checking in

A few random thoughts...

1) Up until last week, I thought the lyrics to The Killers song "Human" were:

Are we human? Or are we dancer?

Like I thought it was this great ode to dancing. Yeah, I'm not human, I'm dancer! Yay dance! Turns out the actual words are:

Are we human? Or are we denser? 

Which does make a little more sense, I suppose.

NEVER MIND. It IS dancer, and I clearly am unable to find reputable lyric websites.

2) The other day I read this review article about chemical gardens, which are these alien plant-looking mineral formations. It turned out my lab had everything needed to make some. So I did, and I posted about it on Twitter, and a million (okay like 40) people retweeted it, and I felt so cool.

BEHOLD THE MAJESTY:

What you do is make a sodium silicate solution (which you can do at home by crushing up some silica beads like you find in the do-not-eat packets in shoes or electronics and mixing it with lye) and then drop in some metal salts (which you can buy on Amazon, like everything else in existence). Pictured above left to right the metal salts used are: copper(II) chloride, cobalt(II) chloride, zinc chloride, and iron(II) chloride. Different metals lead to different colors and different growth patterns. Chemistry is so great. 

3) Speaking of how great chemistry is, here's a piece by Oliver Sacks that spells it out a lot more beautifully than I can. As he is dying of metastatic cancer, he finds comfort in the physical sciences:

"Times of stress throughout my life have led me to turn, or return, to the physical sciences, a world where there is no life, but also no death.

 And now, at this juncture, when death is no longer an abstract concept, but a presence — an all-too-close, not-to-be-denied presence — I am again surrounding myself, as I did when I was a boy, with metals and minerals, little emblems of eternity."

Little emblems of eternity. I love that.

4) I started listening to podcasts on my walk to/from lab. #muchculture. I am loving Invisibilia and Radiolab, especially this episode. Parents of a baby who died a few days after being born donated his body to medical research, and a little while later, his mom tried to find out exactly where his organs went and what they were used for. It made me cry and feel proud to be a scientist.

5) Aaron and I were recently debating over buying an ice cream machine because it seemed like a fun new cooking adventure we should try out. And then out of the blue, Wendy sent us one because she is the best! It turns out making ice cream is super easy and delicious. We've tried salted caramel and mint chip, and basically if you come to our house for a party or dinner in the future I'M MAKING YOU ICE CREAM!

So...that's how things are going around here lately. What are you loving these days? What else should I be reading/listening to/eating? I mean besides ice cream, obviously.

too many scan cycles

A conversation between me and Aaron, just after I'd woken up, having fallen asleep at 9 PM on the couch:

Me (very confused and somewhat angry): Ugh, my neck hurts from sleeping on it for 800 scan cycles.
Aaron: What the heck are you talking about?
Me: I don't understand why you don't understand! A scan cycle!
Aaron: Umm...?
Me: You know, like waiting for it to scan 1 nanometer at a time!
Aaron: You sound like a crazy person right now.
Me (now very angry): Whatever, I'm going to bed.

What can we learn from this?
A. I hate waking up at 11:30 at night. Or actually, I should say that I hate waking up from naps, regardless of when they occur.
B. Apparently I have been using the CD spectrometer too much, because I know that was what I was thinking about when I decided to start using scan cycles as a unit of time (much to Aaron's bewilderment).

(Does this make me a good grad student now? Maybe I can be less stressed about not being stressed enough because science has infiltrated my just-barely-consciousness!)

grad school: I think I'm doing it wrong

The other week I went to a de-stressing seminar sponsored by the Women in Chemistry club. As I listened to everyone talk about how stressed out they are, and how they feel the need to constantly be in the lab and feel guilty when they're not, I realized maybe my grad school experience so far has been an anomaly.

I don't think I'm stressed enough. I get to lab between 8 and 9 in the morning, and leave around 6 every day, plus a few hours on Saturdays. When I get home, I do nothing related to chemistry. I don't read papers or ponder my data. And up until that seminar, I didn't even feel guilty about it. BUT, now I'm stressed out that I'm not stressed out enough, which I guess is simultaneously solving the problem and yet making my life a lot less enjoyable.

I think I would be able to brush it off and go back to my low stress level grad school style because I wasn't planning on having a career in chemistry (or any career at all really), UNTIL. Aaron ran some numbers and saw that we would have some pretty serious money problems if we tried to live on his residency salary with kids and $200,000 in debt. So...post doc? Does that mean I have to write 15 papers now? CAUSE NOW I'M STRESSED BECAUSE EVERYONE'S MORE STRESSED THAN ME AND DOES MORE WORK THAN ME AND I JUST WANTED TO HAVE BABIES POST-PhD AND NOW MAYBE I NEED TO ACTUALLY GET A JOB, AND THANKS A LOT DE-STRESSING SEMINAR.

