The Happiness Project

There is a New York Times bestselling book titled The Happiness Project. My mother sent it to me and I am really, really hooked on what this lady had to say.

I haven't read very much of it yet but what I have read intrigues me. Her most important piece of advice is "Be Gretchen." (Her name is Gretchen.) Her need for legitimacy led her to attend law school and clerk for Sandra Day O'Connor. During this clerkship she realized that her fellow classmates read law articles in their spare time and loved it. She spent the required time needed to finish the clerkship but found herself doing other things in her spare time. She took one other law position after that but realized what she really wanted to do was be a writer. She is fulfilling the goal of "Be Gretchen" by being a writer- and this is part of happiness. But- part of happiness is also having enough money to pay the bills and support a family.

This lady speaks to me on a very deep level. I can relate with the need to feel legitimate. Its a bit like JK Rowling (Harry Potter) being told by her father to pick a practical major in college- not writing. She needed that practical major after college too. Her deadbeat, drunken husband was not able to support her and her baby before the Harry Potter books were sold. She was forced to take a teaching position at a high school to pay the bills. I think all writers can relate to the advice that some other educational background/experience is necessary for that person to have something to fall back on. Writers, musicians, all entertainers need to have day jobs. If JK Rowling had solely lived by the philosophy to "Be Joanna" she would have been starving in the streets with her infant and Harry Potter might never have been sold to a publisher. The "Be Myself" rule can only be taken so far in life for true happiness to be achieved.

It's like walking a balance beams or tight rope. You walk the tight rope that feeds your inner desires and passions only to realize your basic need for food and shelter may not be met. So you hop over to the tight rope of the practical to select a very marketable, practical line of work that pays the bills. This tight rope presents its own challenges which often lead to the same feeling of a satiation of passion and fulfillment. I think it just takes longer to find fulfillment in a job that is practical- you need to practice it long enough to appreciate the mastery of something that is really useful in the world.

It is incredibly satisfying to help chemistry students master the trade. I've received emails from students profusely thanking me for my services. Apparently I helped them learn the material and motivated them to continue in their careers. This is incredibly rewarding. Do I get the passion rush of mastering a classical piano piece and performing it with all the emotion my soul can muster? No, but it is a different kind of reward.

What can I say? We can't all be the Meryl Streep of our trade. I knew a star student of the musical/drama/theater department at Northwestern University my freshman year. From recent surfing on the web it seems her show was cancelled in Chicago and I can't find much on the Internet about her recent performances. Even someone as talented as she was is struggling right now in this difficult economy.

I've digressed from the original topic of the Happiness Project. The author spends a year of her life focusing on improving her life to become happier. She works on all aspects of her life: relationships (marriage), career, friendships, health and hobbies (to name a few). Her main question to herself is this: What is it in life that makes me happy and how do I bring more of it into my daily life?

I want to ask myself this question over the coming year. What is it that makes me happy? How can I find more of that in my day to day life. Interestingly, one of Gretchen's pieces of advice is to start a blog- which I have done here. A blog is a way to measure progress on small goals and mark that progress in writing.

One of the parts of an online blog that is really positive is the accountability I get from readers. I know there are people out there who will measure my progress by reading this blog. One of the drawbacks in the lack of privacy in a public blog.

I know writing makes me happy. I plan to add many entries to this blog over the coming months and comment on my happiness. Could I take steps to be happier?

"Food is meant to be shared, especially with friends like you."

This is a quotation from Emeril on Emeril's Table. Cooking is an art meant to be shared in groups. Friends, family and even people you barely know all benefit from improving this skill.

Seeing the glass as half full, not half empty

I was just reading about Victoria Beckham's life. She is a 37-year-old mom of four who is also a very successful model, dress designer and fashion enthusiast. The article basically stated that she admitted to being very, very tired. She is up in the night with her 7-month old baby Harper as well as up in the night to take international calls about her fashion line. She stated she is very happy with her life despite her exhaustion.

I can relate with her. It is incredibly rewarding to feel like you are part of the world; and a big part of the world is the work world. For her, it is worth the exhaustion that she feels to have all of those rewarding parts of her life fit together.

I first took note of Victoria Beckham when she was pictured as a guest at William and Kate's wedding last April. I had heard of her before but not really noticed her until I realized her baby was due within days of mine. (In fact, I think we had the same due date.) As the wife of soccer-great David Beckham, she lacks no spotlight and could very easily get by without any career at all- I'm sure David brings in a hefty check to support their four kids. But no, she has decided to make way in the world on her own. She has her own career, her own income and her own claim to fame. And for that I give her applause. She is living all aspects of her life to the fullest and, despite her exhaustion, is feeling very rewarded.

I am struggling with my own lot in life at the moment. I have chosen a home life for the first year of my baby's life. I say "chosen" because it was a decision that made sense when I got pregnant. It was more of a sequence of events that led my income to be eclipsed by my husband's. If anyone's income weren't to be missed it would be mine. So it made sense for me to forego a few career committments to take time for our baby. And I'm not sorry. But I do have pangs of longing when I see articles like the one about Victoria Beckham. There are women out there who do it all. And it is very rewarding. Perhaps next fall I'll get a chance to rejoin them in the workplace.

sprucing up the easiest meal

The crock pot is the greatest invention. Throw in a pot roast or a whole chicken with a little water or broth, add some vegetables and you have a complete meal with very little effort. It is this type of cooking that made me interested in doing more with it. I now want flavor AND convenience in one.

Lucinda Scala Quinn (Mad Hungry) has provided me with solutions. For example, marinade your pot roast in soy sauce with a bit of ginger (1 hour minimum), sear it with a skillet and then add it to the crock pot with a can of beer. It is full of flavor, DELICIOUS! This really isn't much more effort than just putting it straight into the crock pot without the first two steps.

A bit more effort is required for her whole chicken recipe. She dressed it in a herb/butter sauce by smothering it under the skin and then tucking lemons in the inside, under the wings and in other crooks/cranies around the chicken. She also placed whole garlic cloves in the interior.

Cooking seems to be a skill learned in phases. I'm now in the phase where the simple/easy recipes bore me. I need more flavor and more sophistication.

Cooking

My favorite activity while I'm home is watching Lucinda Scala Quinn on Mad Hungry. I'm sitting here watching her make minestrone soup right now. Her theme is "Bring back the family meal." I can't tell you how much she has improved the family meals at our house! The quality is not the only thing that has improved: she has enhanced my joy of cooking. Cooking is so much more of an art than it was before for me. I've always liked it. Now I love it.

Lucinda Scala Quinn teaches me about teaching. She has the perfect combination of personality, knowledge , humor and fun to make her show informative and entertaining at the same time.

So much of being a mom is so mundane: washing, cleaning, feeding.....it is so nice to find something artistic in the mundane everyday tasks.

stroller traffic

I've reached one of those age-milestone markers in life. I am now aware of stroller traffic and stroller parking places. It is comparable to the milestone reached by seniors when they move into the retirement communities and suddenly become aware of wheelchair/walker parking places and traffic in the hallways.

I was walking with my stroller (baby happily strapped in) in my residential neighborhood on a smoothly-paved sidewalk with disability-accessible curbs. I stopped briefly to adjust my baby's hat or socks only to be barraged  by two teenage skate-boarders racing to school. Yes, racing. The disability-accessible sidewalks make racing on a skateboard as easy as taking an uninterrupted walk with a stroller. Luckily, I was able to remove my stroller from the sidewalk to the grassy area next to it. Close call- just another example of my latest milestone-marker of life.

I have graduated to middle-aged mom.

holiday entertaining debrief

The Christmas Eve meal was a success! We even made enough food to have a leftover meal last night in our  post-Christmas exhaustion!

I chose a featured meal from the Martha Stewart show.  She demonstrated the roast pork with prunes and brown ale on her show last month. On her web site she had recommended side dishes and desserts to go along. We chose the brussel sprouts with gouda cheese. I made a traditional holiday scalloped potatoes as well.

We started with a simple green salad with cranberries and pine  nuts. Then we served the pork and  Brussell sprouts with scalloped potatoes. Finally, we served some chocolate covered pomegranate with mint brownies and fluffy cookies made with egg whites.

It was a perfect combination of traditional recipes along with new adventure for extra spice.

Here's to next year and the joy of creative cooking.

Merry Christmas!

I'm packing my supplies to make scalloped potatoes while I'm visiting some family up north. I was assigned Christmas Eve meal as my holiday project.

