of how chemistry is conducted out in the world.  After many, many conversations, an accumulating pile of work in ACS activities, and a few visits to schools, what I’ve found is not what I expected. I expected a bit more curiosity about how commerce works and perhaps what life is like in a chemical plant. I really thought that my academic associates might be intrigued by the wonders of the global chemical manufacturing complex and product process development.

What I’m finding is more along the lines of polite disinterest. I’ve sensed this all along, but I’d been trying to sustain the hope that if only I could use the right words, I might elicit some interest in how manufacturing works; that I could strike some kind of spark.  But what I’ve found is just how insular the magisterium of academia really is. The walls of the fortress are very thick. We have our curricula firmly in place on the three pillars of chemstry- theory, synthesis, and analysis. In truth, textbooks often set the structure of courses.  A four year ACS certified curriculum cannot spare any room for alternative models like applied science. I certainly cannot begrudge folks for structuring around that reality.

It could easily be argued that the other magisteria of industry and government are the same way.  Well, except for one niggling detail. Academia supplies educated people to the other great domains comprising society.  We seem to be left with the standard academic image of what a chemical scientist should look like going deeply into the next 50 years. Professors are scholars and they produce what they best understand- more scholars in their own image.  This is only natural. I’ve done a bit of it myself.

Here is my sweeping claim (imagine the air overhead roiled with waving hands)-  on a numbers basis, most chemists aren’t that interested in synthesis as they come out of a BA/BS program. That is my conclusion based on interviewing fresh graduates. I’ve interviewed BA/BS chemists who have had undergraduate research experience in nanomaterials and AFM, but could not draw a reaction showing the formation of ethyl acetate.  As a former organic prof, I find that particularly alarming. This is one of the main keepsakes from a year of sophomore organic chemistry.  The good news is that the errant graduate can usually be coached into remembering the chemistry.

To a large extent, industry is concerned with making stuff.  So perhaps it is only natural that most academic chemists (in my sample set) aren’t that keen on anything greater than a superficial view of the manufacturing world. I understand this and acknowledge reality. But it is a shame that institutional inertia is so large in magnitude in this and all endeavors.  Chemical industry really needs young innovators who are willing to start up manufacturing in North America. We could screen such folks and steer them to MIT, but that is lame. Why let MIT have all the fun and the royalties?  We need startups with cutting edge technology, but we also need companies who are able to make fine chemical items of commerce. Have you tried to find a brominator in the USA lately?

The gap between academia and industry is mainly cultural. But it is a big gap, it may not be surmountable, and I’m not sure that the parties want to mix. I’ll keep trying.

In praise of polyolefins

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Being a person nestled in the dark and humid recesses of industry, I find myself boggling at certain things out in the bright and sunny world.  Truly, it boggles my mind how little appreciation people have for polyolefin resins. That is to say, polyethylene, polypropylene and all the myriad copolymers and formulations found thereto.  Ok, let’s throw PVC and polystyrene in the mix as well.

Why do I boggle at this? What makes my head spin in puzzlement? I’m so glad someone asked.  Polyolefin films look innocent enough to be ignored. In their uncompounded state they are clear and colorless or they may be white.  Polyolefin films and extruded components are ubiquitous in packaging and thus are not normally an object of desire. They serve the object of desire. They occupy a lesser state interest in nearly all contexts.   They are made inexpensively enough to be torn asunder from the desired object and tossed wantonly to the side for later clean up.

But if the uneducated user of polyolefins only knew the extent to which modern science and engineering had been carefully applied to the lowly stretch wrap or the roll of 1 mil PE film. If they only knew the scientists and engineers who carefully devised the ethylene crackers to produce high purity ethylene, or if they knew the highly educated people who devise the polymerization process, they might have heard an account of the long march to produce water white films with properties matched to the end use.

Puncture resistance, elongation, fish-eyes, haze, modulus, crystallinity, glass transition temperatures, melt points, low volatiles, melt viscosity and strength- all attributes carefully tended to so that the film appears invisible to the consumer. High gloss, low haze films to make the product look even better.  Low volatiles and residues for food contact use.  Polyolefins engineered for specific densities for the global market.

