The seventh sense: I see chemistry, everywhere

When a recently filled out a questionnaire asking whether I thought about chemistry in my daily life, I said no. Well boy was I wrong. The following moments all happened today:

1) I noticed a social phenomenon that reminded me of nucleophilic substitution. We were sitting in a group and another friend approached us. There were no seats in the vicinity except for one occupied by a stranger to our group and his backpack. The friend who arrived clearly wanted to associate with the positive social nature of our group (i.e. he was the nucleophile). The nucleophile then asked the stranger if he could move his bag so that the nucleophile would have a space to sit. Since the substitution was now complete, the stranger had no attraction to our group and left as a lone anion (he clearly felt a little negative about the whole situation).

2) When I read the ingredients on my flavored drink, I noticed glucose-fructose followed by sucrose. From biochem, I know that when glucose and fructose are joined by dehydration synthesis, they form sucrose. So doesn`t that mean that the company listed sucrose twice in their ingredients list. What`s more frightening is that these were the two most abundent ingredients after water.

3) Lastly, while doing my chemistry tutorial for a lab I have this week, I thought of an interesting mnemonic for electrochemistry (especially if you are an animal lover). It goes as the following: an ox, red cat. See, this mnemonic reminds you that OXidation occurs in the ANode and REDuction occurs at the CAThode. I hope this wasn`t thought of before. It probably has been though.

2 popular athletes, 2 drugs and 2 different reactions

By now, you have probably all heard about the photo of Michael Phelps smoking marijuana. This has landed Phelps in some major trouble including a 3 month ban from swim competition by USA swimming as well as the dropping of some sponsors such as Kellogg (Ouch, that has to hurt. It must feel like Tony the Tiger just punched him in the ...). While everyone is very disappointed that Michael did such a thing, especially when he is a role model for young kids, he technically didn't do anything illegal in terms of prohibited performance enhancing drugs. In fact, pot should probably be considered a performance decreasing drug and Michael should get more praise for winning 8 golds while high (of course this is only speculative. Could you imagine how pissed off the other athletes would feel if they found out he was high while owning them in the pool?) Anyway, news just broke today that in 2003, Alex Rodriguez tested positive for anabolic steroids (that's not to say A-Rod doesn't smoke marijuana as well. In fact, this would probably explain his dating Madonna). You'd think this would be a lot more serious since it actually involves a banned substance but MLB is doing everything to protect him. When asked, the league mentioned that in 2003 there was no penalty for using performance enhancing drugs. Also, the report was supposed to remain confidential and due to this, they could not confirm whether he was or was not in it. I'm not mentioning this to criticize either of these scenarios. It just looks like the theoretically less serious offense is going to get the practically more serious punishment.

I just saw squirrels getting it on

Speechless. Not really. I was carrying stuff from my dorm to the car when I walked through a little forested area. There they were, in all their fervent glory, a pair of squirrels (one grey and one black) doing what Darwin would call "natural selection" (I just made a scientific theory into a dirty word). Before I could contemplate what fraction of their offspring would have a grey phenotype, they noticed me. They stopped, looked up at me and then just kept on going. It was an awkward moment for all involved. I will say that squirrel sex is not as interesting as a squirrel fight to the death. Besides, they weren't even naked (because they had fur, and not because I would like to see a pair of naked squirrels getting it on. shiver).

I don't know what is real any more

I think it is great that the special effects these days are so advanced that I have trouble distinguishing what is real and what is fake. You may think, "Well I knew that King Kong in the new Peter Jackson movie was not real." Well, what about the Skull island or the 1930s New York skyline? Certainly not all of it could be real, but can you really distinguish reality from special effects, especially when everything is moving so quickly? I bring this up because I saw some Superbowl commercials (I didn't watch the actual game because I was working and I didn't have a vested interest in either team). One of the better commercials is shown below:

Hulu's Superbowl Commercial - Ma-Tvideo France2
Découvrez les meilleures pubs du Superbowl 2009 !

