Category Archives: Fun

Elements of research

I’ve seen a few periodic tables doing the rounds on Twitter where people have filled in the elements that they’ve worked with. This is not a new thing — I’ve seen these over the last few years — but with it currently … Continue reading

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Periodic car Scrabble

Sources: Elements (the periodic table, duh) | Scrabble words | International licence plates

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Getting into sloe business

I recently went to the 2018 Spring ACS meeting in New Orleans (#ACSNOLA). It’s a big chemistry conference and not only was I going in order to see some cool chemistry, but I was also asked to give a couple … Continue reading

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Joy provision

The July 2017 issue of Nature Chemistry is the 100th and the Editorial celebrates this milestone. I decided to have a little fun while writing it and was inspired by this story from @Helena_LB about including song titles from Metallica’s … Continue reading

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Periodic prose

It is, apparently, #WorldPoetryDay (on Twitter at least) and the question of writing a scientific paper in poetry form cropped up again (it does every now and then). And when it does, I usually end up digging through the dusty … Continue reading

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Another 100 chemists on Twitter

After someone (Per-Ola Norrby, I think) pointed out that my original list of 100 chemists on Twitter is now down to 99 (there’s 100 in the blog post, but the Twitter list only has 99 members now that one of … Continue reading

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Back to the future (of chemistry publishing)

So, here’s my obligatory Back-to-the-Future Day post and, because it is me doing this, it’s obviously about chemistry publishing. I figured I’d compare one issue of a journal published in 1985, with an issue published in 2015. Because the last … Continue reading

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A silicon spoof

This post is a follow-up to yesterday’s (did you notice the date?) that looked at an April 1981 paper by Dietmar Seyferth and James J. Pudvin published in the (now defunct) ACS journal CHEMTECH. This article reports the isolation of … Continue reading

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Some surprising silicon chemistry

Ever since Scott Denmark told me about a gem of a paper back at the Bürgenstock conference a few years, I’ve been meaning to blog about it. Well, today is as good a day as any* I suppose, so here … Continue reading

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How to make sloe gin… and a little bit of chemistry

First, the recipe. Making sloe gin really is as easy as 1, 2, 3… – it only requires three ingredients (a fourth is optional) and the particular ratio my recipe uses is 1:2:3 (sugar:sloes:gin). The recipe is easily scaled depending … Continue reading

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