I confess scalloped potatoes are my weakness around  the holidays.  The warm butter mixed with flour moistens the potatoes so that they melt in your mouth. Such a holiday treat I cannot pass up.

This actually ties into a project I did in graduate school  with the Maillard Reaction. This is the reaction that is the basis of flavoring buttery flavored foods in the food industry. It occurs between a carbonyl and an amino group in a basic environment.

Beginner cooks pay attention!

If you have never cooked and want to try it then please pay attention! I was a member of the club that cooked from books titled "Idiots Guide to Cooking" about four years ago. Now I consider myself a fairly proficient chef. I'm not Martha Stewart but I can prepare a decent meal for two or even entertain a group of friends with my skills. Here are some pointers I've learned along the way:

1. Simple recipes do not mean less appealing food. The meals my husband raves about are not necessarily the most difficult, expensive or time consuming meals.
2. You must invest in some basic kitchen gear to get started. I recommend a basic set of pots (all sizes), several pans, a combo frying pan/stew pot (deep enough to hold liquid but wide enough to fry meat), and a set of kitchen appliances that include a Cuisinart, mixer, crock pot, toaster oven and several casserole dishes of varying sizes. By a wonderful stroke of luck I was given all of these items awhile back- it would be a considerable investment to purchase all of them but a necessity if you want to provide a wide variety of foods. I had no idea I would use all of these items. Never fear if you can't afford them- there are still many recipes that can be made with just a few pots and pans.
3. It is good to hold a few staple ingredients in your cupboard at all times: kidney and black beans, beef and chicken broth, sugars (powdered, regular, brown), flour, butter, olive oil, and spices. I would start by purchasing parsley, basil, oregano and chile powder. As time goes by you find your spice cabinet multiples itself abundantly.
4. Invest if a 1-year subscription to Cooking Light or another magazine about cooking. Some of the simplest, most nutritious recipes come from these magazines.

Give yourself a one-year grace period to experiment. It takes time to learn. The toughest part is the timing of the meal. Getting the roast to come out of the oven simultaneous with the vegetables and the bread is a challenge. This can only be learned with practice.

Here are some simple foods that are favorites around our house. Its amazing how these incredibly simple recipes create tasty and nutritious meals in short amounts of time.

1. Shrimp with pasta (This is a very, very simple recipe and one of our favorites. This is the recipe that made me give up my complex pot pies and other time-consuming endeavors. Why bother when something this easy is so popular?)
2. Pot Roast with bread (a crock pot is really useful for this classic dish. You load the crock pot in the morning and you have a ready-made meal when you come home from work at 5 pm)
3. Scallops with pasta (a bit expensive but not to bad if you buy frozen scallops)
4. Grilled Chicken (very easy if you microwave the chicken for 5 minutes and then put it on a Foreman Grill or a regular barbecue) with rice (a rice cooker is very handy here but you can make it on the stove also)

Add a salad and a side-dish of a fresh vegetable and you have a delicious, fairly-easy meal in a short amount of time. It is so nutritious to cook at home and such a rewarding feeling to know how to prepare a meal.

Good luck. May you discover a creative side of you that you never knew.

children's books

A dear friend of mine from childhood just sent me an illustrated copy of Wind in the Willows and The Secret Garden. It inspired me to take inventory of children's literature on my bookshelf. I've actually been collecting various children's books for awhile now. I lived with an elementary school teacher about ten years ago and she lent me the book order forms from her classroom. The prices offered to children are great through mail order. I'm sure the Internet has probably changed all of that by now ten years later.

My collection now includes the following:
1. Wrinkle in Time (series of 4 books)
2. Narnia books (7 in set)
3. Harry Potter (I have the first 4 in the set)
4. Wind in the Willows (beautiful illustrations)
5. Secret Garden (beautiful illustrations)
6. Anne of Green Gables/Emily of New Moon (can't remember how many exactly- I keep these at my parent's house)
7. Jane Eyre (copy taken from my grandmother's house)

I regret to admit I've never finished Jane Eyre. Always something left to accomplish.

 Much to feast on for my daughter's upcoming bedtime reading. Let the fun begin.

You just can't get away from regulatory.......

After graduate school I began looking for a job in.....??????  I didn't really know what I was looking for. Have you ever noticed that when you don't know what you are looking for you rarely find something that really satisfies you? This does occasionally occur but more often than not a person who is looking haphazardly for something doesn't find anything worth finding.

I landed a job in regulatory affairs at a large research chemical supply company. Looking back, although the position was not intellectually satisfying or even all that challenging, I learned something that I didn't identify until now: The power and importance of regulatory affairs in the American economy.

As I read articles about the economy and regulatory affairs I realize how the problems I encountered in my little cubicle in chemical supply pervade the regulatory climate that encumbers the banks, the housing market, high-tech ventures and other businesses.
 

Problem number one:
Companies do not want to follow the rules (especially new ones) because they must spend money to comply with these rules. If they invest money in meeting the demands of these rules they risk having the rules repealed only to find their monetary investment was for nothing. (Unfortunately, for the peon (that would be me) in the cubicle monitoring the regulations, this can drive you crazy. The system is messy, disorganized and totally unsatisfying to work within.)


For this reason, companies stall in following regulations that are new or poorly enforced. What is the point when it cuts in on their  profit?


Problem number two:

There are some regulations that nobody understands or that are so old nobody can remember the original purpose. It becomes a total waste of time to follow these: a bureaucratic nightmare to figure out which sucker in the organization keeps a database geared toward following such nonsensical and ridiculous regulations.

While this applied to me in my little cubicle in research science it applies to the high-tech world as well. In two different editorials in the Wall Street Journal on Oct 31 the problem of regulations and green cards is addressed. Why is it that we send foreign graduates of engineering and physical science programs back to their countries after they complete their degrees? Even in this weak economy we are short on engineers in the US. The editorial states that Steve Jobs could have moved manufacturing jobs from China back to the US if Apple could hire 30,000 engineers in the United States. We don't produce enough engineers here in the US (by the time we send all our foreign graduates home) to keep jobs here.
The current green card policy is a stupid rule that not only fails to serve a purpose, it actually harms our economy and (as the article states it) gives an unintentional gift to China of jobs/business.

Part of the problem here is a failure to communicate and work as a team.
I liked how Newt Gingrich summed up the problem in one of the GOP debates recently. He said something like this: The gridlock in Washington is best summed as avoiding something totally stupid by cutting off your head if you don't allow your leg to be cut off. So we will allow something semi-stupid to avoid something totally stupid from occuring. (In reference to the super-committee and the impending automatic budget cuts in the event they can't come to an agreement.)

This is relevant because the super-committee must come to an agreement about how to streamline current regulations that strangle the economy. I just hope we have insightful enough politicians to be able to maturely tackle the problem without too many political games and other wasteful behaviors. 

We must have leadership that can work with businesses on this problem. Regulations must make sense and be comprehensive of the needs of businesses. We must be able to enforce regulations and have the enforcers have a logical reason to implement the rules. Stupid rules have no place in American business.

We need leaders who act in the best interest of the country: this includes private business, private citizens personal lives and public government needs. Do we have enough integrity as a country to select leaders who can manage all of these needs simultaneously while also preserving their proverbial political neck? This is a tall order- one I'm glad I'm not committed to achieve. Why would anyone want to run for such political office?

Recitation as a tool of learning and a way to fight boredom

This is my day: 1. Wake up. 2. Feed baby  3. Change and clothe baby  4. hold baby and walk back and forth around the house to keep her from crying. 5. Take a walk with a neighbor who also has a baby (if I'm lucky)

As you can see my intellectual interests are stalled currently. Here is how I combat the situation:

I recite.


You recite? You ask. Yes, it is a tool I used to learn introductory chemistry when I was a freshman in college. I made flashcards with definitions, terms, key ideas and concepts. Then, I would review the flashcards at all free moments during the day: after/before meals, before dorm meetings and at other times of the day. Now I recite because index cards are all I can hold while still holding an infant.

I am currently not reciting chemistry- I am learning a subject unrelated to science. But I still recite and can relay the information I'm learning by memory. It is really a great way to break up the boredom. You should try it.

the chemistry of breastfeeding

In a spirit of interest about the chemistry of breastmilk I ask the following question: Why is it that baby humans digest human breastmilk more efficiently than they digest cow's milk? I really wonder how much the nutritionists know about this in terms of the actual digestive path. I bet there is a nutritionist or scientist out there who knows.

It could possibly be related to the structure/function arrangement of the proteins in the milk. I'm guessing that the structure of the human milk proteins match more of the active sites of the digestive path of a baby human. Has anyone ever looked at these proteins in that level of detail?

