Educational Deficiencies in the Past Are Front and Center Today

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As you would expect, deficiencies in American education each school year will impact the future as each K-12 graduating class blends into the population. They take with them a lumpy mix of classroom lessons and life experiences from outside of school.

Some grads will go straight into the work force while others choose college or military service. Some won’t graduate, leaving them to find a living wage without specialist training that might justify higher wages. A few may explore criminality and eventually find 3 hots and a cot inside one of America’s many “Grey Bar Hotels”.

“The argument has been made that the worm of Nixon’s Southern Strategy laid the eggs for Reagan and Falwell’s Moral Majority, the larval form of the Tea Party, and finally bursting from its chrysalis into Trump’s golden MAGA movement.” Source: From the Tea Party to MAGA – How White Christian Nationalism Is Taking Control of the US, João Ferreira Dias, European Center for Populism Studies, https://www.populismstudies.org/from-the-tea-party-to-maga-how-white-christian-nationalism-is-taking-control-of-the-us/

Since the start of Trump’s MAGA movement in 2016, its supporters show a different understanding of civics than what I learned in 9th grade civics, indicating significant discrepancies in our views on the practical functioning of American democracy.

Any fool can describe from their perspective of how American civil society actually functions in its tangle of interconnections and dead ends with what the ideal tangle should look like. MAGA followers believe that they have been systematically kept from the “Good Life” in America by a supposed “Deep State” of elites with their woke-agenda governmental agencies.

In the imagination of MAGA followers the “elites” are a dark coterie of liberals comprising intellectuals, university professors, LGBTQ+, environmental activists and others in the festering carbuncle of liberal wokism. Or so it goes. The accusations of deep state machinations and conniving and woke elites steering an otherwise god-fearing and patriotic nation into disrepute and moral disfigurement was gratefully accepted by disgruntled millions.

As each 12th grade graduating class shambles into the future, we drag along our predispositions, learnings and fresh skills in our survival tool kits. For some, the tool kits are satisfactory. For others, not so much. Many are unaware of what should be in the kits in the first place. Most of us carry knowledge and skills that are hardly used and initially appeared to be a waste of time.

Everyone carries educational deficiencies of some sort into the future. For some, the gaps in education hardly matter in our lives. Sometimes it does matter.

I’ll get to the point. If you did not take or pay attention in civics class, graduation dumps you off into American life with little understanding of how our government works and how politics is woven into the fabric of our lives.

Many who are deficient in civics have trouble avoiding a cynical and sarcastic outlook over government and politics. Rather than admit to ignorance and resolving to improve, many rest on the assumption that politics = corruption. As with all human endeavors, there is some truth to this.

Public schools in the USA are much maligned and have been under attack by those who seek to embed them in an overall religious education. I refer to conservative protestant evangelical organizations. ALEX, the conservative American Legislative Exchange, is a source of written legislation and municipal codes or other rule making text that is used at the local level of politics including municipalities and school districts. Those wishing to legislate their religious beliefs onto school children find this service very useful. It gives continuity to large scale implementation of protestant evangelical doctrine.

School districts in my state have elected board members who have transplanted religious doctrine from ALEX to school boards in conservative areas. One of the best ways to convince governing groups to adopt new rules is to supply them with text to adopt rather than depending on the members to gin up their own text.

I once gave a presentation to our town board hoping they would adopt a Dark Sky Initiative. At the end of my presentation I handed out copies of ordinances adopted by other communities. My request was ignored but a few years later and with another presentation by someone else an ordinance was eventually adopted. By that time outdoor LED light fixtures with horizontal cutoff were widely available and ordinary. Nobody had to take a chance with a new policy.

Many within and from the public schools bemoan the lack of financial and religious education in the schools. I would argue that this is fundamentally the responsibility of the family. In my area, we have a mixture of Mormons, Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Atheists and Lutherans. Which religious sect should design and teach religious curriculum? Should your Mormon child’s religious studies be taught by a Baptist? What if one group viewed it as well balanced but the Mormons say it is deficient in their doctrines. Imagine the cat fight. Leave the religious indoctrination to Sunday school. The public school curriculum should remain secular just like math and physical education.

Today American liberal democracy is collapsing because 1/3 of the voters misunderstand the basics of democracy. America has always had an anti-intellectual bent and today with social media, ignorant citizens reinforce their ignorance through connection with the wider collection of dullards and lazy thinkers online.

Rolling Onto Final Approach for the Big Landing

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I’m now officially retired from the specialty chemical manufacturing business, but I’ll continue to write here as before. I ended up working 28 years for the same company. Career-wise, it was all but certain a mistake to stay all that time. But there was job stability in a place I wanted to live and raise a family. And being curiosity driven, the early transition metal chemistry we did was very interesting.