I did get a little yellow smiley face stress ball out of it, though, so it wasn't a total loss.

ahhh science

This week I have to give a presentation to my lab group about all the research I've been doing this summer. Apparently I'm a little more anxious about it than I was consciously aware because last night I had a horrible nightmare where it was right before I was supposed to present, and I was flipping through my powerpoint and all of my slides were messed up with the wrong text or in the wrong order and all of my Raman spectra had been replaced with roadmaps. When I woke up I had to check my presentation to make sure everything was okay. It was, except for the fact that I still don't actually have anything to say about my data. Maybe I'll go with a modern art feel and just throw it up on the projector and say, "Interpret it however you want!" and then run out of the room. 

I bet that will impress my professor. 

i hate titling my posts

Today, I parallel parked for the first time since moving to Philadelphia. I have successfully avoided it for nine months, which I think is rather impressive itself, but finally I sucked it up and parked, parallelly, on the left side of a road, on a very narrow street. (okay, the parking spot was pretty big, but still!)
THERE IS NOTHING I CAN'T DO NOW, WORLD!

(Oh, and the fact that I am driving means our car is all fixed up and back to us, all clean and shiny with a new window and paint and no more Diet Coke residue in the cup holders! Two weeks ahead of schedule!)

Another thing: science friends, have you seen these articles published recently in Angewandte?

Blood typing inspired by Tom Riddle's diary in Harry Potter

Using NIR imaging spectroscopy to look at paint binders in illuminated manuscripts

I mean, cool! Harry Potter and illuminated manuscripts. It doesn't get much better than that...unless you can also parallel park.

Hope your weekend is lovely and that you conquer some major fear so you can feel invincible, too!

speaking of female scientists...

My photo made it onto the This is What a Scientist Looks Like tumblr! I think that means I am famous now. Or just really vain.

i'm mostly here for the pretty colors

This is just your friendly reminder that chemistry is awesome.

Bismuth crystal. Isn't it gorgeous?! It looks like stairs! I want one on a necklace.

Cobalt chloride crystals that are the same color as the pair of jeans Nordstrom just shipped me. 

Cobalt blue! So great!

i ate plutonium

This Saturday a bunch of chemists and I got together and baked the periodic table. That's 118 cookies guys! And you know what's really awesome? We were able to pipe the lettering for every element except the Uux ones from memory.

I think someone should just give us our PhDs now.

(By the way, Mindy Kaling's book was really good! I read it all in one sitting yesterday afternoon and couldn't stop laughing. It was just the thing to cheer me up after my disastrous organometallics test.)

the more i write, the more i think the whole premise of my proposal is flawed

You know what's a bad idea? Telling a professor that you're interested in a career in science writing when you're going to have to turn in a nice little 5 page paper of science writing and you know you're going to end up still writing it at midnight the night before.

Not my best science writing tonight, guys. Oh well, oh well! My concern for this is decreasing exponentially with time.

How's your school life been lately?

turns out i have to memorize the f-block too.

Sometimes, this is how I study. I draw pich-AHS!

Everything is reversed in the photo, unfortunately, because the order is the whole point! This is how I have memorized the actinoids in two stories:

An actor (actinium) acting as Thor (thorium) is protecting (protactinium) his uranium (...uranium) from evil Neptune (neptunium). All of this happens on the planet Pluto (plutonium), which has a frowny face because it's not actually a planet anymore.

In America (americium), Marie Curie (curium) goes to Berkeley (berkelium) in California (californium). While there, she chats with Einstein (einsteinium), Enrico Fermi (fermium), and Mendeleev (mendelevium). She wins the Nobel prize (nobelium) and gives it to her dog, Lawrence (lawrencium).

Now I just need to come up with one for the lanthanoids and a better way to remember transition metals instead of trying to make sounds with their symbols (TiZr Huf Ruf, anyone?)

it is all matter

"There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes. We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter."

Doctrine and Covenants 131:7-8

What a cool set of verses! All I know is, there is some rad chemistry going on there, and when I die, I'm going to ask God all about it.

the future of science is in their hands so we tried to make it look as cool as possible

I never posted about our second annual chemistry Open Lab Day, so here it is! Last year we did the same sort of thing where we invited all students 5-12th grade to come to the chemistry building, do experiments themselves in our teaching labs (this year they made a component in sunscreen, analyzed caffeine content of painkillers, and identified some unknown compounds in a solution). We also have a big chemistry "magic" show, have tours of our research labs (lasers! nuclear magnetic resonance! oh my!), and serve liquid nitrogen ice cream. It's been my job to run around and take pictures and generally make sure things are running smoothly. It's so much fun to watch the kids get excited about science, especially high schoolers who are normally way too cool to get excited about anything. My former AP chem teacher told all of her students that if they got a picture with me at the event that she'd give them extra extra credit. So it was fun feeling like a mini celebrity getting my picture taken with all of these kids, he he. 

My sister Becky helped volunteer! And when the elementary school kids got finished with an experiment early, she was pro at keeping them entertained in the hall (she's an el ed major).

 My little sister Abby came and in this photo is demonstrating her superb reasoning skills with the magic fish experiment (put your goggles back on, missy!)

High school students work on their aldol condensation (a lab straight from the chem 353 course at the university-how cool is that?)

More high school students work on their caffeine content experiment.

