6 ms·

Lowe's articles have the delightful quality of bringing in people who don't understand the chemistry, and making them feel like they're part of something. I ne

Lowe's articles have the delightful quality of bringing in people who don't understand the chemistry, and making them feel like they're part of something. I never got into o-chem, and I certainly don't know anything about excited groups that want to blow off some steam and relax. But I can read Lowe's posts and feel like I'm in on the joke, and that's pretty rewarding in and of itself.

andybak 10y ago
That (and a touch of Breaking Bad) did that for me. Added chemist to the list of "things I could have done in an alternate universe". Anyone who liked this should Google for more ("Things I won't work with" is a good search term). As well as the 'things that blow up' category he writes delightfully on 'things that smell bad' and 'things that can kill you in miscellaneous ways'.
gkafkg8y8 10y ago
Explosions and threats of explosions bring many kids (middle/high school/freshmen) into it. If you have money, this is nice for the younger ones: https://melscience.com/ https://melscience.com/ Or one of the numerous chemistry sets available- preferably something with a lot of chemicals that are unsafe. I personally almost killed myself mixing things when I was an adolescent. And in the 80s there was this: https://archive.org/details/Chem_Lab_1985-Simon_and_Schuster_side_A https://archive.org/details/Chem_Lab_1985-Simon_and_Schuster... If kids aren't interested in chemistry, it's that the teacher/cirriculum/resources available to the students is just piss poor... and unfortunately that is the norm. It's so easy to keep kids engaged if you continue doing experiments that astound.
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  > Explosions and threats of explosions bring many kids (middle/high school/freshmen) into it. That was exactly why I was a chemistry nerd in high school and almost made a career out of it. Veered off in a different direction ultimately, but I still have what are to me fond memories (not so fond for everyone else around me subjected to "side effects" from the "experiments"). Still not clear how I avoided getting thrown in prison for all the crazy stuff. I'd be terrified if my kids attempted the same things.
amelius 10y ago
To be honest, the talking about explosions turned me off. Surely there are more interesting topics to get somebody excited about chemistry?
- mikeash 10y ago
  This concept of "more interesting than explosions" confuses me greatly.
  - amelius 10y ago
    It's like trying to make somebody enthusiastic about computer science by having a long monologue about the wonders of the "rm -rf" command. :)
    - mikeash 10y ago
      A lot of my enthusiasm came from things like Core Wars and abusing C to crash my computer by overwriting code (hooray for old systems with no memory protection), so, yeah.
    - mercer 10y ago
      It sometimes depresses me a little that on the best ways I know to 'impress' (but only barely) friends of mine with my line of work is to do a 3D css transform/transition on whatever website they're currently looking at... Thankfully there's been the occasional friend who got really excited at the thought of being able to use their browser's devtools to change things on the page through css or javascript.
      - mikeash 10y ago
        Maybe you could impress them by showing how you can use devtools to forge a tweet or bank balance or boarding pass.
        mercer 10y ago
DogPawHat 10y ago
That's what I was thinking, I don't quite know about "nito-groups" other then it has nitogen in it, but I get the feeling it blows up a lot, and that's good enough for me (to read about, not acually try this)
- jcranmer 10y ago
  In chemical terms, nitro groups are -NO₂, which puts the nitrogen atom (which usually wants to attract electrons) at the oxidation state of +5. This makes nitro groups likely to be explosive, since nitrogen wants to return to a more neutral oxidation state (more specifically, elemental nitrogen, N₂ with its very stable triple bond), and will tend to do so exothermically and rapidly. The desire to return N₂ quickly also makes N-N and N=N single and double bonds very likely to make compounds explosive, because those bonds are already well on their way in the quest for stability and will happily release lots of heat as they do so. See the hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane mentioned in the article--it's full of -N-NO₂ groups! And, naturally, it blows up.
  - DogPawHat 10y ago
    My thanks :D
kinkrtyavimoodh 10y ago
His "Things I Won't Work With" series is absolutely delightful. Strongly recommended to everyone. http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/things-i-wont-work-with http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/thing...

andybak 10y ago

That (and a touch of Breaking Bad) did that for me. Added chemist to the list of "things I could have done in an alternate universe". Anyone who liked this should Google for more ("Things I won't work with" is a good search term). As well as the 'things that blow up' category he writes delightfully on 'things that smell bad' and 'things that can kill you in miscellaneous ways'.

gkafkg8y8 10y ago

Explosions and threats of explosions bring many kids (middle/high school/freshmen) into it. If you have money, this is nice for the younger ones: https://melscience.com/ https://melscience.com/ Or one of the numerous chemistry sets available- preferably something with a lot of chemicals that are unsafe. I personally almost killed myself mixing things when I was an adolescent. And in the 80s there was this: https://archive.org/details/Chem_Lab_1985-Simon_and_Schuster_side_A https://archive.org/details/Chem_Lab_1985-Simon_and_Schuster... If kids aren't interested in chemistry, it's that the teacher/cirriculum/resources available to the students is just piss poor... and unfortunately that is the norm. It's so easy to keep kids engaged if you continue doing experiments that astound.

Florin_Andrei 10y ago
> Explosions and threats of explosions bring many kids (middle/high school/freshmen) into it. That was exactly why I was a chemistry nerd in high school and almost made a career out of it. Veered off in a different direction ultimately, but I still have what are to me fond memories (not so fond for everyone else around me subjected to "side effects" from the "experiments"). Still not clear how I avoided getting thrown in prison for all the crazy stuff. I'd be terrified if my kids attempted the same things.

amelius 10y ago

To be honest, the talking about explosions turned me off. Surely there are more interesting topics to get somebody excited about chemistry?

mikeash 10y ago
This concept of "more interesting than explosions" confuses me greatly.
- amelius 10y ago
  It's like trying to make somebody enthusiastic about computer science by having a long monologue about the wonders of the "rm -rf" command. :)
  - mikeash 10y ago
    A lot of my enthusiasm came from things like Core Wars and abusing C to crash my computer by overwriting code (hooray for old systems with no memory protection), so, yeah.
  - mercer 10y ago
    It sometimes depresses me a little that on the best ways I know to 'impress' (but only barely) friends of mine with my line of work is to do a 3D css transform/transition on whatever website they're currently looking at... Thankfully there's been the occasional friend who got really excited at the thought of being able to use their browser's devtools to change things on the page through css or javascript.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      Maybe you could impress them by showing how you can use devtools to forge a tweet or bank balance or boarding pass.
      - mercer 10y ago

DogPawHat 10y ago

That's what I was thinking, I don't quite know about "nito-groups" other then it has nitogen in it, but I get the feeling it blows up a lot, and that's good enough for me (to read about, not acually try this)

jcranmer 10y ago
In chemical terms, nitro groups are -NO₂, which puts the nitrogen atom (which usually wants to attract electrons) at the oxidation state of +5. This makes nitro groups likely to be explosive, since nitrogen wants to return to a more neutral oxidation state (more specifically, elemental nitrogen, N₂ with its very stable triple bond), and will tend to do so exothermically and rapidly. The desire to return N₂ quickly also makes N-N and N=N single and double bonds very likely to make compounds explosive, because those bonds are already well on their way in the quest for stability and will happily release lots of heat as they do so. See the hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane mentioned in the article--it's full of -N-NO₂ groups! And, naturally, it blows up.
- DogPawHat 10y ago
  My thanks :D

kinkrtyavimoodh 10y ago

His "Things I Won't Work With" series is absolutely delightful. Strongly recommended to everyone. http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/things-i-wont-work-with http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/category/thing...