A painfully incorrect graphic

Source - macosicons.com/#/u/antonin1802

The reddit thread on which I found today's graphic saw quite a few comments pointing out the horrific incorrectnesses (sp?) in the folder graphic found to the right.

Amongst the many issues...

• The chemical reaction as written eschews an arrow (or even equilibrium arrows) in favor of an equal sign. For people who don't know chemistry, those symbols might seem equivalent, but they are not - in spite of what some of my students have dismissively claimed over the years.
• The reactants in the reaction includes monatomic oxygen, a drastically and dangerously unstable form of oxygen. Typically, diatomic oxygen is written in the reactions because that's the stable form of elemental oxygen.
• The structural formula as drawn contains a carbon at the center top of the 'molecule' that has six bonds, expanding the octet of carbon which - to my understanding - is rather impossible.

There is some suggestion in a few of the comments that this figure might be generated by artificial intelligence. I can't speak to that, but if it was created by a human - assumedly antonin1802 - then it was clearly created by a human who didn't know how organic chemistry works.

Why Melted Bugs On Candy And Lemons Fuel A $167 Million Industry | Big Business | Business Insider

That is amazing...and gross...and sad...and a marvelous encapsulation of our world.

I had no idea that the stuff grandpa used to put on some of his wordworks - or at least the etymological origin of what he called what was probably varnish or polyurethane by then - had its origins in bug secretions meant to protect them while they nibbled on trees. 

What's That Smell - Flavor Chemistry | Science Around Cincy

Chris Anderson, the host of these videos and originator of the Science Around Cincy YouTube channel used to teach at Princeton High School, where I work.

Chris was with us for a few years and eventually moved along. Chris had said that the time that he wasn't going to be content staying in the classroom, something I never assumed meant becoming a YouTube 'personality', but I hope he's enjoying his time on YouTube. I'm guessing this means he's not in the classroom anymore, but I don't know that for certain. (I did look up his license on the ODE site, and he is at least still licensed to teach 7-12 science until 2026 at the moment.)

Today Chris plays around with a food scientist to smell different organic chemicals which are used to enhance artificially flavored products.

Then he comes back and tastes some of those artificially-flavored products without the smells or sights.  

Homochirality: Why Nature Never Makes Mirror Molecules

Chirality is incredibly simple on the surface, but the effects of chirality are incredibly complicated and important in the biological world.

Our world - our universe - favors one handed-ness over the other, and we sometimes get in big trouble when we interact with the wrong version of a molecule.

If you want to know more about just how right- or left-handed molecules rotate light waves, check out more from Steve Mould.

The source of licorice/liquorice/anise flavor

I hate licorice so very much.

I hate the black licorice.

I hate anise seed and star anise and fennel - though I do like Italian sausage with fennel seeds in there.

I've never tried absinthe, though I enjoyed the green fairy scenes in Moulin Rouge.

The science of anethole and estragole is interesting to me, however.

Volatility means different things to different people

See, it's funny because volatility has two meanings...(quoting from Google's definitions)

• liability to change rapidly and unpredictably, especially for the worse
• As in, "the market is highly volatile right now. Eventually it will settle once all the news has been priced into the stocks."
• tendency of a substance to evaporate at normal temperatures
• As in, "organic chemistry deals with a number of volatile substances. That's why the labs have a distinct smell of solvents."
• Inorganic chemistry deals with far fewer highly-volatile solvents.

Pictures from an organic chemistry laboratory

I know so very, very little organic chemistry. Yes, I took a year of organic chemistry at Wabash, but organic and I weren't exactly close friends.

So, in reading through the Pictures from an Organic Chemistry Lab tumblrhttp://labphoto.tumblr.com/, I found a heck of a lot of stuff that was over my head.

But I understood enough to get the idea of what the gorgeous photos were describing.