Stubborn-turtle-blog

I want to see an adventure story set in medieval Bologna

Or Assassin's Creed

The city of Bologna in the 12th-13th century - the closest we can get to a medieval skyscraper city; because nobles used to build high towers as a symbol of power and also for offensive/defensive purposes, at one point there were around 100 such towers.

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Don’t try this at home!

I talked about the interesting structure of graphite (aka pencil lead) in our latest video:

But I didn’t have time to touch on one of the fascinating side effects of this structure - graphite’s conductivity. A single, two-dimensional sheet of graphite (known as graphene) is the most conductive material we know about. Diamond is among the least conductive materials we know about.

Impure graphite - like the stuff we find in pencils - is somewhere in between. It’s more conductive than sea water and less conductive than steel. As free electrons flow through it, it lights up like a filament and puts out a lot of heat.

Some risk-taking YouTubers (MausolfB Education and ElectroBoom) demonstrated this property so you don’t have to.

Diamond photo credit: Macroscopic Solutions, Graphite photo credit: DerHexer

I hear you! I’ve had three partners so far for competitions - it sucks when you don’t have anyone and I’m not entirely looking forward to having to find someone new when I graduate and move. There’s still a lot you can do on your own, though, I use a hoola hoop and mirrors to practice when I have to work on my own. 

You can also find local ballroom groups for the US at: http://usadance.org/chapters/find-a-local-chapter/ 

The Sad Part about my love for ballroom dancing

Is I have no partner. No one to dance with, or take lessons with, so I am left alone, to dream. Here’s hoping for a little ballroom and a little romance when I move. 

Oops

When humans “domesticated” fire 400,000 years ago they made the right combination of conditions – longer periods with close human contact, plus smoke-damaged lungs – for tuberculosis to mutate from a harmless soil bacterium into our number one bacterial killer, according to new research.

I had an interview today and I totally rocked this question:

Interviewer: How would you explain DNA to an 8 year old?

Me: I would tell them that DNA is like Legos. Like four different colored legos. Individually, they can't do much, but when you build them in a certain order, you can make different things, like a house or a tree or little lego people. It's the same in your body. Four different DNA molecules fit together to create the unique you.

Interviewer: *brief pause* That's a really good answer.

Me: Thank you. I like Legos and science.

A shooting star over Mount Rainier By Tanner Wendell Stewart

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American Slavery - Bill Rankin, 2016

Remember back in August when the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) asked for the public’s input on where future subways in the city might run by means of an interactive “draw a subway map” tool? 

Well, thy’ve just released the collated results of that survey – wich had some 2,600 respondents – as a heat map, and the results are certainly definitive. It would seem that almost everyone wants a subway line along the length of Geary Boulevard, with another major “crosstown” connection running south along 19th Avenue. An extension of the Central Subway to Fort Mason also seems popular, as is – if you combined all the disparate routes into one – a second Transbay Tube. 

Though these corridors have been identified, there’s still a lot more planning and funding work to be done before any concrete plans start to take shape. Still, an interesting conclusion to this little public outreach exercise! There’s also an online GIS-based version of this map showing all of the submitted ideas, but it takes forever to load all 2,600 of them!

Source: SFconnect website

Chlorosulfonation of an imidazole derivative with chlorosulfonic acid.

Why is this a special thing? Chlorosulfonic acid reacts with water explosively forming sulfuric acid and hydrogen chloride. So when I added 200 g of a compound to 500 cm3 of chlorosulfonic acid, a highly exothermic reaction happened and immediately and a highly acidic fog formed in the flask as the reactants contacted each other.

Important note when working with chlorosulfonic acid: NEVER WASH ANYTHING WITH WATER WHAT CONTAINS A RANDOM LIQUID, since if its chlorosulfonic acid, it could blow a highly acidic solution on your labcoat/hands/face. And always pour chlorosulfonic acid and reaction mixtures that contain this chemical on large excess of cracked ice to avoid serious problems.

P.S.: always wear proper PPE.