Don't give up!

No, I haven't given up on blogging just yet.
No, I haven't forgotten either.
I'm just tied up trying hard to finish my thesis.

More to come, I promise.

The beholder has eyes, but so do I

You know the old saying "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" ?

(just for reference, this source claims Margaret Wolfe Hungerford is credited with the earliest appearance in her book Molly Bawn, dated 1878).

Anyways, I am currently in the midst of organizing and promoting an event which will take place this coming Saturday in the Chemistry building at UofT.
The event is part of the national Culture Days weekend which is dedicated to "raise the awareness, accessibility, participation and engagement of Canadians in the arts and cultural life of their communities"

For me, Science is a big part of my culture. I rely on science to decide which food to buy (or not buy), which cleaning products to use (or not use), and so many other decisions we all make every single day, entangled in our habits, our ideas, our opinions, our passions, our perception.

But wait, there's more. Science is not just part of our culture. It is also an object (if one can classify science as an object) of BEAUTY.

I think SCIENCE is BEAUTIFUL.

This is my subjective perception. I am the beholder.
And so many others share this feeling too (here's a few of them):



We all have a different idea of what it is in science that we find beautiful.
It is the surprise, the challenges, the novelty?
Is it the final answer or the process of getting that answer?

There is no right answer. They are all equally correct. Isn't that beautiful in itself?

So what will we do to show people how beautiful science can be?
Well, thank you for asking. We will be making paintings. But not in the ordinary fashion. No. We will try to surprise you in the way we draw.
And we'll also show some neat chemistry which you can do to create art.

(can you tell I'm being careful not giving away all our secrets just yet... but I do promise to post pictures and videos after the event is over)

So what is it that I'm trying to say?
Well, that sometimes, it is nice to stop thinking about explaining science. Sometimes, its nice to think about how you feel about science.

For the Love of Science

Sometimes others can articulate your thoughts so much better than you, at which point your best choice is to nod and say "you just read my thoughts".

John Skylar put it beautifully on his website:

http://www.johnskylar.com/post/61507282912/why-you-dont-fucking-love-science

Thank you John.

A Table Tale

(The following piece was first posted on www.chemicalsareyourfriends.com, to which I am now contributing my thoughts on Chemistry. I will, however, keep on posting stuff which is not strictly chemistry here, in addition to mirroring my writing on Chemistry)


It is merely a table. Or is it.... I first heard Tom Lehrer sing "The Elements" song when I was taking my first year general chemistry course more than a decade ago.

 

 The song lists all the elements known at the time, which was only 102, compared to the 114 officially recognized elements we have today, all sang to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's Major-General's song. The final words of the song are:

"These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,

And there may be many others, but they haven't been discahvahd"

And here lies the true wonder of the graphical masterpiece commonly known as "The Periodic Table of the Elements". Its name is misleading, since by the use of the word 'table' one may expect nothing more than "an orderly arrangement of data". But the periodic table is actually something completely different.

It is ... (wait for it, building the suspense here) .... A GRAPH!!!!
Or more precisely, an amalgamation of many graphs!!!
Yes, that's the truth.

What is the difference you may ask?
Well, a table is usually a way of presenting information in a tidy fashion to make it easier to find specific information of relevance. But a graph is a much more powerful tool. A graph plots values that are correlated to two or more attributes. Once plotted, trends can sometimes be observed. And if a trend exists - you can PREDICT! After all, science is more than just observing nature and taking notes. Science is about using the earlier observations in order to predict the outcome of future experiments (aka forming hypotheses)!
When Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleev first published his periodic table of the elements in 1869, the elements were (for the most part) arranged based on their molecular weights. Mendeleev noticed that when arranging the elements according to their molecular weights (since atomic numbers were not yet a measurable quantity at that time - see footnote), you can arrange the elements in such a way that certain periodicities arise with respect to the properties of the elements. But the true breakthrough in Mendeleev's approach was that he then utilized his discovered pattern to predict new elements which had not yet been discovered. By using the periodic trends in the properties of the elements, he was able to predict some of the properties of those yet-to-be-discovered elements. And guess what ... he was right. Shortly after, Gallium, Scandium and Germanium were discovered, corroborating Mendeleev's hypothesis and exemplifying the practicality of the periodic table of the elements.

