Making Science Fun!

[major_clanger]

Grad student uses nuclear magnetic resonance and thin layer chromatography to examine his earwax.

We had a combined gas chromatograph / mass spectrometer at school that one of our chemistry teachers had rescued from a lab; he was a very traditional sort (insisted on demonstrating the thermite reaction rather than being a wuss and showing a video) and I doubt if he would have approved of this sort of thing, somehow.

Comments

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Ha! We got the "thermite chessboard": eight metals and metal oxides to be mixed, heated and observed - I suspect that the size of the class (about 20) wasn't the only reason we didn't get to see all 56 combinations.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Cool! Maybe that's why you became a chemist?

[akicif.livejournal.com]

That, and other fun and games - although I was already fairly close to being seduced by the flashy-bangy side of the force. Ironic I should end up in crystallography and molecular modelling/mechanics, though.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

With the dangerous flash bang experiments usually banned by health and safety, its no wonder that recruitment is dropping...

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Did they not mix a metal with its own oxide for completeness's sake?

[akicif.livejournal.com]

'Fraid not.

I used to wonder - if you'd a metal oxide and a radioisotope of the same metal and heated them up together, would you get some small degree of transfer? And if you took the stable metal and the oxidised radioisotope, would, would the degree be different?

[I'm not sure anything would happen, but if it did, there should be an isotope effect]

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

We still demo the thermit (Thermite is a trademark) reaction several times a year, the only real dangers are burns and inhaling barium from the starter reaction, both of which are easily fixed by doing it in a fume cupboard. I hope they never dumb things down to the extent that we can't do it.