I considered doing an online MBA for a move into the business end years back but after some soul searching I had to admit I didn’t want to paddle spreadsheets around in the corporate wading pool until retirement. I worked for a small company where it was possible to wear many hats but I didn’t realize how lucky I was.

The orthodox corporate life is not for me. It is a world of ultra-precise job descriptions discouraging the hiring of talented generalists and on-the-job training. After we were bought out by a capital investment firm there was a proliferation of KPIs, Key Performance Indicators for the anal retentive MBAs. C-suites are now packed up with smooth talking devils who traffic in saccharin B-school euphemisms and the latest accounting sorcery. I understand the need for KPIs in business and the information drawn from them. But what a colossal bore for a scientist.

Management consultants are a dime-a-dozen, each with their own bag of tricks and associated best selling books extolling the virtues gleaned from stitched-together anecdotes. The exalted individuals squatting on the board of directors meet quarterly to review progress on the bottom line as promised in a flurry of business-speak the previous quarters. Obviously this is customary for the board and C-suite but it’s for the love of accelerating EBITDA rather than the love of chemistry and engineering. I am fundamentally a science guy, not a prince of the executive class.

What remains of my retired brain is a mishmash of rapidly aging business trade secrets and a Rolodex half-full of now retired industry people. But, this is true for most retirees. My career was a crazy quilt of sales and marketing, scale-up, process safety, patent analysis, R&D, accident investigation, calorimetry and TSCA regulatory submissions. Such hopscotching around job descriptions was only possible in a small privately-owned chemical company.

My new gig is as a freelance writer for the local newspaper. It’s a real kick. I am the first science writer for the paper but am writing under my real name from now on. It’s for an entirely different demographic that requires me to use AP style and an active voice after decades of writing in the passive voice.

My next online/print articles are on the presence of uranium in the water of a new reservoir. How can that happen? After that is a 2-part series on the technology of both the input and output sides of municipal water treatment.

It is quite interesting to be part of a news gathering organization. It’s like being in a watch tower with binoculars. A newspaper is like a shark- it has to keep moving if it is to survive.

I just finished a spring semester online political science course on the comparative politics of Eastern Europe from the interwar period to the collapse of the USSR. I was able to get into this university extension class because I had $1600 and a heartbeat. A little spendy but I’m doing it again next fall.

I took the class to gain insight on the question of “What the hell is wrong with Russia?” Why are they so paranoid? Why can’t they join the broader community of nations in peaceful co-existence and prosperity? What gives?

I’m in the middle of a comprehensive biography of Peter the Great of Russia. From the book it is plain to see that Russia has been insular and suspicious of outsiders for a very long time. Peter’s fascination with the customs and technology of Europe was tolerated only because he was Tsar. The Patriarch of the Orthodox church, who resided in old Muscovy, was particularly opposed to any western influence and spared no opportunity to dissuade Peter from western influence. Peter paid little attention. He was what we would now call a “party animal”.

Numerous stressors have expired from the turbulent churning of daily concerns except for the big political fiasco of our time- Trumpus Maximus. Even when Trump eventually falls over dead from natural causes his legacy of evil, ham-fisted stupidity will live on and will take generations to reverse, if ever.

From my career days I have a professional library of over 1050 books, 80% of which are chemistry related. I’m under great pressure at home to be rid of them lest my survivors be inconvenienced with disposing of it. I’m looking at selling them on Amazon. I tried to donate them to my undergrad chemistry department but there was no interest (!!!). The problem with online sales is that it’s a sizeable mail order job with lots of packaging and shipping BS to contend with.

I have taken up sport shooting at a local gun club with my new 9 mm Sig Sauer pistol. It is a little out of character in some ways but I’m always interested in expanding my horizons. On TV you see fictional bad guys repeatedly firing and missing the good guys even in a close-in shootout. On the other hand the TV coppers shoot and rub out the crooks at long range with the first double tap. Okay, the coppers train regularly but pistols are not precision devices.

I continue to be inspired by my favorite YouTube geologist, Myron Cook. He lives next door, up in Wyoming. I enjoy geotourism and expect to continue with this activity.

The End of the Universe as We Know It.

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So, this article shows up in my Google news aggregator titled “Scientists Experimenting With Quantum Effect That Some Fear Could Cause Chain Reaction That Ends Entire Universe“. My goodness, says I. How could that happen? I don’t recall signing off on that experiment. The article links to a Nature abstract by Max Tegmark and Nick Bostrom.