Mots-clés : superbowl publicité 2009 advertising usa

Video de humantarget

At first you may think that this is quirky, unexpected and funny (situational irony as you might call it in English). But don't you think that its kind of scary how quickly people just shrug it off and assume its fake. Remember when they first read the War of the Worlds over the radio and everyone thought aliens were attacking. Well, even if aliens were attacking today, I don't think anyone would believe them anymore. I could imagine the following situation happening:

person A: Dude, what the hell is that on TV?

person B: Looks like an alien, man.

Alien: My name is !!aaarchnoo (waves arms up in a sweeping motion) and I come from Uranus. Who is your leader? We will not harm you is you comply with our demands.

person A and B: Did the alien just say he came from Uranus? Hahaha!

person A: This commercial is going on way too long. Change the channel.

person B: Oh, that's right. American Idol is on tonight (switches channels).

See, in my imagined but not so unlikely situation, no one would actually believe aliens were invading. Even if the aliens were able to convince us, they would have a hard time intimidating us. I mean, think of all the movies of us kicking alien ass (the Alien movies, Independence Day, Signs, War of the Worlds etc.). In this situation, I'm pretty sure most North American's wouldn't even sweat about it because they assume that when the time comes, Barrack Obama will just happen to know how to fly a fighter jet and that he will blow the alien mothership to kingdom come.

Colds and Night Midterms don't mix

So I am feeling a bit under the weather recently. Don't worry about catching it as this cold is probably due more to my weak immune system (since I don't do any physical activity) than to some virulent form of a virus. As you guessed, I just finished a midterm tonight in one of my night courses. I thought it was relatively straight forward although some of the questions were quite precise and specific. I also noticed that the multiple choice portion of the exam had many possible answers as in a, b, c...i, j, k etc. The number of choices for each question were also quite different. I could definitely imagine my professor haphazardly typing these up the night before. Maybe they just don't try as hard for night courses. Maybe they are justified in doing this because they are paid less. I don't know how it works. I don't care, as long as I do well on the exam. On a side note, I noticed a poster in the hallway as I was leaving. It read : The AMS is the highest-elected council in the AMS." Is there something I'm missing here or is it just the cold medicine?

The "amputation" diet

While I was googling how much a heart weighs, I found this website about the amputation diet. The word amputation caught my eye so I read it. At first, they were taking about cutting your hair and peeing more to get rid of some extra weight. At this point I thought, okay, it's not as bad as I thought. Then I read the next paragraph. Turns out, the amputation diet actually recommends it's followers to donate body organs, get breast reductions and in some instances actually cut off limbs to shed extra weight.

I could imagine two amputation diet followers having a conversation:
person A: Hey, you look great! What did you cut off today?

person B: Thank you. I finally found a way to get rid of that pesky kidney weight. It feels like that thing has been weighing me down my entire life. Now its finally gone and I feel great.

I just have a little advice for people who are planning to cut off their limbs. If you are not totally insane, you will still want to function in life. This means you will probably require a prostesis or a wheelchair to get around. Realize that these things are often made of METAL and are HEAVY.

Something is going to explode besides that bacon

So I saw this article on the New York Times the other day: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/dining/28bacon.html

It seems like some people in Kansas have come up with a BBQ dish that is becoming quite popular in the US. It is called the bacon explosion. Once you see the pictures, you'll know why. With at least 5000 calories and 500 grams of fat, this monstrosity could feed an entire village in Africa. However, for people who have regular diets eating this thing could lead to a whole host of bad things happening. First of all, you'll definitely be gaining a pound of fat, pork fat. That weighs more than your heart and guess where it is going to first. If fluid dynamics in physics has taught me anything, it is that a partially blocked artery is a bad thing (If someone where to cut that artery, I could predict how much blockage would be necessary to squirt a little boy 10 m away. Thanks, physics!). Secondly, by eating the bacon explosion, pigs will never look at you the same way. Lastly, I would like to see that "Supersize Me" guy document himself trying to eat this thing in one sitting. I would definitely watch that, right after I made sure no pigs were in the room.