 I mentioned the word "periodicity" several times, but periodicity of what? The answers is: quite a fair bit. Let's look at how the Ionization energy of the various elements changes when ordered in the periodic table arrangement. (The ionization energy is the amount of energy needed to separate one electron from the initially neutral atom). In the above graph, the height of each element corresponds to its first ionization energy (in eV units). So what can we tell by looking at the graph? The first obvious observation is that when moving down each column, the height decreases (granted there are some exceptions, but let's look at the general rule). Another observation is that when moving from left to right along each row, the height generally increases, although several sharp drops are seen (such as in the case of N-nitrogen and O-oxygen or Cd-cadmium and In-indium). You can check out some more examples at www.chemicool.com . Atomic radius, ionization energy, melting point, boiling point, density; they all show a periodic behavior when plotted against their atomic numbers (again see footnote). Why do we get such periodicities you might be wondering? The atomic number, the number of protons in the nucleus of the element, provides the basis of the periodicities in the periodic table. The more protons there are , the heavier the atom is. Additionally, the atomic number also indicates the number of electrons around the nucleus (since the atoms in their pure state are neutral, therefore for every positively charged proton in the nucleus there will be a negatively charged electron around it). As the number of electrons increases, the atomic radius becomes larger (with exception of 'kinks' due to periodic changes in the arrangement of the electrons, similar to the sudden sharp drops we saw for the ionization energies). And since electrons are the main players in chemical reactions, the number of electrons and their specific arrangement around the nucleus will affect the reactivity of the element. In chemistry, electrons like to be paired. Just like people (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). Let's take a look at the group with a common attribute along a vertical line in the periodic table: Lithium, Sodium and Potassium. They all have a single unpaired electron, and are similarly reactive because an unpaired electron is more reactive being all by itself.
Contrary to the above group of elements, Helium, Neon and Argon have all their electrons paired. They are all similarly nonreactive and belong to the same group along a vertical line in the periodic table. (In fact, the electronic structure is more complicated than simple pairing, which is why we saw fluctuations in the above graph where the ionization energy showed sharp drops in the general increasing trend moving from left to right along the rows. Since this post is getting quite long, I'll leave such descriptions to another time) The periodic 'table' contains a plethora of information. Graphically, it is (probably) the most concise form to summarize an astounding amount of information.
 So next time you gaze at the periodic table, remember, it is more than 'just' a table. It is the essence of the chemistry that makes up our entire universe!


 Footnote: The numbers we see today as the basic ordering of the elements are the Atomic Numbers. These are the number of protons in the nucleus of each of the elements, but they were only discovered in 1913 by Henry Moseley, which makes Mendeleev's accomplishment even more impressive.

Science Fair at the Science Camp

Wow, it is sooooo hot and humid these days in Toronto.

And like every summer, Toronto is bustling with tourists.
But more than that, Toronto is a popular place for people from all over the world to come and improve their English skills, while soaking up sun and sites of this gorgeous place.

How does that have anything to do with science?
Well, as it happens, this last Saturday, as part of the Pueblo Science experience, we held a "Science Fair" event for the CISS ESL camp at St. Michael's University.

We had a GREAT time!!!!

We had:

Balloons pushed into Liquid Nitrogen

What you see:
When an inflated balloon is pushed into liquid nitrogen it shrinks.
When taking it out of the liquid nitrogen, it expands back to its former size.

Why does that happen?
That's because the trapped air inside shrinks when the temperatures drop, and expands when the temperature increases.
The pressure inside is always constant at 1atm, same as in the atmosphere.
The amount of air molecules which are mainly nitrogen molecules and oxygen molecules is kept fixed because the balloon is closed tight.
The only two variables left to be changed are the temperature (liquid nitrogen is at -196 centigrade!) and the volume.
The relation between all these attributes (pressure, volume, amount and temperature) is called:
The Ideal Gas Law, which is P*V = n*R*T
(P is the pressure,
V is the volume
n is the amount of molecules
T is the temperature
and R is a constant that relates all of the above to one another and is called not surprisingly - the gas constant) 

 

We also had:

The Disappearing Vial

 What you see:

When you submerge a glass vial into a glass filled with oil, the vial becomes invisible!!!!!!

