Cryptic Bits About Th’ Gaussling
This is a running commentary on items of interest to Gaussling- Process chemistry, intellectual property, airplanes, politics, and our fabulous chemical industry in general. Th’ Gaussling still manages to do a bit of research and generates new and more clever failure modes in chemical synthesis.
Weasel Words: Comments of Th’ Gaussling are his own blunders and should in no way be construed to represent opinions or practices of employers past and present.
Profile: Th’ Gaussling has taken more than a few of the cow paths less traveled. A moody Chemist-Bohemian with Buddhist leanings, I was born too late to participate in the hippy movement. I really dig chemistry, airplanes, and theater. Arguably, Gaussling’s truly important achievement is having produced a great kid with a dry sense of humor and a love of language.
Oh yes, a “Gaussling” is a slang name invented for someone who really digs NMR- nuclear magnetic resonance.
I’m extremely impressed with your calendar archiving system for your blog posts, and just wondered how you’d managed to implement it? Is it a WordPress plugin or part of the style sheet? All hints and tips gratefully received!
WordPress has all of these features built in. I can’t take any credit for it whatsoever. So far I’m pretty happy with WordPress. And the price is right too. $0.00
I am interested in contacting a chemist who is knowledgeable in PLA chemistry. I have an application for PLA that is potentially very large. Please send a message as to how the expert can be contacted (as per your article on December 20). Thank you.
If you contact me, we may be able to help you regarding you PLA application.
Gaussling,
Many thanks for linking me on your site.
I’ve listed your URL under “Other Related News and Opinion within the Blogosphere”.
I look forward to dialogue with you in future.
Regards,
Mark
The Green Chemistry Technical Blog
Mark,
Sure thing. I am increasingly interested in green chemistry. Introducing green processes to industry is actually a lifes work for anyone who tries it. Chemical engineers have been doing something like this for sometime, but usually on the effluent side. Chemists and poroject managers need to be more aware of better atom efficiency and cradle-to-grave issues concerning the fate of reagent residues.
I believe that some of your readers may be interested in our ongoing work at http://www.chemspider.com to provide online searching for >10 million compounds and access to s eries of prediction services.
I have to second Antony’s pointer to ChemSpider.com (partly because I’m working with him there on a new chemistry blog - Spinneret and partly because it is turning out to be such a useful tool. Almost everyone I’ve mentioned it to has had a reason to look up one molecule or another and found the structure they were after very quickly. On the tech side it’s searchable by chemical synonym, Smiles string, and Inchi. And, more than that, it searches all kinds of dbases - academic, OA, PubChem, Chebi, and commercial (usually invisibleweb stuff). Give it a try and please check out Spinneret while you’re at it.
Gaussling,
I would like to add a link to http://gaussling.wordpress.com from http://www.chemistryguide.org/chemistry-blogs.html page. Could you send please your blog’s description?
Is there a way to contact you via e-mail? (pseudonymous at a large free web mail address maybe?)
Thanks!
Hi Christina, I sent an email to what I think is your address. Ping me here again if it doesn’t turn up.
Happy Birthday Gaussling!!
Radio frequencies help burn salt water:
http://green.yahoo.com/index.php?q=node/1570
whatsayou?
Thanks Janie! I appreciate it.
Ramsey, You have a good question here. I have seen other reports of this. I will have to look into the details.
Hi Ramsey- well, apparently they have managed to crack water with RF energy. The H2 and O2 evidently recombine and combust. This is probably what is making the water appear to burn. My guess is that the salt will increase the dielectric constant and allow more energy to be absorbed by the aq solution.
They have Rustum Roy from Penn State involved and he is a very credible character.
All of the fuels talk is premature. Someone needs to sit down and do the energy balance. Cracking water with RF energy and then burning it seems hardly likely to be a net exothermic process. Consider the big energy hit you take just making electricity (~1/3 efficient). Then there are power transmission losses, conversion losses to make the RF, losses in the transfer of energy from the RF generator to the sample, and then the efficiency of the reaction yield in joules of energy input per kg of H2 formed.
It might be more efficient to do what the Germans did with the Hindenburg- dissolve iron in H2SO4 and capture the H2.
On the other hand, there may be useful chemical processing applications waiting to be discovered.
Gauss,
got a potential business venture for you and would like to catch up- send me an email from your other address or your cell number…
Dear Gaussling,
I believe that some of your readers may be interested in our resource http://www.rdchemicals.com
The R&D Chemicals is a database of chemical compounds accessible over Internet. Its search engine allows you to find a chemical by its
molecular formula, IUPAC name, Smiles, common name, CAS number,
structure or substructure.
I just wanted to say I enjoy your site. The majority flies over but the variety keeps me interested. Out here.
Hi Gaussling,
I’d like to thank you for including ChemTube3D in your list of Chem resources.
ChemTube3D contains interactive 3D animations for some of the most important organic reactions covered during an undergraduate degree with supporting information on reactivity and spectroscopy.
Inspired by your efforts, I’ve started a blog which will record changes/additions.
Hi Nick,
Chem3D is a great resource and I wish I had access to it when I was teaching orgo. A well done animation is worth a thousand words.
Hi. This is a response to “Spacely Sprockets”. I’ve said for a long time that society is being psychologically turned away from manual labor. T.V. shows cubicle jobs as the norm and menial jobs held by idiots, or simpletons at the least. Maybe some nationalistic tendancies are good, like self sufficiency, not outsourcing. Make it here, by us, to benefit us. That is not selfish. That may be survival. Americans, they say, are not willing to do some jobs, so we need huge amounts of immigrants to do them because they are willing. Do we need employers who pay so little that taxpayers have to subsidize the life costs of those families? Yes, I know that EVERY person everywhere is an imigrant or decended from one, so I am not imigrant bashing.
Are stock holders our most important citizens? We put people who produce nothing tangible, such as Paris Hilton, or Hollywood in general, or Wall Street types, or career politicians, in the catagory marked “If you want the best, you have to to pay for the best”. We pay $50,000 for a big truck(status symbol), yet if our sewer pipe breaks in the basement and our choice is swim in something unpleasant or pay someone to come crawl through our sewage to fix it, we bitch about the price. Maybe a little idealism is needed, in leau of revolution, to shift our orbit, just a bit. Money isn’t everything. It can’t be. Sure we are capitalist, and democratic, but this is a republic, and it takes some effort and sacrifice to keep it working like the group of folks did 232 years ago.
This is an unintentional rant.
Hi Rob, I have to say that our priorities have been adrift for a long time. Given the recent and rapid change in demand in the world for petroleum and the nationalized character of 75 % of the worlds petroleum supplies, the USA really must buckle down and think about self-preservation.
Just wanted you inform you that your Chemical Musings link under Chemistry Blogs is broken. He is still posting, but at a new URL:
http://www.milomuses.com/chemicalmusings/