Moving Through Color

I have a lot of friends who are premeds, so they definitely aren't all bad. That said, some of them are pretty hard to be in class with. Especially the ones who are SUPER competitive - they dominate office hours and take up the instructor's time with questions that are sometimes only relevant to themselves. One of my TAs was complaining about one of the that argued with him for 30 minutes over half a point. There's a point where it goes past acceptable academic competition.

At the risk of being incredibly whiny, what exactly is everyone's beef with med students? D: I just finished my biology degree with pre-med and I guess I was just surrounded by med students because I do not understand

It’s just exhausting to be in a class you enjoy and are taking because you want to do science and be surrounded by students who are constantly complaining about how much they hate it, and don’t need it, and are only taking it because it’s going to be on the MCAT. Certainly not all pre-meds are like that, but even the 10% who constantly ask questions about if they’re going to get an A and look down at the mere science students kind of ruin it when you have to deal with them in every class.

I will say, a large part of the problem isn’t even pre-med students themselves, it’s the fact that biology departments have to bear the burden of the majority of their students being pre-professional in some capacity, who have completely different needs than pre-doctoral students who want to be biologists. Bio programs end up teaching to the MCAT almost out of necessity, which does a disservice to the students who want to be scientists. 

I know that at my university, I considered switching to bio from chem, but ended up staying in the science and engineering college because the bio college was so focused on pre-professional students that they did a really poor job preparing you to be an actual scientist. Just based on the classes I took for my biochem minor, it was really obvious. I suspect that this is the case at a lot of schools, which sort of compounds the issues and makes pre-doctoral students frustrated with pre-meds, even though it’s not their fault directly.

twelve Essek Thelyss valentines/pick-up lines that no one asked for

Are you a Gravity Sinkhole? Because I’m feeling a powerful attraction to you.

Can I quantum tunnel my way into your classically forbidden region?

My favorite food is soups, but I’m thinking of eating out tonight.

Do you have truesight? Because you see right through me, valentine.

Let me show you a kindness.

No war crimes tonight, valentine. Unless you are into– look, I said I was sorry–

Valentine, I’m walking on air whenever I’m with you.

The inexorable flow of linear time isn’t the only thing I’m violating tonight.

Do you believe in love at first sight, or shall I invoke Fortune’s Favor and reroll my Charisma check?  

Can you clear the cats off the bed, valentine?

Have you been bound to a Luxon Beacon? Because I think you’re conse-cute.

Of my many regrets, loving you will never be one of them.

We had to use an old-school GC much like this in one of our teaching labs. It felt like traveling back to another age.

Old school UV-visible spectrometry

There’s something oddly satisfying about watching the needle move

The cellular structure of wood as seen through a Victorian microscope. (via)

Day in the life of a scientist

Me, at an art store: I need a paint marker with low toxicity and a delicate tip.

Employee: What kind of project are you working on?

Me: It's for a research project. I just need bright colors.

Employee: What medium are you using? Canvas or paper?

Me: uh....spiders.

Employee: Plastic or felt?

Me: ....live spiders. Like, from the forest.

Employee: ....

Employee: I have to get back to the counter.

Superfluids, a special type of fluid located below the lambda point near absolute zero, exhibit some mind-bending properties like zero viscosity and zero entropy. They are, in essence, a macroscopic manifestation of quantum mechanics. Here their thermomechanical, or fountain, effect is explained. This bizarre state of matter isn’t only found in laboratories, though. Scientists now think that superfluids may exist at the heart of neutron stars.

SEED MONEY

After the price of gold dropped in the 1980s, Fred Libby left the mines of Arizona, where he worked with precious metals, and started Treehouse Silver Inc. with his wife, Connie. The Libbys now grow small crystals of copper, gold, silver, and other minerals and sell them to more than 250 gift shops around the country. They grew this crystal by dissolving copper wire in a hot mixture of water and nitric acid. Then they dipped two copper plates into the solution, one of which had pennies attached to it. The plates are hooked up to opposite ends of a low-voltage power source with the pennies plate connected to the power source’s negative end. After about a day, copper in the solution gets reduced to copper metal and crystallizes in long, thin structures on the pennies.

Credit: Treehouse Silver Inc. 

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The Beauty of Discovery

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never don't reblog labphoto

Distillation of the reaction product from a pressure tube. 

This picture may look like that’s nothing special with it, but in the receiving flask (left side) there is a really-really special disulfide what I was able to prepare first time in pure form with a high yield. For months I was unable to prepare this molecule with a high selectivity from the starting materials. Always at least 2-5 side products formed and the product was only isolated in a low, 10-20% yield. 

We take for granted that drops which impact a solid surface will splash, but, in fact, drops only splash when the surrounding air pressure is high enough. When the air pressure is low enough, drops simply impact and spread, regardless of the fluid, drop height, or surface roughness. Why this is and what role the surrounding air plays remains unclear. Here researchers visualize the air flow around a droplet impact. In (a) we see the approaching drop and the air it pulls with it. Upon impact in (b) and © the drop spreads and flattens while a crown of air rises in its wake. The drop’s spread initiates a vortex ring that is pinned to the drop’s edge. In later times (d)-(f) the vortex ring detaches from the drop and rolls up. (Photo credit: I. Bischofberger et al.)

Gale pin design✨