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Category: Chemical Stew

Organic Chemistry is not your friend

1572 print of Calicut (Kolkata, formerly Calcutta)
The Phytochemical that Launched a Thousand Ships – Part I

The Phytochemical that Launched a Thousand Ships – Part I

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THE PHYTOCHEMICAL C17H19NO3 As you may recall from high school biology, a phytochemical is any chemical compound that comes from plants. Our species of omnivore consumes huge quantities of phytochemicals everyday: caffeine, sugar, methyl salicylate, vanilla, just to name a few. Because much of our diet is plant-based, many of our daily nutrients are in the form of phytochemicals. Basically, phytochemical is just a fancy word but now that you know it, you can get a lot of mileage out of it…

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grains of green vitriol, better known as copperas or iron sulfate heptahydrate
Green Vitriol

Green Vitriol

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WHAT IS A VITRIOL? Simply put, a vitriol is a metallic sulfate compound, often but not always hydrated. The crystals of most vitriols are glassy and all are soluble in water, making solutions containing sulfuric acid. In fact, the very word vitriol has its origin in the Latin word for glass, vitrum. Out of the ten or so vitriol compounds, one is common and occurs along faults and oxidized zones in metallic mineral deposits: green vitriol, better known to geologists and miners as…

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A crust of lead acetate - sugar of lead - on a lead metal roll
Sugar of Lead

Sugar of Lead

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Today’s article may be the last of the “Science Lite” posts since by this time next week, we may be unpacked enough to resume normal life after the moving across the country.  |  Everyone knows there’s a problem with little kids eating paint chips because of the danger of lead poisoning. The real culprit is not even the main lead-based white pigment but rather a lead-based contaminant found in lower-quality paints. The antiquaited name for this contaminant was sugar of lead….

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Seasonal Psychoactive Drugs

Seasonal Psychoactive Drugs

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We’re in the panic stage of packing and cleaning because we’re leaving…in theory…in a few days.  So the science lite blog posts continue. This week’s offering is a short piece on psychoactive drugs from the podcast site called impromptucast.com.  Playtime is approximately 1 minute. WARNING: put all food and drink down now, and you may want to sit down…  Don’t listen to this at work. CREDITS Pumpkin Spice Chloropromazine is by Sean Clark, who might be married to me, 2017, CC…

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methanethiol molecule model
The Composition of Human Fart Gas

The Composition of Human Fart Gas

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We’re still packing up to move so short “science lite” posts will continue until we get settled in on the other side of the country. Today’s post is about something you’ve all been wanting to know about: human fart gas! HUMAN FART GAS Have you ever been kept from sleeping at night pondering what farts were made of? Ponder no longer. You can now sleep well at night because the knowledge you seek is here at hand! Strangely enough, fart gas…

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Element 118: Oganesson

Element 118: Oganesson

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My blog posts are going to continue to be science-lite until we’re done with our move from Maine to Idaho, sometime in mid-October.  This week’s science-lite offering is our newest element, the element 188, which was officially named  just last year as Oganesson, after physicist Yuri Oganessian, who headed the joint Russian-American team that made the discovery of the element in 2006.  They collided atoms of California-249 and Calcium-48 to produce three – and maybe even four – atoms of…

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The Most Elegant Periodic Table Ever

The Most Elegant Periodic Table Ever

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My blog posts are going to be science-lite until we’re done with our move from Maine to Idaho.  This week’s offering is the most elegant periodic table every drafted.  It is a thing a beauty, stacking the elements by the number of orbitals and arranging them geometrically by type and reactivity.  If you grok physical chemistry, you will really be blown away.  If you don’t grok physical chemistry, then please just appreciate the geometry beauty inherit in the order of…

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figure of Labrador instrument from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/231197.pdf
Corpse Gas Part II: Enter the Soil Gas Cadavermeter

Corpse Gas Part II: Enter the Soil Gas Cadavermeter

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CORPSE GAS 101 At the dawn of the 21st century, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation promoted research into quantitative methods of measuring corpse gasses as an adjunct or possible replacement for cadaver dogs. They funded a joint project with the University of Tennessee body farm and a soil gas group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. A body farm is just what it sounds like: it’s a plot of land where researchers plant corpses in order to study the…

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Corpse Gas Part I: Cadaver Dogs and Other Human Remains Detection Methods

Corpse Gas Part I: Cadaver Dogs and Other Human Remains Detection Methods

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Beginning in 2010, I had the opportunity to help in the search for Susan Powell, a mother of two toddlers from West Valley City, Utah. Susan is a missing person. She was last seen on the evening of December 7, 2009. Her husband, the now-deceased Josh Powell, remains the sole “person of interest” in her disappearance. The details of her case made headlines internationally so I won’t repeat them here. There are three good “true crimes” books out on the…

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mercury danger sign
Methylmercury Poisoning

Methylmercury Poisoning

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When people worry about mercury in fish, it’s organic methylated mercury they’re worrying about. METHYLMERCURY SOURCES While there are a multitude of mercury chemicals, the ones that concern human life are methylated compounds of mercury. One major source of methylmercury is industry. The chlorine-chemical plants and pulp-paper mills have historically discharged fluids contaminated with methylmercury into rivers, lakes and oceans as part of their waste stream. This practice is now illegal in many places, like the United States and Sweden,…

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