Category Archives: Science

Atlas Experiment at CERN

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At the CERN facility in Geneva, Switzerland, a mammoth detector array is being built to detect events resulting from proton-proton collisions.  It is called Atlas.  There is an impressive collection of public outreach web sites to afford some background to the interested viewer.  The Atlas project has produced some swell animation too. 

I think these physicists have done a first-rate job of trying to make their work comprehensible to the public.  I wonder if we chemists have made a comparable effort in our endeavors? But maybe there are not comparable projects in chemistry.  Whereas there are 1800 physicists working on Atlas, where are there comparable numbers working in unison in chemistry?  Answered my own question.

Encounter with Asteroid 2006 VV2

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An asteroid said to be approximately 1 mile in diameter will have a near encounter with the Earth at 11 pm Pacific Daylight time today, Saturday, 31 March.  The rock will pass within 3,900,000 kilometers of our planet.  The asteroid is passing south against the backdrop of the constellation Leo this very moment.  It is predicted to be 10th magnitude and will require a 6 inch telescope or greater to see. Its proximity to a nearly full moon will not help the seeing. This NASA JPL link will allow you to generate an ephemeris.  Spaceweather.com has a stereogram of the object passing the galaxy M81.

For tickets to this momentous event, send $20 cash to Gaussling.google.internet. Operators are standing by.

Katzenklavier

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There are many amazing but obscure characters in history. One of them is the German Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680). Wikipedia has a nice writeup on this guy.  Kircher was one of these intellectually insatiable fellows whose curiosity knew few boundaries.  While chemistry or alchemy was not a mania of his, he did publish works on geology, Egyptology, and music theory. Among many other acomplishments, he was an early proponent of hygienic practices to prevent the spread of infectious disease.

Curiously, Kirchner set forth what must have been an improved version of the Katzenklavier, or a Cat Piano.  This lamentable instrument was described as early as 1549.  Thankfully, he doesn’t appear to have actually built a working model. The cat piano was an apparatus wherein an “octave of cats” were selected by the timbre of their meow. They were thus arranged in a mechanical contrivance that would hammer or pull their tails to elicit a painful, though harmonious, yowl when the “artist” pressed a key. 

Kids, don’t try this at home.  It is an oddment that should remain in the remote past.  Though I am a cat fancier and the thing is obviously cruel, I can’t help but snicker a little at the thought of it. It is just so … Monty Python.

Hu- The Human Element

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We’ve all seen the ad on television with it’s folksy music and mosaic of compelling images while the voice-over waxes philosophic about the “Human Element”. It is a very well done piece of public relations art.  The theme is that the practice of chemistry is ultimately about serving people.  I’m inclined to agree, though the ad does gloss over the imbalance between service to the stakeholders and the shareholders.  But that is the general state of affairs with the whole of the corporate world.  We’re all stakeholders, but only a few are actual shareholders.

Few people outside our field associate chemistry with the term “high technology”.  That is commonly reserved for medicine, electronics, and aerospace.  Just look at any news outlet or magazine. If it ain’t happenin’ in space or in the hospital or it doesn’t involve TV or cell phones, it is too boring for words. 

But in fact, chemistry deserves to be in that elite group as well.  We chemists know that the ballyhoo about advances in medicine typically resolve to advances in the chemical sciences.  It’s the same for electronics and even aerospace because they rely heavily on the material sciences. OK, so our chosen field is not the object of admiration. We’re probably better off for it.

It is an understatement to say that the human element is important.  My observation is that resolving issues with the other elements is almost always easier than issues relating to this one element- Hu.  Using it to titrate buy-in, cooperation, or just help often requires the most subtle interactions and the results can be spectacularly non-linear. 

Sometimes Hu is refractory, other times it is pyrophoric.  It can be most agreeable, or not.  I still do not understand it very well.  But I’ll keep trying. 

Yves Rossy and his flying wing

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So, there is this Swiss fellow named Ives Rossy who has developed a strap-on wing assembly complete with a small turbine engine.  His flight profile goes like this- He launches from a high wing single engine aircraft (a Pilatus) at altitude.  As he drops, he deploys the folded wingtips and achieves a stable glide. I can’t tell from the video, but I suspect that he starts his engine prior to leaving the plane.  Once he has his glide established he throttles up the engine and begins powered flight.  Clearly he is maintaining level powered flight and even appears to climb.  This is no mere glider. He ends his flight at altitude near the intended touchdown point and deploys a paraglider-type chute and lands by parachute. 