Basically, it was awesome. A film crew from the college showed up at the end to capture some magic show footage and made a sweet video. Basically, chemists are the closest a muggle's going to get to Harry Potter. Click here for proof! (look for the goblet of fire)

i just can't take any more transcription initiation factors.

Sometimes, it is really hard to concentrate when I'm studying biochemistry because I just feel like I'm looking at a craft catalog the entire time.

Evidence:

If that doesn't just scream ribbon explosion, I don't know what does.

(figures of proteins. which ones, I don't know, which is probably why I'm going to fail my biochem final tomorrow)

arch

We liked St. Louis! We already knew the med school was fantastic, but what we didn't realize is how much freaking money they have over there, and how much they're willing to give to students, for doing medicine abroad, financial aid, awesome sweatshirts, great food, etc. Aaron's in the running for an apply by invitation only full tuition merit scholarship...so...that would be extra awesome if he was to get that, and we didn't have to pay a dime for the $200,000 education he'd be receiving. I also got to hang out at the chemistry department and chat with a bunch of professors and grad students. There are a few professors whose research interests me, particularly this one guy who does a bunch of nanomaterials drug delivery stuff. Super cool. 

And! I got the decision deadline for grad school extended by a month until May 15th (instead of tomorrow, April 15th) so that we can wait and hear what financial aid Aaron gets at Penn and Wash U. Yay extensions!

In other great news we won $450 from the chemistry department awards banquet! I got the writing student of the year award and Aaron got the inorganic student of the year and senior of the year. Yay chemistry! We love you! When we're rich in 20 years, we'll donate money for a scholarship to pay that back.  

That's what we've been up to lately. Finals are next week, and we have to make up our minds soon about where we want to be living the next 4-5 years of our life. For someone who has a hard time choosing what to wear or what to cook, this is quite the dilemma.

a picture's worth a thousand words

We went to Disneyland, we ate at a pricey Japanese restaurant, we talked with professors we want to work with in grad school, we went to the Newport Beach temple, we presented our posters, we learned about photodynamic therapy and making supramolecular compounds, we dance partied,  we missed a lot of school.

It was awesome.

(and now there are only 8 days left of school! and I have two tests to take and a scary amount of math homework to finish. bah.)

pennnnnnnn

Philadelphia =

And it's a darn good thing because Aaron got accepted at Penn last week! And now I'm here in the city (having survived an all alone red eye flight + layover in Atlanta, I'm so brave) for the chem department's open house! And it's so great!

More later. Must sleep [in a bed...and not an airplane seat]

today's color palette: ripe lemon and plum, with a hint of metallic

Cr(acac)3

Mn(acac)3

(C5H5)2Fe2(CO)4

Isn't that plum purple on the second photo beautiful? And the shine on that third photo! I'm telling you, I spend 6 hours a week in Chem 518 making glitter.

At the end of the semester I'm going to line up all of my little vials of compounds I've made in the order of the rainbow and take a picture and it will be so beautiful I won't be able to stop typing really long sentences with way too many clauses and too few commas.

In case you're curious, that little football shaped thing in the second and third photo is a magnetic stir..egg..I guess you could call it. We put it in the beaker with all of your starting materials on top of a magnetic stir plate so that your reaction solution gets stirred! Pretty cool.

one thing's for sure, our kids are going to have kick butt science fair projects

I think if I were in charge of marketing science to little kids, particularly little girls, all I'd say is, "Be a chemist, and you can make glitter and pretty colored things!!"

Behold the evidence:

trans-dichlorobis(ethylenediamine)cobalt(III) chloride

(synthesized today in lab! it was in this really pretty dark, dark turquoise liquid, absolutely gorgeous) 

Buckminsterfullerene (60 carbon atoms bonded together in the shape of a soccer ball)

(made last week)

Buckminsterfullerene with flash!

Gold flakes about to be dissolved by aqua regia

 Dissolved gold in aqua regia!

(Isn't that cool? Did you ever think about gold dissolving?)

I think that the colors just might be my favorite thing about chemistry. So beautiful.

plasmons and phototherapy

I am having horrible flashbacks to 391 (go here, here, or here for a taste of what that was like)
because it is 4:50 AM, and I'm still working on my paper for chem 514. It's actually pretty interesting, because wouldn'tcha know I picked an awesome group on the periodic table (copper, silver, and gold) for my topic.
There are so many cool applications of gold nanoparticles! You can do tumor cell imaging! And then proceed to selectively kill the tumor cells!

But I would really, really, really like to go to bed now.
Only 3.5 more pages...

get that corn outta my face

I dream in chemistry all the time these days. A couple weeks ago I was measuring concentrations using a spectrophotometer but in my dream I thought I was doing Raman spectroscopy. And then like two days ago I dreamed about NMR and figuring out structures of organic compounds.


but. i still. do. terrible. on instrumental. analysis. tests.


and i still. do. awesome. on verbal sections of practice GRE tests.


Sometimes, you know what, I feel like Nacho Libre:
"Precious Father, why have you given me this desire to wrestle and then made me such a stinky warrior?"


It's just disappointing that I finally found out that it makes no difference whether I'm up to my eyes in ballroom or not, I still don't have the self-discipline and motivation to do well in school.