I know that my baby human intakes breastmilk and excretes a byproduct very different from that of the formula-fed babies I meet. The exact chemistry involved here is fascinating. I'll have to research a chemistry-nutrition specialist who can map it for me.

Buoyancy

I'm thankful for this scientific concept. I wore my ugly 38-week pregnancy swimming suit over to the pool the other day and gasped at my ability to float without effort in the pool. I guess my density is much less than water now that I have extra fat, baby and other nutrients floating around in my abdomen.

The nostalgia of being a competitive swimmer!

As I tried to do a flip turn my buoyancy prevented my simple head-duck to propel my body into a circular motion into my efficient turn-around. I don't flip to turn- I get too much water up my nose.

Hope I can swim my way back to low-body-fat content in the months following delivery.

Time is short....

So according to my doctor my membranes are "thinning." This is a good thing- when one is 38 weeks pregnant you would expect the membranes to ready themselves  to eject a human.

Sometimes I wonder if infertility is nature's way of getting parents ready for mother and fatherhood. Since infertility is NOT a problem in our household, we skipped that preparation step altogether. This is kind of scary- taking on the health and well-being of another human being. It goes so far beyond any principles of science or logical analysis. Becoming a parent is not logical- but we aren't entirely logical creatures- are  we?

It seems so easy to decide to become a parent and then when the dream becomes a reality it is a truly daunting task. Not that I don't think I can do it- I'll do it. I'll just do it as I am able. And I will make mistakes. And this is ok. 

cross-stitch and science

I pulled out some unfinished cross-stitch kits the other day contemplating making something for the new addition to our family. Surprisingly, I have finished most of the many projects I purchased from Michael's for various special occasions and gifts. It's so easy to purchase a cross-stitch or other craft kit and then somehow never finish it. I collect my past patterns, leftover floss and kit-covers of the finished product. I have over 25 finished kits in my archives- at some point I will organize them by category/topic and put them in a permanent archive for when a similar occasion arises.

We have reached a new era in crafting. Michael's no longer sells complete cross-stitch kits. This means you must purchase or create your pattern independently and purchase the floss/aida cloth separately. While I think this probably increases the level of skill of your average cross-stitcher, it makes it harder to get started and requires a bigger committment for each project. Oh the days of convenience! While you can buy the completed kits online it is considerably more difficult to do so since you really can't see the picture on the front cover in any detail. It makes it difficult to judge whether or not you really like the design or not.

What does such a silly topic have to do with science anyway? Actually not a whole lot but I was trying to force a connection in my mind today. Is there anything scientific about cross stitch? I came up with one thing: color. The assembly of different colors with thread on a cloth is scientific in nature because it uses the principles of harmony/complementary colors to create pleasure. The absorption and reflection of white light creates the beauty of the combination of colors selected for any art project. Cross-stich does that with floss, aida cloth and a needle.

What beauty- I love crafts. Crafts relate to science as well. Almost everything in this world does.

cooking and chemistry

I think it is more typical for people to garner an interest in chemistry from their interest in cooking. I, on the other hand can confidently say that I was never really interested in cooking before I studied chemistry. It is only since I got married and more interested in domestic matters that my interest in cooking has really piqued.

Today I made a french lamb stew that I found several weeks ago in the Wall Street Journal. Often on weekends WSJ has a food section- most notably I've seen this stew recipe as well as  whole section about how to cook artichokes. (Artichokes are hands down the best vegetable out there.)

After I browned the lamb in hot oil and then carmelized it with sugar followed by a heating in the oven I felt like I was in chem lab. Heating, cooling, thickening, wetting.......it took me all day to prepare the lamb to combine it with a few fresh veggies for a complete stew.

For the first time I used my joint frying pan/casserole pan to cook part of the stew on then burner and then bake it for a bit in the oven. The broth was made with whole garlic, chicken broth, flour, drippings from the lamb, fresh sage and, of course, salt and pepper.

All the vegetables were fresh except the peas and the pearl onions- I parboiled them in water and then plunged them into an ice bath. If that doesn't sound like something straight out of organic chem lab then I don't know what does! The "plunging" in the ice bath is supposed to prevent them from overcooking before they are neatly tucked with the lamb in the thick, bubbly, richly-smelling lamb base.

I love cooking and I love its relationship to science. I wish I realized this a long time ago.

Whatever will I write about as I am idle?

I am afraid of being idle. I get terribly bored very, very easily. This is why I hesitated before I said "no" to offers to teach in the fall. Am I crazy or am I just realistic? I have been told by numerous people, most notably my beloved sister, that I will be feeding around the clock for at least six weeks. By my calculation, that puts me at mid-August or so before the madness ends. This is exactly when the fall semester begins. This is why I declined offers to teach in the fall.

My spring schedule is already filling up- the question is really what kind of a load I can realistically handle. I would love to take on more classes and even move up in the ranks in terms of the level of classes that I teach. I'm not sure that will happen based on my tendency for exhaustion.

This is becoming a reality quickly- last night we ordered the pack n play and the stroller/carseat travel system. Next weekend we purchase our crib/changing table.

Motherhood has nearly begun. Embarking on the unknown is both tremendously daunting and excruciatingly exciting simultaneously. This is a bit like the curve, severe dip and then drop-off of your scariest roller coaster at the park. The question is- is it fun or just very frightening?

In recent years I vote more for frightening as I get severe whiplash on any roller coaster. Perhaps this is why traditionally, nature favors younger mothers. Am I too old for this?

Titration Help! Ahhhhh- how do I do the titration lab?

Titration help handout:


The acid/base titration with NaOH and acetic acid is the oldest experiment in the book. I did it when I was in college (a long time ago) and both schools for which I work do the lab. I know they repeat it in higher level classes with a few more steps to make it more challenging. So it is to your advantage to try to master it at this level so you can handle more detail when they throw it at you.


Part I: Standardization of a base (NaOH)

Why would you standardize a solution? Generally it is because you need to precisely know the concentration of it.

What variables do you know in the first part? You know how many moles of acid that you started with. (KHP). You can calculate moles of acid in your starting material. You also know that the balanced chemical equation for the neutralization of KHP and NaOH reacts in a 1:1 mole ratio between acid and base.

KHP(aq) + NaOH(aq) → KNaP(aq) + H2O(l)

With your buret, you measure the volume of NaOH required to neutralize your KHP acid. You know the experiment is complete when you see your indicator turn a faint pink color. This indicates the pH of the titration is greater than 7 (slightly past the end point the pH can jump up sharply). The true equivalence between NaOH and KHP comes a few drops before you see pink in the solution but we approximate equivalence at the point the solution turns pink.

How do you calculate the concentration of the standard solution? You take moles of acid and set it equal to moles of NaOH. (You know this is true based on the balanced equation).

You can read the volume of NaOH required to complete the titration on your buret. This is the total mL (or Liters) you used to complete the titration.

Simply divide moles of base by liters of solution to get the concentration of the standard solution.

In part II of this experiment you are working backwords. What are your known and unknown variables? Let’s think about this carefully:

Generally you are told to pipette a certain amount of acetic acid in a flask. Let’s say you have a 5.00 mL calibrated pipette. You have 5.00 mL or 0.00500 L of acetic acid in your flask. (Notice I used three sig figs by adding two zeroes to the end of my liter value)

In this titration you now have a known concentration of NaOH from part A. (No, it is not 1:1 as I often see in my lab reports for this lab. It is the value you determined in part A). At this end of the titration, your acetic acid turns pink when moles of acetic acid is essentially equal to moles of base. How do you use this data to derive the concentration of your acid?

Let’s say you have a 0.2540 M concentration of NaOH from part A and you used 26.80 mL of your NaOH to titrate your acetic acid. You can determine moles of NaOH used for the titration by multiplying your concentration of NaOH by your volume of NaOH.

0.2540 moles/Liter NaOH X 0.02680 L NaOH= moles of NaOH (moles/Liter X Liters is always moles)

We know this is equal to moles of acetic acid by the balanced chemical equation.

What volume is this divided by to get the concentration? The original volume of acid you pipette into your flask- 5.00 mL or 0.00500 L.

Triumph!!

It feels so good to have the check box for "excellent" on one's performance review. Yes, I'm going out with a bang!

I leave my job at the end of May to embark on motherhood. I was worried about finding a place to teach when I want to come back to it. Would all of my schools replace me with younger teachers, fresh out of school, brimming with enthusiasm?

