Recently Th’ Gaussling & family spent some time at a mineral spa in Idaho Springs, CO. Having been to a number of mineral springs in the West, I have some sense of what is reasonable and ordinary. All hot spring operators preach or otherwise encourage the benefits of soaking in a hot mineral bath. Mud treatments and massage are lucrative extras offered by proprietors of mineral springs. Sadly, by constitution Th’ Gaussling is refractory to the mystical enchantments of this hot saline jive (wisdom or weakness?). I really need to see a mechanism.
Hot springs are egalitarian destinations where the young and old, rail-thin and morbidly obese, tatoo’d and blank skinned can comingle in the hydrothermal aqua from the plutonic realm.
This particular hot spring was a hotel-pool establishment that had seen better times, but the proprietors were managing growth by adding cabins and a ribs catering operation. We enjoyed our stay there and will probably return.
My only critical comment is that the water was not particularly loaded with minerals and didn’t favor the bather with even a whiff of sulfur. A hydrothermal pool without the primordial tang of sulfur is but half of the experience.
We visited the Phoenix Mine, which is a shoestring gold mining operation a few miles west of Idaho Springs. If you want to understand Colorado, you have to come to grips with mining. It is one of the two great enthusiasms that lead the settlement wave in Colorado in the mid 1800’s- gold / silver and sanitariums (tuberculosis).
Much of the activity stemming from the gold rush of 1859 occured along what is now the I-70 mountain corridor. The discovery of placer deposits of gold and silver quickly lead to hard rock mining activity in the many canyons connecting with Clear Creek. Placer gold was also found in streams in what is now the Denver Metro area and Cripple Creek.
The recovery of gold from stream sediment (placer gold) is called prospecting. Hacking it out of hardrock is called mining. The recovery of placer gold uses somewhat different technology from hardrock mining. Placer gold is isolated by direct settling of the higher density metal from a slurry of gravel and sand. The prospector uses a pan, sluice, rocker, or trommel. The owner of this particular mine has several miles of stream that you can pan from to get the experience of seeing placer gold first hand. It is hard work and seems to appeal to people who like to gamble.
The tour guide stated that the Phoenix mine operation is centered on a sandstone vein containing 6-15 troy oz of gold per ton (the number varied considerably during the tour so it is hard to tell what it actually is). But what is interesting is that the vein is a sandstone matrix varying from a few inches to 4 ft thick with a large variety of metals- Au, Ag, Cu, Pb, and Zn. Glinting xtal faces could be seen as well as green Cu salts in the “Resurrection” vein. As you walk through the mine it can be seen quite plainly. The miners just follow the vein where ever it goes.
This is a type of mining that targets a highly concentrated vein, so the amount of mass that has to be processed is relatively small as these things go. This is in contrast to very large ore bodies that contain highly dilute levels of gold value. Such operations require large scale equipment for beneficiation and produce vast quantities of tailings. The operators of the Phoenix mine limit their beneficiation to milling and frothing. Concentrates are sent to Canada for the final recovery and refining. The guide was reluctant to say it, but my guess is that they ship out drums of liquid concentrate.
The other great enthusiasm for Colorado in the 19th century was for the convalescence of patients afflicted with consumption, later called tuberculosis. The thin dry air and the sunny climate was thought to be beneficial for consumption patients. Throughout history, hot springs have attracted the afflicted and the infirm. The abundance of hot springs in Colorado attracted spa operators who catered to tourists. The railroad provided the means of transportation for patients to arrive from distant quarters for their convalescence.
Colorado Springs was an early destination for consumption patients as was Glennwood Springs. The ill-tempered old west figure Doc Holliday died from a long bout with consumption and is buried somewhere under a subdivision in Glennwood Springs, his marker sits on a hilltop cemetery above town.
Liquid meets liquid
Cloud of solids swirl at once
Calm filter awaits
—
Mother liquor rests
Budding crystals glint in light
Shame to disturb them
Th’ Gaussling
I suppose there are more than a few out there who are not familiar with REACH. Those of us in the States are a bit confused about the implications on trade and the possibility that the US EPA will attempt to adopt and promulgate the same sort of regulation. REACH has formally begun, as of June 1, 2007.
From the EU Parliament website-
Parliament adopted the compromise it negotiated with Council on the new regulation for chemicals, REACH, which will oblige producers to register all those chemical substances produced or imported above a total quantity of 1 tonne per year. Registration will affect about 30,000 substances. For more hazardous substances, producers will have to submit a substitution plan to replace them with safer alternatives.
When no alternative exists, producers will have to present a research plan aimed at finding one.
Hold the bus!! “Where no alternative exists, producers will have to present a research plan aimed at finding one.” Hopefully, there are provisions for reactive precursors or intermediates.
Reactive chemicals are useful chemicals. Synthesis chemistry is about the management of reactivity. Differential reactivity gives selectivity. Chemical manufacturing is all about selectivity.
What if you need a ton of butyllithium or triphosgene or PCl3? Hopefully there is language that provides for manufacturing non-commodity, specialty chemicals with reagents that are highly reactive.
It will be interesting to watch the unintended consequences pop out of the ground on this program. The business of testing may end up being more profitable than specialty chemical manufacturing. The bedrock of western economics is manufacturing. I hope the EU doesn’t chase away to much of its manufacturing base.