This is nothing short of amazing.  There are other video’s showing different flights and a few details of the wing.  As flying folk know, when you go aviatin’ you are actually flying the wing. Passengers may focus on the fuselage, but the pilot is busy up front making sure the airstream is moving over the wing properly. However, the fuselage is not just a cargo space or place to sit and leer at the stewtrons while munching pretzels.  Significantly, it connects the empannage, or tail assembly to the wing. 

The job of the empannage is to hold the vertical and horizontal stabilizers in place.  The horizontal stabilizer and its articulated control surface called the “elevator” is a concession to an unfortunate aspect of wing behavior.  A “normal” wing (i.e., a Clark Y) is just an oddly shaped truss built to develop a pressure imbalance in an airstream.  This imbalance gives rise to lift which counteracts the force of gravity.  But a normal cross section wing will also develop a pitching moment, or the tendency for the trailing edge to pitch upwards and the leading edge pitches downwards about the center of lift.  The job of the horizontal stabilizer downstream of the wing is to counteract this downward pitching moment. 

One of the critical design features of the flying wing was to counteract this downward pitching behavior.  One way to do it is to shape the trailing edge of the wing upwards to cause the airflow to impart some counteracting downward force on the downstream side of the wing.  So, if you look at the details of Rossy’s wing, you’ll see this upward curving lip on the trailing edge.  He is a clever boy.

My hat is off to this guy. Yves, my next glass of Fat Tire is in your honor!

Isotope Mojo Blues

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Near as I can tell, there is some kind of demand in the marketplace for all of the elements from 1 through 92, with the exceptions of Pm, At, and Rn, I suppose. It is hard to gauge the trade in actinides since precious little gets outside the realm of government regulatory frameworks. Clearly there is demand for certain isotopes of Th, U, and Pu.  But the nuclear regulatory people keep a tight reign on that stuff.

I remember a pottery class I took some years back in a nearby town. I was snooping through the pottery stockroom looking for glazes and what did I find? I found a sizeable quantity of Thorium nitrate.  These hapless middle-aged, post-hippy era, meadow muffin starving artisans running the co-op clearly had no idea that they had an actinide a nuclear-age artifact in their midst. Obviously, it had been secured for colored glaze applications.  I warned them about it but was met with the cow-in-the-headlights-look. I call it the “bovine stare”.  So, I brought a GM survey meter the next week and opened up the jar with a few of them standing there. As the clicks ramped up from the beta’s and as I switched the attenuation to keep the needle on scale, I thought I heard the unmistakeable faint slapping sound of multiple sphincters slamming shut.

The first question was “Would I like to have it?”.  Pppffffttttt!  “Hell no!” says I.  Nuclear cooties. Jesus H. Crimony!!  I did a careful survey with the GM counter and found that the surrounding area was clean. The material (early 1960’s vintage by the looks of the label) had hardly been used, so I was confident that contamination was not too bad, if indeed there was any. There may have been alpha emitters but this counter wouldn’t pick them up.  I gave some names of hazardous waste vendors and a stern warning not to drop it or spill it.  That’s the last I heard of it.

I remember a seminar in grad school when a visiting rock star from ETH gave an organic seminar detailing the use of Li-6 in NMR studies.  The fellow lamented in his fastidious German/Swiss accent that it was difficult to get Li-6.  He also said that for a time much of the refined Lithium in the market place was depleted of Li-6.  It would be interesting to hear someone comment on the accuracy of this. 

Purchasing- The Dark Side of Business

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All sales people have to deal with purchasing people in some way or other.  In the B2B chemical business, where you never really meet the ultimate end user, sales people can be found to populate two levels.  Non-technical and technical.  Non-technical sales people are, in my experience, relatively scarce in the chemical field.  Yes, you do find people with degrees in business doing chemical sales, but without any technical savvy they are at a distinct disadvantage.  Most of the people in chemical sales tend to be technical types of one stripe or another- engineers, technicians, or chemists.

What has always struck me about business is the dramatic differences in culture and operating policies between companies in a given market.  Some companies make it nearly impossible for sales people to contact employees and other companies seem indifferent.  I have noticed that pharma companies are particularly stringent about employees meeting with sales people.  Of course, this may just be an artifact of my sampling experience.

There is a reason, of course, for a company to make it difficult for sales people to contact its staff.  They want their purchasing “professionals” to be present and/or in control during such encounters.  This is not unreasonable.  Some large pharma houses for instance have contracted other companies to do their purchasing for them.  This being the case, uncontained or off-line purchasing may be redundant, uneconomical, or a breach of contract. 