Of course there are no guarantees in life but I feel reasonably assured that I have a place to teach come January when my newborn will be six months old and ready to spend a few hours a week with a babysitter.

Hurray! Bravo for that "excellent" check box on the evaluation form.

Lewis structures, VSEPR theory thoughts

My fourth time through this topic in lecture and lab is yet an other new beginning. I rewrote my handout AGAIN for the third time. My supplementary handout started out as a four-page document, evolved into an eight-page document and has now become a 12-page document. Whewwwww! Challenging. Every time I teach this topic I realize more and more exactly what the students don't understand. The strange thing is that out of the three textbooks I own on chemistry, only one actually explains it thoroughly from the lewis dot models to the VSEPR shapes to the dipole moments/polarity and overall symmetry of each molecule. Is this a new topic? I doubt it. I'm trying to understand why none of the book authors can sufficiently explain it.

The Power Of a Personal Network

Today I'd like to share about the importance of networking. There are endless workshops out there about how to speed network, work a room, meet important people and build your network. Many of these workshops are helpful, yet leave out a personal element that makes networking all the more relevant to the individual. This is a true story about how I was hired at my current job:

I have played the flute since age ten, piano since age five. Music is strictly a hobby for me although at various times in the past I've taken it more seriously than others. About four years ago I attempted to join a community orchestra here in San Diego. What a shock! If you want to play in a high-calibre, amateaur group here in southern Cal you need a PhD in music performance. I am not kidding- there are professionals competing for unpaid community orchestras around here. There is one orchestra in particular that attracts professionals and high-quality amateurs. You have to be a very good musician to join and you have to know the right people.

Three years ago I started taking flute from a former member of the San Diego Symphony. Last summer she invited me to perform my Quantz Concerto at the  First United Methodist Church in La Mesa. (She is music director at that church). One of the ushers was a teacher/professor at Southwestern College in  Chula Vista. He asked me about my day job and I told him I had taught some chemistry at community colleges and worked in industry around San Diego. Small world! He told me that he taught physics at Southwestern and gave me the name of the department chair. The rest is history.

I did not perform at that church to get a new job. It was the last thing on my mind. I strive to become a quality musician; even someday join a high-quality orchestra here in San Diego. My performance at that church was purely for furtherment in the musical world. However, I walked away with a new contact in the chemistry education world.

You never know who in your network can help you at any given time in your life. Networks,  skills, hobbies and ALL of the people you know are very important in your network.

An article about introducing science to students

I just read this article from NEA journal fom fall 2010. It describes science in a very general way. I found it helpful in explaining the difference between science and other disciplines to my students.

embarking on motherhood

As I pass the halfway mark toward my July 2 due date I am somewhat overwhelmed by the remarkable changes my life will undergo in the next year. I look at where I've been over the last twelve or so. I moved down to San Diego in the fall of 1999 footloose, fancy-free of obligation and responsibility; ready to tackle the world and anything that might come my way.

Much of what I've done has been very rewarding; I've taken this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be completely selfish. I've followed Ayn Rand's philosophy of being true to myself.

As rewarding as this has been, it is ending, and now I am entering a new phase in which I cannot keep this same mentality and behavior. It must be my responsibility now to think of the other people in my life ahead of myself. I must provide for their protection and education and well-being. I can no longer date that random guy (that ended three+ years ago when I got married), take a job in another state, or make other random decisions that ride on my daily desires.

In a way I have lost my freedom and in yet another I have gained so much more. The lack of responsibility and obligation seems initially very liberating, however, over time it becomes very empty. It is the responsibility and obligation in life that yields meaningful and lasting relationships. As hard as these can be sometimes they are really what makes life worth living.

I will be a mother, a protector and a care-giver. Hopefully I won't completely lose my professional identity or my sense of daily accomplishments completely inside myself. My first and foremost priority will be my child and my family. I will give my previous sense of self to the betterment, protection and furtherment of another human being in what may become my most significant relationship yet. I am so excited for what awaits me.

I am scared as well. Am I really ready for this? I think so. It has taken me nearly as much time to prepare for this as it took to raise and prepare an infant for college (18 years). I am now nearly 18 years out of high school. A completely different being has emerged with new ideas, values, and sense of the world. I am ready to be a parent.
Cheers to the future.

Chromium VI: A Human Interest Story

Today I taught nomenclature in my introductory chemistry class and I thought of a wonderful human interest story to make type II transition metals (type II ionic compounds)  all the more relevant. Here it is:

Have you ever seen the movie Erin Brockovitch? If you  haven't, I highly recommend that you do. In this 2000 movie starring Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovitch, a local electricity company releases hexavalent chromium (Chromium VI) into the drinking water of a southern California town. The chromium VI compound is used to prevent corrosion at a cheap price. Not just at a cheap monetary price; at the price of the general health of the surrounding population. This happened from the early '50s through the mid '60s. According to the film, Brockovitch took a low-level clerk position at a law firm to pay her bills amid her rather low-class, somewhat promiscuous, borderline-sketchy lifestyle. Initially, her treatment at the firm was very poor.

Whether it was luck, God, general intelligence or a combination of all of these attributes is unknown. However, in her filing and general administrative duties at the law firm she noticed something odd about documents she was given. She noticed several people in a real estate case had family members with severe health problems (cancer, chronic illness and other complications).

One thing led to another and by the end of the film Brockovitch won the largest class-action settlement in US history against PG&E.

Brockovitch did not have a chemistry background and probably did not know what the health ramifications of Chromium VI might be. Can you imagine how much faster her work might have gone if she had known about this?

Today we looked at Chromium is several different oxidation states. Do you know how to figure out the oxidation state of chromium in a type II ionic compound?

molecule vs compound. What is the difference?

I realized recently that I use the terms molecule and compound interchangeably. Someone asked me what the difference is and I said, "same thing." This answer is actually incorrect- there is a difference between molecules and compounds although many people (chemists included) use the terms interchangeably. The reason for this is that the two have many things in common.

Both molecules and compounds follow the law of definite proportions. Another way of saying this is to say that in every molecule of water you have one atom of oxygen and two atoms of hydrogen. An alternate way to state this is to say that for every 16 grams of oxygen (per molecule) you always have 2 grams o hydrogen. This is true whether you refer to molecules or compounds.

The terminology differs however when we talk about the type of bonding that occurs in molecular compounds vs other compounds. (Notice how I used the word "compound" in both terms. It implies that something molecular is a compound by nature meaning that it follows the law of definite proportions.) A molecular compound is one that only contains nonmetals (generally) and is held together by the sharing of electrons. Whole molecules might be held rigidly in place by intermolecular forces between molecules but there is never any official chemical bonding between molecules. The sharing of electrons might not be equal. This is the cause of polarity and electronegativity differences. The degree of polarity can actually be calculated on a scale of severity to rate the nature of the polar bond. A bond that has a high enough polarity or electronegativity difference between atoms is actually no longer considered a polar covalent bond but moves into the ranks of the ionic bonds.

Two atoms that have vastly differing electronegativities are bound together by forces of electricity, not the sharing of electrons. It can be thought of as a donation of electrons from one species to the other to create two charged species- positive and negative. The bond is then an electrostatic interaction. One of my students expressed it this way, "It's like the difference between lego legs and a magnet- the ionic bond is the magnet attraction." (and a compound as opposed to a molecular compound)

The "lego legs" illustration refers to the characteristic of molecular bonding in which the sharing of electrons (through overlap of orbitals) creates distinctly arranged atoms that form distinctive shapes with distinctive angles.  In the "magnetic" bonding, the atoms arrange themselves to minimize repulsions and maximize attractions.  In some ways the atoms all float together in magnetic attraction (as if they don't form individual compounds but one big centralized compound made up of many formula units) but if you broke the unit down into pieces it would always have the same ratio of atoms as the compound itself (due to law of definite proportions).

What a talented student! Lego legs vs magnets! I love it.

Randall Knight comes alive in my classroom!

I've finally implemented the idea of instant feedback from the Five Easy Lessons book by Randall Knight. Did I need complex electronic equipment to do it? No. I passed out large index cards and each student divided them into 4 parts. A, B,C, D. Now whenever I want to estimate the number of students who understand my point I ask for people to hold up the appropriate card.

I learned what does NOT work. If you ask the students to give you a rating on the easy/hard nature of the quiz they have no idea what they are talking about. Almost everybody gave me "B" (the quiz was easy). Funny thing that the average was a 65%. Guess they are remiss in the idea of easy vs hard.

Its a subtle change in teaching technique but I already feel a difference. I am connecting with my students on a deeper level. I can't wait to continue.