Interesting overlap of events. The current issue of the Atlantic has a rather detailed and unflattering account of the “Rove Presidency”. This morning, Karl Rove announces his resignation, effective at months end. This bombshell was released by the Wall Street Journal.
Given the nature of the characters, it is hard to believe that a hundred articles like the one in The Atlantic would be enough to compell Rove to resign. My guess is that he has been calculating a departure for some time. The endgame of the Bush II presidency is probably not something he wants his name associated with. Rove is all about election “strategery”. Guiding a battered ship to permanent drydock is not his gig. Rove is a builder, not a custodian.
Rove and his sort are like skittish sea otters. You try to swim up to them and they pop below the surface only to come back up in the distance. Rove seems to breath politics. The idea that he is retired from such activity is tough to swallow. Rove is not on-air talent. He is the guy running the editing booth off-stage.
It is interesting to note how certain countries dominate particular parts of the periodic table. South Africa has a large lock on the Platinum Group Metals (PGM’s) and crystalline carbon (diamonds). According to the South African Department of Minerals and Energy, South Africa has 62 % of the worlds supply of PGM’s. The ore bodies are located in the Bushveld complex in the northeastern section of the country.
China finds itself flush with perhaps the largest reserves of rare earths- scandium, yttrium, and the lanthanides. In my travels I see that a good bit of applied research is being done with rare earths in China, some of which is being reported in publications that I only see from a Google search. OK, I don’t have a matrix of data to prove this. But it appears that SciFinder hasn’t covered Chinese research as well as I thought. Not too surprising I suppose, given the language and distance barriers.
It is very clear that China has a thriving, though unruly, rare earth metals industry. The value of this natural resource is not lost on them. They are not content to export tech grade products so that others can squeeze the value added from refinement. They are busy trying to extract that other natural resource- the value of skillful application.
The University of Cambridge has a site with a collection of interesting and possibly even useful Applets for chemical calculations. It has a graphic feature for help in visualizing relationships. Of particular interest is the Rotovap Simulator Applet.
Ruthenium remains at US$490/toz in the EIB.
I suppose most of us have not considered what kind of training patent examiners complete before they are cut loose on our applications. The USPTO provides a lengthy training period for beginning examiners. The program seems to be quite substantial both in terms of knowledge of the MPEP and case law.
For some interesting reading it is worth visiting the blog Patently Academic. This site operated by “Relativity”, which can only be homage to the architect of the Theory of Relativity and former Swiss patent examiner, Albert Einstein.
While tunneling deep through the compacted patent strata, I happened to notice that E. J. Corey’s oxazaborolidine patent appears to be expired. US Patent 4,943,635 (July 24, 1990) was assigned to the President and Fellows of Harvard College and listed Professor Elias J. Corey as inventor. This is a patent with 30 claims, of which 3 are independent claims. All of the claims are for composition of matter.
The description teaches methods of preparation of a variety of oxazaborolidines, with a special emphasis on the preferred embodiment based on proline. The use of the catalyst for asymmetric reductions is taught in the description as well.
Curiously, Corey is the only inventor on the patent. Hmmm. Knowing that he was well into his career by 1988 when the application was filed, I can only guess that he must have been very busy running multiple reactions, doing flash columns, and burning NMR spectra. \;-)
The next oxazaborolidine patent to expire will be the Merck US 5,039,802 (Aug. 13, 1991) patent. This is a process patent claiming a method for the preparation of the diarylproline system using aryl Grignard addition to a pyrrolo[1,2-c]oxazole-1,3-dione.
Incidentally, I did witness a famous professor actually doing bench chemistry. A friend and I were wandering around the chemistry building at her alma mater, (The) Ohio State University, in March of 1993 when we happened past the lab of Mel Newman.
There he was, in his 90’s, intently shaking a 2-liter separatory funnel of some dark hellbroth. He was isolating a polyaromatic hydrocarbon that he made. Newman graciously stopped to talk about his work. Having freshly graduated from a stereochemistry group and a stereochemistry post-doc, I nearly fainted when I met him. It was like meeting Elvis. Newman passed away a few weeks later.
Like everyone else, Th’ Gaussling has been sailing through life, tacking to windward usually, but occasionally a breeze astern will fill my sails and I can unfurl the spinnaker and just enjoy the ride. You know the sensation, one blunders forward smoothly in life only to run aground on an uncharted sand bar. <<< end metaphor>>>
I was met with one of those sandbars recently when my spouse pointed out an observation she had made. She observed that, in conversation,
the more highly educated a person was, the more likely they were to spend their listening time formulating their next sentence, rather than actually … listening.
Jeepers. It is hard to refute that one. After she made the remark, I knew instantly that it was not just a random comment. There I was. Exposed. Metaphysically naked.
What I, Th’ Gaussling, find is that as time goes on, I tend to give answers to questions that I wish were asked, rather than those that were actually asked. It is a poor habit, I’ll admit. But it stems from the notion that the best questions give the best answers. If someone isn’t going to ask the best questions, then by George, I’ll give answers to the better questions.
Lamentations on Chemistry 