All of the attributes above to attend to with a continuous polymerization loop that spews 50,000 to 80,000 lbs per hour of pellets into silos and rail cars. Pellets that will eventually go to converters who will blow films and extrude widgets all day long.  All so the consumer product can arrive at its destination wrapped unscuffed and free of dust.

Polyolefin materials are incredibly useful and amazing in their own right. We should have more appreciation for these materials and how they serve our needs.

Needlessly invoking clathrates. BP’s underwater ice machine.

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In the news reporting on the BP oil spill, there is talk of methane/water forming a special ice composition that defeated the previous attempt to channel oil to the surface.  I think folks are referring to clathrate formation. This ice blocked the flow of petroleum from the concrete structure that was lowered over the well head.

But, here is the deal. Wouldn’t you expect cooling of a compressed gas as it exits the well pipe and into the sea water? Isn’t this just an example of the Joule-Thompson effect?  As the natural gas component of the petroleum discharge exits the pipe, it is going to expand somewhat, even at a one mile depth, and cool the surrounding water. If this occurs in unconfined, open water, the jet of petroleum will entrain water in the flow and be warmed by the continuous flow of heat from the water.

But, if the gas/oil mixture of petroleum is ejected in a confined space that interferes with heat transfer, then one would expect the expansion cooling of the gas phase to predominate and cool the water in the confining space, possibly to the freezing point. Clathrates may be formed, but the simplest explanation is from good old thermodynamics.

Chemistry Field Trip!

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So I decided to kick up my interest in the local metalliferous deposits and get more folks involved. As a member of the executive cmte of the ACS local section I’ve organized a seminar at a local university and arranged to have the lead exploration geologist from CC&V come to talk about the their gold mine in Cripple Creek.

The seminar is thursday night. Friday morning a few of us will board a van and drive the 5 h round trip to visit the open pit operation. We’ll stop at the nearby Molly Kathleen mine as well. I’m hoping we’ll be 1000 ft down the hole when the mine next door begins blasting. That’s an unforgettable experience.

Enthusiasm is contagious.  Especially with regard to gold colored precious metals. Unfortunately, bench chemists have few opportunities to take field trips. So the thinking here is that we’ll find a way to get members out and about to look at heavy industry. And gold mining is definitely a chemically related industry. Email blast notifications to rouse attendance are surprisingly ineffective- 1 or 2 % response at most. It is hard to get folks to participate in local section activities because everyone has a life.

The next day I’ll be on a field trip with geologists to visit various sites showing ductile and brittle deformation as well as hydrothermal alteration of formations in the central front range. I’ll be a chemical science interloper, as usual. The key to many of the metalliferous features in the world is hydrothermal transport. Shallow magma intrusions energize a kind of heat engine that pumps water through metal-bearing rock and transports hot, pressurized mineral laden fluids through a large and cooler network of fissures and faults where minerals precipitate according to their solubility.  Hydrothermal alteration is an important feature to look for when prospecting for metals.

8th Grade Science as a Path to Madness

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So it happens that my kid is in 8th grade and is studying chemistry for the first time in earnest. As luck would have it, the kid’s teacher is of Haitian extraction and is on some kind of leave of absence either due to illness or possibly because 3 family members perished in the quake. I don’t know. This fellow seems to be a good teacher.

His replacement, however, is not very good. In fact, his replacement is … awful.

For the first time, I had a serious discussion with a principal about a teacher’s performance. The principal is apparently aware of the substitutes classroom foibles and sins of omission. The principal’s own son is a student in that class and so he has a personal interest in the matter.

So, after some time with the kid at the whiteboard in our basement last night, it dawned on me that I had completely forgotten how utterly strange atomic theory and the chemical phenomena that derive from it really are. It is all quite abstract and maybe even a little weird.