The Personal Journals of LM Montgomery: My growing interest in a topic

The evolution of my interest in these literary works spans twenty-five years. For the amount of time I have been interested in this topic I should have received a PhD by now. The unfortunate part of this is that my studies have never been official or affiliated with any kind of university. But, nevertheless it is true, I am fascinated with the life and works of LM Montgomery. Her writing never ceases to lift my spirits in times of trial or provide general entertainment on a rainy day.

When I was ten years old I had very little exposure to television or movies. My viewing was limited to Little House on the Prairie and a few other harmless shows. However, one night I got lucky: Mom and Dad were having a party and needed me to stay upstairs for the entire evening. This meant that not only did I get to watch TV but I got to move the TV into my bedroom to watch it. Since this had never happened before I was thrilled beyond belief. My mom set up the TV in my room to watch the brand new Canadian version of the classic movie Anne of Green Gables. From this moment (was it 1985 or 1986 that it made its debut on television?) I was a hard-core Anne of Green Gables/LM Montgomery fan. Little did I know how my life changed the night I saw the movie for the first time.

Shortly after that I had my own copy of the book, then the entire Anne series (8 books). Not too long after that I had the Emily of New Moon books and a few others. By the time the second movie came out I had parts of the first movie memorized.

As I grew older my enthusiasm waned a bit. Anne seemed a bit juvenile as I got into high school and then during college I was too busy for my old love affair with a fictional character. It wasn't sometime after college that I discovered LM Montgomery  had written novels for adults. There are actually two novels for adults: Blue Castle and A Tangled Web. Both were written while she was living in the Toronto area. A Blue Castle is actually based on a location she visited as a tourist in Toronto; the owners of the hotel have created a museum to commemorate the fame she created out of their hotel in her novel.

When I met my husband one of the things that interested me about him was his Canadian origins. He had lived in Toronto for a number of years before he moved to the United States. I wondered if he had ever heard of famous Anne and her creator. Of course he had not.  (Most men are not overly fond of Anne in the way I am.) I told him about my love affair with LM Montgomery and her origins on Prince Edward Island and he convinced me we should pay her hometown a visit. So we did. And thus began my second love affair with LM Montgomery.

In 2009 we fulfilled a life-long dream of mine and went to Prince Edward Island. Cavendish is just as beautiful as Montgomery describes in her books. We were even able to stay right across the street from the Cavendish cemetery that borders the MacNeill family property. Green Gables is just down the road. Of course the guest house was named after Rachel Lynde (of all people) and ties in with the theme of the different buildings Anne used from Cavendish in her Anne novel. The entire setup is a fairy land.

How much delight it gave me to roam the old MacNeill property so elegantly described in LM's books. The old MacNeill house was torn down long ago - apparently Uncle John was not thrilled with LM's literary fantasies (as obvious in her journals) and rid the property of the house in a utilitarian sweep of the unnecessary. However, John's son and his wife Jenny refurbished the old foundation and created a walking path with a gift shop nearby. You can traverse through the haunted wood to the Green Gables house and walk through the famous Lover's Lane. Surprisingly the Lake of Shining Waters is not there but  over at Park Corner (Campbell home) which is several miles away.

Trips to Rustico and to the North Cape proved to me that there is even more to PEI than Cavendish and Green Gables. I could buy a summer home there it is so beautiful.

It was at the gift shop on the Macneill property that I first became interested in autobiographical information about LM Montgomery. There is a book called the Alpine Path in which she describes her literary career. It is the only such book available by her about her own career and decisions. I read it from cover to cover and found it fascinating. (As an added bonus, John MacNeill's son David MacNeill signed a copy of it for me)

Here in Brampton I discovered that Montgomery and Ewan Macdonald (her husband) served in the Presbyterian Church in Norval. It is about fifteen minutes down the road from us.  In the town there is a bakery owned by the Crawford family; Marion Crawford was one of the children who grew up in the house Montgomery used as her scaffold for Green Gables. The Webbs were cousins of the MacNeill family in Cavendish.  The bakery has a museum in the back dedicated to the memory of LM Montgomery. Of course they sell the 100-year anniversary memorabilia, display her belongings like old teacups and dishes, first-editions of her novels, and display pictures, flyers and other advertisements from the many theatre, church and other functions during her time at the manse. Apparently there is a garden dedicated to her memory- it features her favorite flowers. You can drive by the old Presbyterian manse; however, it is not a museum because the current  pastor of the Presbyterian church (and his family) live there.

The University of Guelph nearby (about 1.5 hour drive from here) owns all of the original journals, scrapbooks, fiction manuscripts and correspondence of LM Montgomery in a special collection that is available for public viewing. Her son Stuart donated the collection shortly before his death in 1982. I am drooling already in anticipation of going there. And go there I will because my in-laws live here. What luck for me!

Meanwhile, The Blue Castle and A Tangled Webb are high on my list of books to read in the near future.

May the love affair continue!

Cold Mountain

Anyone out there seen Cold Mountain? I love the movie. Back when I was a beach dweller here in San Diego I used to take walks down to the Blockbuster on Mission Ave. and purchase old VHS tapes they kept outside on a table for 2$. Lucky for me they were purging their supply back when I lived there. I have some gems on VHS (and a good thing I still own a VHS player!) (including Cold Mountain)

I tutor at the library and happened upon the Friends of the Library collection near the front door. What a deal! People donate paperback novels- everything from Garrison Keillor to Phillip Roth and Dan Brown....and Cold Mountain. Whatever is on the shelf is fair game for 50 cents. Yes, that's 50 cents. What a deal. For this reason I have my own copy of Cold Mountain. (I also own books I would never buy at the store price: Kite Runner, Memoirs of a Geisha, Devil Wears Prada, two Keillor novels, and Schindler's list just to name a few). If you've never checked out your local library for the cheap paperback (used) books then I would go take a look. I've never had such cheap, yet quality entertainment. In this case that is definitely not an oxymoron.

I digress but I return to the purpose of this post. Cold Mountain. What a powerful novel. Superficially it is a touching romance. The movie emphasizes the romance and the scenery. There is a bit of information about the war but really not much more than what you might learn from Gone with the Wind. The Civil War was initially portrayed as a romantic, exciting and noble cause for the good of the south. So different from what it ended up becoming at the end of the war- a blood bath of meaningless massacre and heartrenching horror. As also shown in Gone with the Wind many southerners became scavengers and hunters as their currency lost value and people's possessions were diminished by poverty and raids by home guard and invading soldiers.

Cold Mountain goes into a bit more detail than other civil war books about specifics of battles and cultural implications of melding the north with the south. I wonder how accurate some of the information really is. For example, one of the concerns of the southerners was that they would have to acquire an odd holiday from the north called Thanksgiving. Imagine dedicating one entire day just to giving thanks- I mean really, what a silly idea. Hard to believe this was a mockery amongst gentry of the south during the civil war.

The author is a genius in flashback techniques. The story is mostly told in retrospect as stories within the main story. Inman (the main male character) has been badly injured in battle and deserted his recovery process in an army hospital. In the chapters that focus on him he is wandering through the wilderness trying to find his way back to Cold Mountain. On the way he meets many different types of folks, some helpful and some hurtful. He also recounts his relationship before the war with Ada Monroe on Cold Mountain- the woman he is hoping to meet again alive in Cold Mountain.

While Inman wanders in the wilderness the chapters intersperse themselves with the account of Ada Monroe back in Cold Mountain. At the beginning Ada is a half-starved, desperate and abandoned daughter of a missionary father. His death left her near penniless and without skills to survive on their farm at Black Cove on Cold Mountain. Slowly, however, through the help of neighbors and a crass, abandoned uneducated farm hand named Ruby she gains a knowledge of growing her own food, tending livestock, and growing into self-sufficiency on her farm. Previous to this experience her skills were nothing that could actually be rendered useful: arranging cut flowers, playing the piano, reading novels.

All this survival on both sides is for one goal: reuniting the love between Ada and Inman. Slowly in the evolution of Inman's wandering and Ada's increased self-sufficiency we learn of a long-lost love discovered during a different time. A time before the war when gentleman existed in the south and integrity and honor reigned in the grand old south.

The scenery throughout the entire book is extremely touching. I really want to go to North Carolina to see Cold Mountain in real life. Apparently it is a real place.

I am enthralled by the writing and the plotline. The author draws us into a rather unusual romance between an ordinary farm boy and a woman of social standing. Then, we are drawn even more into the forces that pull them back together after they are separated. Inman nearly dies several times during his journey back and each time he scrapes by it seems that his desire to see and reunite with Ada drives his will and wit to pull through. It is love that truly saves the day in the end. Inman survives and arrives back home.