But the other reason for discouraging staff from meeting with sales people is this- purchasing people are skilled in the art of procurement.  They are familiar with company policies regarding suppliers and negotiation.  And, not insignificantly, they tend to be a bit more refractory to the enchanting ways of sales folk. 

A well run purchasing department is a type of profit center.  Not only are they required to get the cheapest and most stable supplier, but they are also tasked with extracting other concessions as well. Other concessions may include custom shipping & packaging details; custom specifications; an agreement to maintain inventory; special price/volume arrangements; or long term pricing agreements. A good purchasing manager is worth their weight in gold.  Over their career a good procurement staff can save a company vast sums of money and secure strateginc reserves of raw materials for competitive advantage. 

I joke about purchasing as the “dark side” because a good purchasing person can be a really tough sell.  They make sales people work hard for their money but in the end everyone is better off because it makes businesses more resilient and competitive.  They raise the bar and, painful as it may be, in the end we all benefit from excellence in business.

Whereupon Gaussling spoke in allegory

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After a deep but unrestful slumber, I awoke to find myself in a dark wood. I cannot account for exactly how I came to be in this gloomy place. It is a hard thing to grasp even now.  As I look back to that dark encampment, my heart quickens at the knowledge of what is to follow.  

After many hours of climbing through the dense thicket, I chanced upon a path that lead through the gloom to a valley whose hilltops glistened in the morning sunlight.  As I trod over a small hillock to the opening of the valley, I spotted a jackal some distance ahead in the path before me.  I stopped to rest for a while and ponder the situation. As I rested, the fearful animal disappeared into the tall grass of the glade.  Having lost some of my weariness, I again took to the sinuous path in the direction of the now rising sun.

The day wore on and the shadows retreated to their origin under the noonday sun. I began to notice large, flat field stones along the path.  As I continued my journey, they became greater in number and were festooned with a great many lichen encrusted runes. The stones were partially buried and had evidently been organized at some time in the distant past.  I am familiar with many styles of writing and symbols, but these marks were decidedly odd. Not only were they unfamiliar, but they were chisled by a hand accustomed to a wholly different way of using language.  I found one particularly large stone with a great many markings on it.  As I looked at the marks, I stepped around it to view the runes from different directions, trying to ascertain some form of structure and syntax.

What could these stones represent? After some time, I began to note that certain markings were found elsewhere, though in different combinations. Perhaps through inattention I wandered from the path for some distance into the glade.  Finally, shaken from the enchantment of these stones I tried to regain my bearings. I struck off in the direction of a nearby col in the mountains, hoping to intercept the path by sundown. 

As I broke a trail through the high grass a moving shape caught my attention.  It was on the left side of my view and may have only been a bird taking flight from a shrub. I had nearly forgotten about the curious animal I spotted earlier in the day, so the movement startled me.  Was it a shy visitor or a predator? Trying to take my mind off this unpleasant topic, my mind returned to the runes. What could they be saying?

[With apologies to Dante Alighieri- Th’ Gaussling]

Bloggenvolk Chicago ACS Meeting

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A group photo at the Chicago ACS meeting.  That would be fun and blessedly easy.  If bloggenvolk want to linger and talk, they could do that. (If you haven’t been to the Art Institute, I heartily advise a visit.)  It’ll be Chicago in March, so that means outdoors may be nasty.  We just need someone to shoot the photo and post it somewhere on the web. 

What about monday noon, at the convention center, in the entrance near that rotating product literature carosel they always have? Any takers?? C’mon.  Be a sport! I’ll be wearing a badge that says “Gaussling”. 

Bloggenvolk

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It would could be fun to meet other bloggers at the ACS meeting in Chicago.  Eventually we’re going to have to have some kind of official (ACS sanctioned) function where bloggers can get together at these meetings.  We’re all driven to write about chemistry in one way or other and I’d say, for the most part, we’re all smitten with this science.  Chemistry bloggers are science writers.  We write because we are driven to do it.

It would have to be done in a way that is not threatening to anyone.  Basically we’re all anonymous writers.  I suppose that fact could be viewed as kind of creepy in some way- I don’t want to run into some wacko either.  But wouldn’t it be fun to sit with other bloggenvolk at the convention hall and chat?  I think it could be lots of fun. The pseudonym stuff wears thin. 

Eventually it’ll happen. This mode of communication isn’t going to disappear anytime soon.