The curriculum gives some emphasis to understanding the concept of pH. Alright. But this requires some ideas about logarithms and exponents. Then there is the matter of chemical equilibrium. While kids are wrestling with the math, you are also trying to tell them that only a very small number of water molecules actually come apart into ions. But the kids need to be comfortable with the notion of ions and charge.

But, what makes hydrogen ion different from hydroxide ion, really?  And why does hydroxide ion have the negative charge? How is it that acids corrode iron to form H2, but hydroxide does not? What does it mean to be an acid? What does it mean to be a base?

You can try to use structural models of sulfuric acid rather than line formulae like H2SO4 to appeal to the idea that these are little things with attachments that do things. One could argue that it is a bit more concrete that way- little structures with parts that are detachable. But as soon as you start drawing structures, you run into a rats nest of intermeshed concepts relating to bonds and lone pairs. Then there is the bloody octet rule, covalency, and orbitals!!!

For crying out loud!! How does anybody learn this stuff?? The learner has to absorb 20 abstract concepts almost simultaneously to begin to “get” chemistry.  Even worse, if a chemist/parent teaches the kid about a concept, almost certainly it will not mesh with curriculum, leading to confusion and tears for the teacher and the student.

I taught orgo to college sophomores, but evidently 8th grade chemistry eludes me. I’m just too dense to grasp the level of abstraction they will accept. Oh!  To have an hour with Piaget!

Mole Day Thoughts on Lab Life

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I have come to the realization that, after a career of avoiding it, I really dig physical organic chemistry. While I do have the synthetikkers love for developing a synthesis, I really enjoy taking the rare opportunity to do a focused study on a single transformation or compound.  It is a stylized form of play that any developmental psychologist would recognize. Discovery is about learning, just like play, and many of the exploratory behaviors observed in play apply just as well to discovery (well, except for hitting and crying).

One way a scientist learns is by doing a search for boundary conditions. Where or how in parameter space does a thing change? What is the best solvent for the desired outcome? What effect does stoichiometry have? Does dry, inert atmosphere really make a difference? What are the best leaving groups? Yes, it’s just research. But there is more.

In order to claim that you have expertise with a substance or process, you must have an understanding of how a process or substance behaves under a variety of conditions. If faced with a product that is off spec and the prospect of having to rework or remake, it is very helpful to understand what conditions lead to the off-normal outcome. Either the chemist sleuths each upset for a cause, or the chemist goes in the lab and purposely exposes the process to off-normal parameters and analyzes the outcome, or both. After a while, patterns begin to arise and trends become apparent. This is play.

Seems bloody obvious. But in a production environment the opportunity to explore  parameter space is often not possible. Favor almost always finds the more practical, though short term, fixes. Production managers are not always chosen for their focus on the long term. They are short term oriented- a necessary predilection for timely delivery of product on a tight timeline.

Part of a good process development program is a study of how the process behaves in various upset conditions. This is important for understanding the thermal safety issues, but it also is a good time to take snapshots of how the composition of the process system behaves when it is out of whack.  A reaction profile under conditions of reagent mischarges or off-temperature can give many clues as to the operating window of the process. It can also tell you something about the best way to do an in-process check and define flags for particular types of upsets.

Many companies do this, but a good many find a way to gloss over such work.

Research and Playfulness

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As a kid I noticed that many cats seemed to lose their playfulness as they matured. What were once playful kittens would mature into rather less playful adult animals with irritability issues. Many humans I know seem to have “matured” away from a general disposition to playfulness in a similar way. It is a shame. Playfulness is an important expression of brain vitality.

Play can be manifested in many ways. One form is where one teases out a response from a stimulus. It can be done for simple joy, as in the case of teasing your sister. Or it can be directed to somewhat more useful and enduring outcomes as in the case of research.

As I look back on my meager list of useful developments in the laboratory, I can see that most were the result of play. I was just curious as to a particular outcome. If I had simply paid more attention to my boss and focused on getting expected results (a production activity), it is unlikely that I would have fallen into some interesting and useful insights. No doubt almost every scientist can make the same claim.