I won't reveal the rest of the ending. It is fascinating. I recommend a read of the book.

A Jane Austen stage perhaps?

Its really interesting that Jane Austen's novels have eluded me thus far. I say that because I have heard about her and her writing in several situations and even watched a few of the Hollywood-interpretation movies since the '90s. It seems like the kind of movie that would grab me, doesn't it? An Anne of Green Gables or Laura Ingals Wilder turned adult romantic and an old-fashioned, harmless, complex exploration of relationships and their meaning. When I was in college, my favorite professor handed out a list of books she considered for our lit class. At least three of Austen's novels were on that list. I still have that list in a manila folder in my garage. And yet I've never picked up a single Austen novel.

But now.... but now I truly am inspired. On our flight from San Diego to Toronto I watched The Jane Austen Book Club. What an inspiration to read all of the Austen novels! About five women and one (lone) man meet once a month to discuss all of Jane Austen's novels. The themes of romantic relationships they discuss are so real they manifest themselves in their real-life relationships. It is truly touching.  And the really cool part of it is that there doesn't seem to be just one interpretation of the themes in a single book. I'm really intrigued by it. How can each person see the characters so differently?

So today in my lazy, pre-Christmas preparations (almost complete) I spent some time updating my amazon.com wish list. I now have the complete novel set along with a complete movie set on my wish list. I actually chose to select the older versions of the Austen films for a very specific reason. Movies are only worthwhile if the content closely follows that of the text. According to the reviews the modern Hollywood renditions of the movie really don't treat the original plots of the novels fairly. Apparently some of the acting is spotty as well.

So here I am- yet to be made a Jane Austen fanatic.  They'll make a Brit out of me yet. So far I'm still pining away after LM Montgomery but maybe this is the bait to transfer my drooling affections to Austen. We shall just have to see.

My current wish-list of ambition

I always have a stack of books next to my bed that fit into this category: "I should really read this book to become a more educated scientist and a better teacher." The problem with the books in this category is that by the time I come home from work after a tough day the last thing I want to do is pleasure reading about chemistry. I'd rather pick up Narnia or Cold Mountain or even Schindler's List (as depressing as it seems) for crying out loud.

But, just today I received something that really piqued my interest in terms of thrilling science. It is called the Disappearing Spoon. Yes, thrills chills, it is a book of anecdotal information about the periodic table and the elements on it. It tells tales of poison, politics and even a bit of science mixed in. I haven't read it yet but the introduction talked about mercury and its haunting tendencies to poison and hurt people.
When I first read the summary I thought to myself, "this sounds like another rendition of Primo Levi and the Periodic Table." Primo Levi is the Jewish freelance chemist who wrote about his experiences in chemistry during world war II by focusing each chapter of his book on one particular experience. The experience was somehow tied into one of the elements on the periodic table- either peripherially or focally.  I can already see that this book is vastly different from Levi's. For one thing the author is not a bench scientist. And for another he is not telling personal experiences- he is recounting facts he learned about elements mixed in with some of his own impressions and conversations with professors during his science education experience. So far it is not evident that he has been employed in science beyond his basic education level.

So- as soon as I gather lots of riveting poisoner stories and other scandalous tidbits to shock my students with perhaps I will gain ambition to read the other two books on my ambition checklist. They are these two books:

One is based on history of science classes taught at Johns Hopkins and the other is a book written by a man exploring the nature of ocean waves with his daughter. Two very different books but both potentially helpful in getting nonscientists interested in science.

I just can't muster up the ambition to actually read these books.

Narnia: a holiday treat

I never thought of myself as a particularly enthusiastic  Narnia fan. When the movie came out five years ago I chuckled, enjoyed it and mentioned to John I wouldn't mind rereading "Lion, Witch and Wardrobe" as I had done in my childhood. Little did I know this would become my most treasured holiday gift!
 
At Christmas in 2005 I received the boxed set of all seven books. You'll remember that in 2005 John and I were first dating and didn't know each other all that well. I guess he took my admiration for the Narnia series more seriously than I did. I never expected (nor did I really want) all seven books. But, boy was this a lucky mistake.
 
Now, five years later I've just finished the fifth book in the series and am thoroughly excited and anticipating the movie. Voyage is by far the best book in the series. The allegorical similarity to the Bible is so striking it touched me on a very deep level and made me read with fascination of not wanting to put the book down.
 
As the children and the ship move through the islands surrounding Narnia looking for their lost Lords, they experience events that closely parallel the Bible. Now, I'm not one to believe everything I hear or jump on the bandwagon but I have to say this: If Francis Collins, head of NIH (currently) can have faith without empirical evidence to back it up then so can I. Period. So I digress back to my point.
 
There is a section where a particularly disagreeable character turns into a dragon by his own greediness only to be transformed in character through suffering until Aslan converts him back into a human again. He is a new person in character.There is a section where Lucy uses magic to remove a spell placed on a group of people who have become invisible. This section is rather like  Harry Potter meets Disney or Harry Potter goes to church section. It explores the fantasy of magic combined with underlying themes of how emotions like fear are handled. The whole issue of fear is explored on a deep level: does fear hold us back from doing things that are really not all that daunting? What is fear and how does it control us? It is fear that nearly prevents Lucy and friends from intervening here- only to find out that it was fear itself that was the worst danger in this situation.
 
My favorite part is exploration of the end of the world. In this part there is an image of the lion laying down with the lamb (Biblical prophecy) and then the ocean turning into a sea of lilies. And along the way a discovery of a whole people group living underwater like humans. The whole notion of the unknown is  powerfully explored with their discovery of the uniqueness of the environment.  Nothing seems to work the way it does in Narnia or on earth for that matter.  And then at the end Reepicheep takes his own individual boat by himself to explore the absolute ends of the earth while Lucy, Edmond and Eustace suddenly find themselves back at his aunt's house on the floor of the living room.
 
CS Lewis is such a treat. I'm growing to appreciate him more and more. Perhaps I'll reread Dawn Treader when I have time.

Another semester is over....

Well, another semester has come and gone and I have lived to tell about it. Seems like the exact same thing happened last semester: finals occur and then grading is finished and then I have to submit final grades. And someone is always unhappy. And I've found my unhappies already.

I heard this myself when I was a student but I don't think I really like it or believed it. "Its not the grade that matters." Over time I've grown to understand what this really means.

When I look at a chemistry text now I understand it in a much deeper way than when I was a student. I can cross-reference diagrams and find topics explained from different angles in different chapters. I never would have been able to do this as an undergraduate. It all came from years of experience and practice.

So the problem then is this: should we be coddling and comforting learners as they wade through the details of problem solving and reading the text by padding grades along the way? I don't know- I think in some ways it motivates people to give them positive feedback and encouragement. However, it certainly doesn't give them the real picture of their depth of understanding of the material. And- I'm not sure it accurately predicts how well they will perform in a more complex class (upper level)

I just gave a very hard final. I had students who normally get A grades fail the test. It was that hard. I took the questions primarily from the textbook test bank on a CD from the publisher. These are TOUGH questions. Most of them include answers that would seem logical if you don't understand the question on a very deep level. Of course, that wasn't the correct answer- only to be found through a detailed understanding of the calculations and logic behind each question. The test gave me some information about my students, however.

This test showed me which students really worked at understanding not only the math of chemistry but the conceptual grasp of big topics. One of the questions had them rank the boiling points of several compounds including covalent and ionic compounds. They were supposed to surmise that the strongest intermolecular forces and the strongest bonds lead to the highest boiling point. (The ionic compound always has the highest boiling point for this reason)  Even my best student missed this question. I'm trying to figure out how he missed this among many other more difficult conceptual problems on the test. I think it is because when we study covalent compounds I emphasize how hydrogen bonding is the strongest intermolecular force and causes the highest boiling point. What I usually don't emphasize here is that hydrogen bonding wouldn't create as high of a boiling point as ionic bonding.  So- for covalently bonded compounds ONLY,  hydrogen bonding would cause the greatest elevation of boiling point. Ionic compounds are in a whole different class altogether.

I hope my students take the experience of this excruciatingly difficult test as a motivating learning experience. This is but the first of many tough exams to come in their scientific or medical careers. It will prepare them to really study and think and examine what is important. It also teaches them there is no free ride. School is hard work.