Abstract

The risk of a doomsday scenario in which high-energy physics experiments trigger the destruction of the Earth has been estimated to be minuscule. But this may give a false sense of security: the fact that the Earth has survived for so long does not necessarily mean that such disasters are unlikely, because observers are, by definition, in places that have avoided destruction. Here we derive a new upper bound of one per billion years (99.9% confidence level) for the exogenous terminal-catastrophe rate that is free of such selection bias, using calculations based on the relatively late formation time of Earth. Nature, 2005 Dec 8;438(7069):754. doi: 10.1038/438754a.

So, some scientists in China were fiddle-fartin’ around in the lab and decided to monkey with a theoretical phase of the vacuum. After all, a quantum computer calculation determined that it was possible. “They simulated a false-vacuum decay” to a true vacuum with a table-top experiment. Is it exothermic for spontaneity?

As of this writing they haven’t wrecked the universe. But shit man, these Poindexters presumed that playing fast and loose with the universe was A-Ok, or whatever the word is in Chinese (好的).

Alright, Tegmark and Bostrom calculated that the destruction of the universe had an upper bound of 1 in a billion years at a confidence level of 99.9 %. So, we can all relax and enjoy our lunch and spend a pleasant afternoon strolling in the spring weather and smelling the lilacs.

Upper bound?

Crude Oil Theft in the Permian Basin

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According to a March 29, 2026, report in OilPrice.com theft in the Permian Basin of Texas amounts to 1 to 2$ billion annually. The Permian Basin, source of benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude, reportedly holds 15 % of the global oil reserves. Oil theft is nothing new but recent high prices for oil have increased theft. Anything not bolted down like copper or tools at a well site will likely be stolen. This is a world-wide problem.

Source: USGS. Red is gas and green is crude oil. The dark outline is the Permian Basin area.

In the above USGS map the perimeter of the Permian Basin is shown as the heavy black line. The Permian Basin is up to 25,000 ft thick and is a sedimentary formation that dips to the eastward.

Source: Wikimedia. The Permian Basin has several sub-basins with the Midland and the Delaware being the largest.

According to Bloomberg (paywall) producers are losing between $1 and $2 billion per year. Martin County Sheriff Randy Cozart estimates 500 barrels of crude oil are stolen each week. A common method of stealing the oil uses a vacuum truck siphon out the crude from tanks on the well site. Some thieves use a waste hauling truck which is normally present in the oil patch.

Naturally, the caped crusaders at the Texas Railroad Commission are none too pleased about the thefts. According to one source, a truckload of 180 barrels of crude was worth about $15,000. The stolen oil could go into the tanks of another producer or directly to the gathering facility for transfer into a pipeline.

Mechanochemistry in Abiogenesis

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Both mechanochemistry and abiogenesis are each pretty deep subjects, and this essay will not due either of them justice. This is just a nudge to the curious out there.

I follow a Facebook page called “Abiogenesis”. It usually posts links to the primary literature and recently to a very intriguing paper. It is titled Mineral-mediated carbohydrate synthesis by mechanical forces in a primordial geochemical setting, The link is –https://doi.org/10.1038/s42004-020-00387-w. and is published by Nature.

Should the unthinkable arise and you, the gentle reader, are unfamiliar with mechanochemistry, I would suggest a free ACS pdf download (Free! Will yah look at that!) with some basics. Ms Google can offer many more links. This was new to me but not to the light of day.

Sorting out abiogenesis is difficult enough in the solution phase, but these workers have included geological surfaces into the mix. And directed to carbohydrates no less. It is ambitious but the field needs ambitious experimental work.

My guess is that most chemists coming through the undergraduate ACS core curriculum are as unfamiliar with mechanochemistry as am I. A chemistry or geochemistry faculty member involved in it would be needed to teach an elective for it. I’ll hazard a guess that mechanochemists are somewhat scarce on most chemistry faculty rosters at present. Geology departments offer geochemistry courses, but it is unlikely to overlap with the chemistry department. How often do chemistry faculty mix (or party) with the geology department? I know that before I began to study it, I dismissed geochem as boring dirty water chemistry. But, as I am finding out, the dirty water is quite interesting.

Oh to be a geologist, merrily tramping around in the weeds and the sunshine, swinging a rock hammer and collecting pretty rocks with a legitimate purpose.

Mechanochemistry definitely expands one’s horizons in chemistry. But what is mechanochemistry? The Wikipedia link above does a fair description of it. The thing is, rocks are frozen mixtures of minerals, usually with very low water permeability over short time spans and at sometimes at temperatures we ordinary chemists are unaccustomed to working with.