On the other hand, if I had paid more attention to my boss, perhaps I’d be  a tenured prof at a decent university or a mid-career manager at Pfizer. Hmmm.

What happens to many people when they age is the same thing that happens to cats. They settle into comfortable patterns and try to exclude surprises from their lives. Just like it takes discipline to get regular exercise, it also takes some discipline to keep imagination and playfulness a central part of your consciousness.  Go out there and try something that has been on your mind all these many months! See if it works.

Bronx Cheer for National Geographic

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After supper last night I parked in front of the tubule and switched on the Discovery Channel. There was an intriguing program on the Cueva de los Cristales (Cave of Crystals) in Mexico. The Naica mine has become famous for its gigantic selenite crystals (calcium sulfate). National Geographic filmed a program on these wondrous crystals and it has been broadcast on the Discovery Channel.

What has raised my ire on this is not the production value. As usual, the cimematography was superb. What is disappointing is the story they chose to tell.

What I have noticed in the public science programming world is a particular weakness that quietly infects writers, directors, and producers. The weakness has to do with the fear of boring their audience. Rather than risk a pandemic of somnolence, writers kick up the script a notch with undercurrents of intrigue and a suggestion of danger for the intrepid parties crawling in the muck or harassing gators.

That’s fine. It never hurts to plan for short attention spans in the audience. But what suffers is a sense of proportion. When the focus shifts from the subject of the expedition to the members of the expedition, the program crosses the line into the tawdry world of show business.

Yes, it is quite hot in the cave. Yes, heatstroke is an issue to be wary of. But, what about the crystals?? What are they made of? Where is the water from which they were precipitated from? How does crystallization work?

And, where is the chemist on the team? National Geographic brought together a geologist, a planetary astronomer, a nuclear physicist, a biologist, and a few others who were not identified. This is a common omission on the part of people outside of the chemical sciences. Nobody knows what the hell we do!

For the showbiz effect, they brought in a planetary astronomer, Dr. Chris McKay, to examine the cave for possible implications on Martian exploration and the Evolution of Life. To media people, science equals- 1) Space Science, 2) Medicine, 3) Computer Science, and 4) oh, did I say Space Science?

It turns out I used to know Chris McKay. He was a TA in an astronomy course I took at the University of Colorado ca 1978. He was a geat guy and, unlike other misfits misanthropes bed wetters grad students in the astro/geophysics program, an attentive and caring instructor. He was (and is) a true believer in space exploration. We spent a long and chilly evening together in the Sommers Bosch Observtory at CU manually guiding the 24 inch telescope on a guide star for some lengthy time exposures of a string of galaxies. We used 3×5 Tri-X plates hypered in H2.

This showbiz reflex is a chronic condition and I am sorry to see National Geographic succumb to it.

Siccus Silicis. Oh yonder dessicated moon! Why dust thou taunt me?

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Big discovery. A few doors down at The Universe Today there is a report of findings showing that the moon is quite dry. This result is from an interpretation of radar soundings taken by the Japanese lunar probe SELENE.

Given the near proximity of the sun, and lack of any atmosphere, it would be astonishing that any water would be found on the moon, at least in the top few meters. Perhaps there are mineral hydrates in the regolith, but discrete surface water as ice or liquid in the shadows seems a bit of a stretch. Supposedly a trace of water was found by others near the polar regions where the sun angle is always low. 

Comets famously de-gas when they come near the sun. Maybe the moon was blowing a vapor trail too- 3 or 4 billion years ago.

The SELENE radar soundings were used to infer the presence of aqueous reservoirs well below the surface. The results failed to give any evidence of such bodies of water. Given the tumultuous history of the moon, as evidenced by the lava plains and impact activity it has experienced, there has been lots of opportunity for water to sublimate or cook off through fractures in the regolith in the past.

I like and appreciate the Universe Today site. But if I could offer some constructive criticism, they could do with more links to primary references rather than just recursive links to previous Universe Today articles. Actually, more than a few news sites do this.

On a side note, it is worth browsing the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) website to get a feel for the depth of their program.