I'll post this exam with the answers for my students next semester to chew on all semester. I plan to make the final more straighforward (with any luck I'll succeed- I had no idea this test would be this hard) I'm hoping that by chewing on the questions from this test students will be prepared to ask themselves and answer the really tough conceptual material.

Chemistry is no cake walk.

Arsenic in DNA?

Arsenic Article
I just read an article in the Wall Street Journal about Arsenic in DNA. This is profound, if true, and a bit scary.

Arsenic? A  poison? Found incorporated in the genetic code of life. I was shocked. Researchers are suggesting this is new evidence that there is life outside of planet earth. This may redefine the essential elements of life.

San Diego Community News Group - Scripps researchers mine ocean floor for solution to antibiotic resistance

San Diego Community News Group - Scripps researchers mine ocean floor for solution to antibiotic resistance

Long hours of labor and the frustration of budget cuts and limited space are over!

Why is water a liquid at room temperature?

Have you ever wondered why there is nothing else like water on the planet? Many compounds have similar molecular masses: oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, etc, etc, etc. Water is the only compound in its molecular weight class that is a liquid at room temperature. Why is it so unique?

It is because of forces between molecules called hydrogen bonds. The hydrogen atoms of one water molecule are attracted to the lone pairs of electrons on the oxygen atoms of adjoining water molecules. This attractive force between molecules is very, very weak on one hand; compared to the attractive forces of a chemical bond, the hydrogen bond attractive forces are really small. Over large distances, however, these small attractive forces add into something very, very powerful. An overall sticky effect is created. "Sticky" in that the water molecules are more attracted to each other than molecules of that molecular mass would normally be. Molecules like oxygen gas and nitrogen gas are gases at room temperature. Because of the hydrogen bonding between water molecules, water is a liquid at room temperature.

Because of hydrogen bonds we have lakes and streams. We have capillary action that allows water to climb the trunks of trees to the branches, we have snowflakes, icicles, and icebergs that float on the top of oceans.

Water is amazing.

PV= nRT

This ubiquitous equation is known throughout the world.
People use it as a password to their website, and as a button slogan. I think my high school chemistry teacher made us write it on stickers and put them on our foreheads..... (oh dear)

The ideal gas equation summarizes the discoveries about the behavior of gases into one neat and tiny equation. Let's start with the left side:

This is Boyle. Boyle's law states that the pressure increases as the volume decreases. This is known in science as an inverse relationship: P ~ 1/V.  The best illustration of this is scuba diving. When a scuba diver goes down into the depths of the ocean the pressure increases. (Makes sense when you think of tons and tons of water weighing down on the ocean floor). As the pressure increases, the volume of the diver's lungs decreases. As the scuba diver rises to the surface, the pressure slowly decreases and the lungs can expand again. When a diver gets "the bends" the person swam upward too quickly and did not allow  pressure/volume equilibration to relieve excess pressure. A scuba diver's lungs can actually explode in such a situation. (Like removing the lid on something tightly compressed in a jar- it springs out)

The left side is equal to nRT. Charles's law told us that volume and temperature are directly proportional: as temperature increases, volume increases. Think about the amount of space something takes up when it is moving slowly versus the amount of space it would take moving quickly. This is why you can get a half-filled balloon to perk up by warming it with a hair dryer. The partially filled balloon seems to suddenly have more air (even though it doesn't) when the particles start moving faster.

We also know P ~ T (direct proportionality). Think about the pressure exerted by air in a balloon. Does it exert more or less pressure at room temperature or when heated with a hair dryer? As the hair dryer heats up the molecules inside they move faster and increase their volume. In the process they exert a higher and higher pressure on the walls of the balloon.

The joys of lecturing.....Today is PV=nRT

Why we can survive carbon monoxide poisoning..... ( read to the end)

My students have been drawing Lewis dot diagrams and predicting shapes of molecules based on their Lewis dot structures. This is a very detailed process and requires them to be familiar with the concepts of valence electrons, types of bonds and bond orders. It is so easy to get lost in all the details. This is why I wanted to stress the importance of WHY. Why does anybody really care about the shapes of molecules. Does it really matter?

Ionic and Covalent Bonding

This week my students did the molecular model lab which is a bummer for them because we are one class period behind in lecture. So- if they didn't take the time to really read chapter 8 thoroughly before lab (most of them probably didn't) then the lab probably went in one ear and out the other.

I'm not sure if it makes more sense to try to explain ionic vs covalent bonding before or after Lewis structures/VSEPR shapes. By learning to use the Lewis Dot model students can predict shapes which influence the overall bonding characteristics of molecules. The larger concepts of ionic vs covalent bonding can be explained without knowledge of Lewis structures, however, the details seem much clearer once the model is explained.

Stay tuned for my upcoming post on ionic vs covalent bonding...

Can't wait!

Friends of the Library

If you have never gone to your local library to look at the paperback books donated to Friends of the Library charity you are missing so, so much. Since I discovered this gold mine of entertainment I have ransacked its shelves with my eyeballs. I have enough restraint not to ransack it with my hands. My most recent comparison to my love of books is my love of food. I eat books like I eat food. It is a hunger to be fed daily.

Today I found Middlesex (Pulitzer Prize winner), The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, and The Castle by Kafka. I think perhaps the Kafka and Middlesex usurp the ranking of books on my list. Middlesex is next after I finish The Wednesday Sisters.

I intended to buy Middlemarch (as opposed to Middlesex) because The Wednesday Sisters recommended it but I have too many books in line.

Each paperback is 50 cents. Sure beats spending $15 on amazon.com.

Periodic Trends on the Periodic Table

In class yesterday we covered the electronic structure of an atom. We Primarily focused on electron configurations and orbital diagrams (and many did very well on the simple quiz I gave midway through the period). Near the end of class I briefly talked about periodic trends, the topic I want to focus on in this blog post.

In our discussion about the periodic table we talked about how each period represents a primary energy level within an atom. Period one is the energy level closest to the nucleus while period 2,3,4, etc are further and further from the nucleus. We also talked about how each period represents a fixed energy level. This returns us back to the concepts of electromagnetic radiation we covered earlier in the chapter. Fixed energy levels were first observed in heat radiating from everyday objects. The energy levels of the measured heat were discontinuous. This same observation holds true for electrons surrounding the nucleus of an atom.

Quotation from JD Salinger in Short Story

A break from science for a minute......

My other love in life is literature. I'm reading Nine Short Stories by JD Salinger. Here is a quotation I'd like to share:

"This is the squalid, or moving part of the story, and the scene changes. The people change, too. I'm still around, but from here on in, for reasons I'm not at liberty to disclose, I've disguised myself so cunningly that even the cleverest reader will fail to recognize me."

He turns out to be the main character of the second half. But you don't figure it out until near the end. Genius.

chemicals in everyday items (potentially harmful)

There is an article in the Wall Street Journal on Monday that caught my eye. Actually the entire Personal Journal section caught my interest: emphasis on green energy. Since I teach alternative energy sources in my class this section was an opportunity for me to update my knowledge on the subject.

The article (click on link for article) has a list of chemicals in a table with the corresponding product in which they are found. I'm going to go check out my personal food containers after reading this article because apparently I have to watch out for dibutyl phthalate.

This brings me full circle to my concerns about sulfuryl fluoride (not mentioned in the article) that is used for termite tenting. As a chemist I know that both sulfur and fluorine have some nasty properties as individual elements. And- the fact that the compound is used to kill termites means it is toxic on some level. Will it end up on a list like this one twenty years from now? In the future will we talk about termite tenting and the harm it caused like we talk about the babies harmed by Thalidomide in the 70s? Or even asbestos? It's really scary to me.


I'm getting tented in December and I'm worried about it.

Understanding as "acceptance" rather than related on a deep level

I touched on this below but I wanted to revisit this idea. Often learning the crux of a subject is more about acceptance rather than true understanding. How can you really understand something if you are new? On the level of an introductory course I think this concept applies to other subjects: art, religion, English and even History (to some extent).

I like to think of my students (that may be you if you are my student) as doing practice problems and reading the material in the textbook so that they grasp enough of the details to accept what the experimental evidence tells us about the way chemical elements behave. None of it is intuitive and none of it is something I would expect anybody to figure out without explicit information from the text.

I hope everybody out there who is currently studying chemistry can grow in their acceptance of experimental data. It is only through this acceptance that you can understand more about how the experimental evidence may affect medicine, physics and the everyday way we live our lives.

I'm sure the founders of quantum mechanics had no idea that they had just unleashed the beginning of the information age. The internet and all the small gadgets we take for granted resulted from the acceptance and further creativity of those who observed quantum mechanics in nature.

