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I've been lucky enough to work with a few highly skilled organic chemists, and I know enough chemistry to know that I could never, ever join them as such. It's

I've been lucky enough to work with a few highly skilled organic chemists, and I know enough chemistry to know that I could never, ever join them as such. It's such a niche, specialised, and important and yet under-recognised set of skills. A few examples. The order in which you add nominally unimportant reagents to a reaction can significantly matter – the enthalpy of mixing is non-zero, and so if you dissolve A and then B in solvent C before letting it reflux for five hours (say), it will be a different initial condition to adding B, then A. Many (most?) chemists weigh vials before adding a mass of x g/mg of a compound, in the process of adding that, and then again when they have removed "x" grams. Lids are pared with volumetric flasks. Tiny variations matter. Room humidity, temperature, and the history of the use of the equipment involved may change the answers. I had one graduate student (who came top in her year in chemistry) make an isotopically labelled molecule for me, with a ~70% yield and a ~100% labelling purity. A few years later, a biochemist following the "recipe" she developed (and beautifully illustrated!) was unable to get above 10% yield and about 80% purity. I never really was able to work out why. Any "debugging" conversation starts with "tell me exactly -- what did you do?". Things occasionally don't go "as well" when certain contaminants are (not) present. The debugger for reality sucks. And still, despite all the fiddly nature of the work, it's downright dangerous. Organic chemists, as a species, live less long. They get blown up and gassed. I've been in a building when a "small scale" reaction has exploded and you feel the vibrations of it – nobody was seriously injured because the fume hood's shock sensors detected the azide derivatives decomposing rapidly and, within microseconds, dumped a load of cold CO2 down the front of the hood, stopping combustion and redirecting/reducing the blast. Another acquaintance of mine managed to have the building evacuated after ordering a 10 ml bottle of a compound he distilled from a hops extract and identified via GC-MSMS and MS^n spectrometry as part of a project trying to understand beer foam (and make better non-alcoholic beers; this is in about 2000 or 1999, before "good" alcoholfrei bier was available) – he naïvely opened the lid to see what it smelt like outside of the fume hood, and immediately uncontrollably vomited. So did his neighbours. Then the rest of the room. Then the floor. They closed it over a weekend, opened all the doors and windows, put in industrial fans, and it still stank for months. Chemists do important, undervalued work. They make drugs, materials, batteries. They do everything from quantum mechanics to what I still consider to be not far removed from alchemy. Some of them are slightly odd people, but they are usually very fun to share a drink with...

taeric 5y ago
I mean. I am not trying to underscore the work. But I feel you are making it sound magical. This is not much different than cooking, is it? Try making bread or beer by adding things out of order. I feel so much of this mysticism is driven by over reliance on associative and distributive laws for elementary math. And it is super annoying because I know I do the same thing.
- maroonblazer 5y ago
  He's not making it sound magical. He's pointing out how hard it is.
  - taeric 5y ago
    I think I was just sticking on the gp's "In my mind STEM topics exist on a scale that has math at one end..." Especially with the first supporting evidence being that order matters on how you mix things. Only in very elementary math, it seems, is that not the case. Yet, we stick on that heavily. That is, I wasn't trying to counter the point. I intend my point to be a further exploration on why that makes things feel more complicated. Near mystical, in that we can't always explain why an order is important. Sometimes we can, of course.
    - DiggyJohnson 5y ago
      I track your point, though I might add that in advanced mathematics, things can often be reasoned in multiple directions, or sometimes proved via multiple methods. Often things are demonstrated irrespective of changing parameters, or otherwise the parameters are well understood to define the problem. This isn't true for many orgo chemicals, based on the OP. The scale of sensitivity to initial and intermediate (!) conditions is un-intuitively high.
      - taeric 5y ago
        Makes sense. I think it is from a definition perspective, though. Statically, it is easy to define things independent of the process that governs them. Such that it is a middle college class that really covers dynamic systems for structural analysis. With most earlier classes being static analysis. Even electrical classes started on analog circuits and power transmission later in courses. Early circuits are centered around ready dc connections. Or steady state ac ones.

taeric 5y ago

I mean. I am not trying to underscore the work. But I feel you are making it sound magical. This is not much different than cooking, is it? Try making bread or beer by adding things out of order. I feel so much of this mysticism is driven by over reliance on associative and distributive laws for elementary math. And it is super annoying because I know I do the same thing.

maroonblazer 5y ago
He's not making it sound magical. He's pointing out how hard it is.
- taeric 5y ago
  I think I was just sticking on the gp's "In my mind STEM topics exist on a scale that has math at one end..." Especially with the first supporting evidence being that order matters on how you mix things. Only in very elementary math, it seems, is that not the case. Yet, we stick on that heavily. That is, I wasn't trying to counter the point. I intend my point to be a further exploration on why that makes things feel more complicated. Near mystical, in that we can't always explain why an order is important. Sometimes we can, of course.
  - DiggyJohnson 5y ago
    I track your point, though I might add that in advanced mathematics, things can often be reasoned in multiple directions, or sometimes proved via multiple methods. Often things are demonstrated irrespective of changing parameters, or otherwise the parameters are well understood to define the problem. This isn't true for many orgo chemicals, based on the OP. The scale of sensitivity to initial and intermediate (!) conditions is un-intuitively high.
    - taeric 5y ago
      Makes sense. I think it is from a definition perspective, though. Statically, it is easy to define things independent of the process that governs them. Such that it is a middle college class that really covers dynamic systems for structural analysis. With most earlier classes being static analysis. Even electrical classes started on analog circuits and power transmission later in courses. Early circuits are centered around ready dc connections. Or steady state ac ones.