Why does this happen?

The reason we can see things is because light hits them, bounces back, and hits our eyes.

But the medium around the object also plays a role.

For instance, we look at a coin on the table, it is easy to see it and grab it.

But when the coin is in a pool of water, we see it, but have a herder time grabbing it.

This is because the water bends the light as it penetrates it. This bending of light is called REFRACTION, and the extent by which light is refracted is called "Refractive Index"

When light passed from one medium (say water) to another medium (say glass) the light will bend if the refractive indexes are not the same. 

BUT, if the refractive indexes are the same (like in our case with oil and glass), then light passes through without bending (or, refracting) going straight through. This makes the glass appear invisible!

 

 

 And also:

Non-Newtonian Fluid

 What you see:
When you mix corn starch and water, you get a gooey mixture (very slimy).
When you push your finger in it slowly, it goes all the way in.
When you pound it hard and fast, it cannot penetrate. The mixture appears 'solid'.

Why does that happen?
Newton was able to formulate how fluids behave by stating that when you apply a force on them, the fluid will flow. But like all motion, fluids experience "friction" which is referred to as viscosity.
What Newton saw was that viscosity was constant of the material, and only changed with temperature.
However, some fluids (like our corn starch) behave differently. (therefore the term - "non-Newtonian")
Our stuff 'solidifies' with strong force, meaning its viscosity increases with force.
When the force is weak, the viscosity is lower.

There were a few more activities, but I think this post is long enough.
I'll continue this another time.
Stay tuned....

Misleading titles - real science, false impression

Science breakthroughs are exciting. They change our lives, they hold the promise for a better world.
Sometimes the explanation is straight forward, and can be easily understood by most people, even if they don't have any related background.

But sometimes, in the process of trying to convey breakthrough research to the ordinary person, editors (or bloggers, or twitters, or facebookers or .....) pick up on a concept they know about (even partially) and use that as the "catch", the title that will make people want to read the article/watch the video.

The problem?

Creating a false notion in people's perception. Misleading them to think something which is (scientifically speaking) is not true.

Today's example (and there are examples like this one popping out too often than one would like to admit):

"Doctors Take A Long Shot And Inject HIV Into Dying Girl. The Reason Why Will Amaze You."

But the real science is more subtle than that, as carefully outlined by Cancer Research UK:
http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2013/06/25/no-doctors-did-not-inject-hiv-into-a-dying-girl-to-treat-her-cancer/

Their most important message to the public is:
"To be absolutely clear, the doctors in the video did NOT inject HIV – nor a “deadly disease” – into a child."

The reason for the misleading title is pinned to the fact that:
"According to the video ... the virus used in these experiments was originally derived from HIV, ... However, the virus has undergone significant genetic tinkering, meaning that it is no longer harmful ... And it’s arguable whether it should even be referred to as HIV at all, given how much it has been altered."

What really happened was that the HIV was used to alter the patient's own immune cells, to allow them to "infect" the rest of the body's immune cells with a new genetic trait (the one that kills the cancer cells).


Perhaps one can be forgiving, saying "but you admit that they used HIV, so what's all the fuss?"
The problem is that with such a title, people get the impression that HIV was the cure, where is fact, it was simply a "tool" to reprogram the body's immune cells.

Would you believe me if I told you I painted my house with Acetone? you would think this is odd.
But if I used Acetone as a paint thinner, and painted my house with the "modified" paint, you would naturally say that claiming I painted my house with Acetone is misleading. Yes, Acetone was part of the paint, but saying I painted with Acetone gives you the wrong impression.
Exactly like the story of the HIV and cancer cure. 

Words are powerful.
Use them wisely.

Distillations

I just received the University of Toronto CHEMISTRY ALUMNI MAGAZINE called DISTILLATIONS.

I was honored to be included in the "Graduate Profiles" for this addition

as well as mentioning the work Pueblo Science does, promoting science literacy

I want to take the opportunity to personally thank Penny and Nina from the Chemistry Department for their constant support, and for the wonderful job they are doing.