It is my hope you will be enthusiastic to do the same. Let me be the proud teacher of the next United States inventor. Good luck.

feedback

An old friend of mine from childhood recently visited this blog and told me that he needed to take my class to understand my blog posts.

Agggghhhhhh! Bad. This is exactly what he should NOT say. Poor guy- he probably had no idea how badly I felt about this comment. I think he meant to compliment me.

The idea is to make science understandable to any soul who happens to find themself on my blog. I want people to find the posts generally interesting and students to find them a good introduction to the meatier and drier textbook.

preparing to teach the structure of the atom....

I'm preparing to meet with some students at SDSU who are enrolled in chem 200. I taught the lab for this class back in 2000-2002 so I'm familiar with the textbook and general setup of the class. Actually, I'm using the old text I used as a TA! They are now on the 5th or 6th edition of the book and I'm using the 2nd. (Hint for those of you wondering if you need to buy the next edition every time it comes out)

The concepts I'm preparing for my 200 students are very similar to those I'm preparing for my chem 3 students up in Irvine. We're beginning our study of atomic structure mostly focused around how electrons move in orbitals around the nucleus of an atom. It is these trends that determine most of the trends in how elements behave on the periodic table. If a student understands electronic structure, that student will make more accurate predictions about chemical behavior of different elements.

The first step to really understanding atomic structure is to realize that nothing that is observed in intuitive. To that end I would like to describe the study of atomic structure less as "understanding" and more as "acceptance" about what is observed by experiment. It is too bad we cannot invest in laboratory equipment to demonstrate atomic structure by experiment to all students. Unfortunately, the cost and convenience of doing such is entirely unrealistic and we must resort to explaining what scientists observe when they run these types of experiments. After reading several different ways that atomic structure affects trends in the PT, students will begin to see patterns, learn vocabulary and grow to accept experimental observations. Ideally, they will be able to use this acceptance (rather than "understanding") to make educated guesses about how other trends might function.

But- it's all tied into an understanding of electromagnetic radiation as well. The energy of electrons and how energy is distributed in chemical reactions is done through electromagnetic radiation. This is why there is an entire section about how our understanding of light and energy has changed over the years.

This is a fascinating subject to learn but I must admit, there is a certain amount of drilling and memorization that must accompany your first attempt to learn it. You will encounter concepts, observations and ideas that are completely foreign to you. I recommend whipping out those flashcards that you used to learn the polyatomic ions and using them to drill yourself about the basics of atomic structure.

electromagnetic radiation and chemistry education

The concept of electromagnetic radiation introduces us to the idea that things are not the way we perceive them. This concept applies to more than just e-radiation in life. It is an excellent example of how we should think about other things in life that seem so, so clear. Maybe they really aren't so clear after all.

We see sunlight as white light that allows us to use our eyes during the day and forces us to turn on a floorlamp or flashlight at night. From the gorgeous rainbows left after a storm we know that sunlight can be broken up into different colors.

The makeup of sunlight seems fairly straightforward-logically it would be a wavelength travelling super, duper fast from the sun. If you extend this idea behind what we can see with our eyes, there is an entire spectrum of wavelengths emitted from varying sources (other than just the sun) that serve different purposes. From radio waves (extremely low energy) to cancer-treating gamma rays (extremely high energy) the electromagnetic spectrum has propelled technology in our lives to a level previous thought unattainable.

The seemingly straightforward makeup of white light and other electromagnetic radiation is not so straightforward. The study of this medium led to Einstein's Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect (light as a wavelength and a particle) and to other phenomena of quantum mechanics. The subatomic processes of light are so different from what we experience in the macroscopic world that it would take an entire degree of classes to really wrap your mind around it. 

If you haven't ever goggled the electromagnetic spectrum, I suggest you google it. Do some background reading on a basic science concept that has revolutionized our lives.

Review for Chapters 4-6

The Exam is a week from Thursday and I suggest you start reviewing now. I am in the process of checking with some other faculty about posting the pdf of complete solutions for the problems in the back of each chapter. Someone brought it to my attention that the solutions manual in the library only works out the solutions to the odd numbered problems. I would like to post a solutions manual (as pdf) that works out both even and odd numbered problems. Please be patient as I verify that I am allowed to do this.

Quotation from the Periodic Table by Primo Levi

I just finished The Periodic Table by Primo Levi. Here is a quotation that jumped right off the page at me.

"Our atom of carbon enters the leaf, colliding with other innumerable (but here useless) molecules of nitrogen and oxygen. It adheres to a large and complicated molecule that activates it, and simultaneously receives the decisive message from the sky, in the flashing form of a packet of solar light; in an instant, like an insect caught by a spider, it is separated from its oxygen, combined with hydrogen and (one thinks) phosphous, and finally inserted in a chain, whether long or short does not matter, but it is the chain of life. All this happens swiftly, in silence, at the temperature and pressure of the atmosphere, and gratis: dear colleagues, when we learn to do likewise we will be sicut Deus, and we will have also solved the problem of hunger in the world."

Photosynthesis made beautiful- don't you think? Primo Levi is a genius of a science writer. I'll have to go back and read his accounts of his days at Auschwitz and other experiences.

Chapter 6 Preview

As I read and prepare chapter 6 (the students are the not the only people responsible for preparing the material) I am reminded that this chapter is really critical to a fundamental understanding of beginning chemistry. Here is why:

You learn how to balance equations in chapter 5. Fair enough. You learn that the relationship between number of molecules on each side of an equation is also equal to the number of moles of each compound on each side of the equation. Let's review a simple example:  O2(g)  +  2H2(g)  = 2H2O
Let's add atoms on each side of the reaction: 2 atoms O and 4 atoms H on the left while there are 2 atoms O and 4 atoms H on the right side of the equation. It is balanced. What does this mean exactly?
For every one molecule of oxygen gas you must have 2 molecules of hydrogen gas to get 2 molecules of water. Can you get less than two molecules of water? No- because you can't cut a molecule in half. Likewise, you must have one mole of oxygen gas for two moles of hydrogen gas to get two moles of water. The relationships, as you can see, between molecules of compounds and moles of compounds are equal.

This is what enables us to use these relationships in the laboratory in a practical way. From these molecule/molar relationships we can calculate the amount of product we should get in a chemical reaction. Returning to our synthesis of water example:  If we start with two moles of oxygen gas and unlimited hydrogen gas how much water should we get? The mole relationship between oxygen gas and water is needed to figure this out:( 2 moles O2) X( 2 moles H2O/1 moles O2 )= 4 moles H2O. This is the maximum yield. What if you go into the lab and determine that this reaction only yields 3 moles of H2O? Then we get into a calculation of percent yield. The percent yield is the comparison of the actual yield you obtain in the lab with the theoretical yield you calculate based on molar ratios of a balanced equation. Percent yield is as follows: actual/theoretical X 100. In this case it is 3/4 X 100 or 75%. You obtained 75% of the maximum amount of material you could get from this reaction with these amounts of reactants.

This chapter also introduces energy transformations. Just as mass is conserved (atomic theory), energy is conserved in nature. This means that energy is transformed from one form to another. This applies to chemical reactions as well as everyday objects like a ball bouncing on the ground. There are a few key terms here you should really learn well: exothermic vs endothermic.
Exothermic: This means a reaction (or process) gives off energy
Endothermic: This means a reaction (or process) absorbs energy
The diagrams for each of these are in Chapter 6. Familiarize yourself with the energy levels of products and reactants for each case.

And...... my favorite thing in chemistry is introduced. That is Calorimetry. What is calorimetry? It is the measure of the transfer of heat.
There is a very simple demonstration you can do in the classroom to show calorimetry. I haven't figured out how to incorporate it into our class- the ice would melt by the time I get to the topic in class.
You take a styrofoam cup, thermometer, and ice/water. You measure the temperature of the water initially. Then, put a  piece of ice into the water. Let the system come to equilibrium (even temp) and measure the temperature again. This is the temperature change you plug into the equation q= mC(Tf-Ti). This measures the transfer of heat from the surrounding water to the melting ice. In this case, the ice is the system and the water is the surroundings. You are measuring the heat that is being transferred from the water to melt the ice.
In the equation: q (heat transferred) = (mass of ice+cup+water)(C-specific heat of water)(Tf-Ti)
Heat transferred is equal to the mass of the entire system  X 4.184 (constant value) X change in temp.

If you understand this basic experiment it will help you understand the concept of heat transfer.

See you Tuesday.