An analogy

I trained new employees in electrostatic discharge (ESD) safety at our chemical plant. We look at the friction of two surfaces in physical contact sliding past one another. It is easiest to think about dissimilar substances in this picture. As contacting surfaces slide, the surface electrons have the opportunity to stay put or jump to the other, more attractive surface. Electrons migrating away from a nonconducting or electrically isolated conductor surface leave positive charge behind. This is called the triboelectric effect. Furthermore, such mechanical friction generates heat as we all know, especially when one or both surfaces have irregular surface topography such as bumps, crystalline or amorphous protuberances and ridges at the submicroscopic scale. Friction is magnified when external forces concentrate at regions of pronounced submicroscopic topographies, meaning where the lumpy, edgy or mountainous features move past one another.

Have you ever generated a spark when two objects make a glancing blow? A good example would be using a flint and steel to light a campfire. The sparks come from small flakes of metal catching fire in the air. The small flying pieces are very hot but are exhausted rapidly. Cigarette lighters have been doing this for decades by rolling a fixed roughened wheel across a flint. The sparks generated are white hot as judged by their momentary brightness.

Well, that’s nice but what is the connection to mechanochemistry? Generating incandescent bits of metal is an example of how a great deal of energy can be applied to a very small solid surface feature. Now let’s back off the energy a bit and consider the rocks in a rock polisher. A rock polisher works by prolonged tumbling of rocks with small bits of very hard material like carborundum or cerium oxide abrasives. As the rocks tumble, they collide with one another. If during the collision there are abrasive particles at the point of contact, a small amount of chipping of both rocks might occur. The surface chipping will plateau at a particular surface smoothness depending on the size of the abrasive particle. Smaller and smaller abrasive particles will produce finer roughness until such point as humans might regard the rock as “smooth or polished.”

We’ve seen that fracturing of a rock surface can occur with an input of mechanical energy over an extended period of time. Highly localized individual surface features might be subject to mechanical energy input that is high in magnitude. In polishing, mechanical energy has disrupted the molecular structure of the surface matrix of the mineral. Fresh surfaces of rock are free to adsorb water or metal ions may swap anions if the atomic radii are similar and the ionic charge is the same. In swapping metals of like charge or just opening a molecular or atomic coordination site, a chemical transformation has happened. The chemical identity of a mineral structure at newly opened surfaces are different from those that have been weathered. This is because water can coordinate and alter the surface composition as a hydrate to begin with. The interior may be anhydrous, but the new surface becomes hydrated. Anhydrous substances are slightly different from their hydrated form. Hydration has several levels- coordinated water bou8nd to a metal ion, water of crystallization within the crystal lattice but not coordinated, or discrete water between crystals. The word “hydration” itself is not very specific, but the context may be written to infer more precise meaning.

Some organic chemicals like explosives are shock sensitive. A good example is nitroglycerine. Shock sensitivity is the application of mechanical energy to the substance, in the case of nitroglycerine, undergoing a chemical transformation begins with the breaking of the weakest covalent bond. This leads to a rapid cascade of transformations and the evolution of hot gases. Oh, and a shock wave too. Notably, these rapidly evolving hot gases occupy more space that did the liquid nitroglycerine, famously doing pressure-volume work on the surroundings.

This long, drawn out explanation leads to a point- Chemical change can and does occur at mineral surfaces. The application of mechanical forces to a solid can result in contact surfaces receiving a large input of mechanical energy. There are mechanical and chemical consequences as well as triboelectrical effects. In the case of a flint and steel, combustion can occur if just momentarily.

Back to Abiogenesis-

Minerals can be altered chemically somewhat through impact and sliding friction. The mineral itself can be altered but more to the point, if prebiotic substances are present near the contact they might be subject to the energy input which can manifest as localized and momentary heating.

Let’s not forget the mineral surfaces themselves. A given mineral may be an ionic substance where the ions are locked into a lattice. Furthermore, the distinct crystallographic surfaces may be chemically reactive in their interactions with the environment.

This is as far as I’m willing to go down this dendritic Google hole. More to follow. Have a good day!

In Memoriam: Emeritus Professor of Chemistry Michael P. Doyle

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I’m saddened to learn of Emeritus Professor of Chemistry Michael P. Doyle’s passing. Mike had retired recently from the University of Texas San Antonio. Those who knew Mike knew that he was a dynamo of research productivity in undergraduate institutions and later in a PhD granting institution. In his career, Mike had 439 or more papers published (Google) in prominent publications. One of his secrets to productive research in 4-year institutions was the use of multiple postdocs who guided his undergraduate researchers in their work. Together they performed synthetic organic and organometallic chemistry and produced a rich tapestry of rhodium catalyzed carbene transformations.

Like research faculty everywhere, Mike’s success in grant writing was key to keeping up a productive lab and attracting excellent post-doctoral chemists. His publications and fascinating catalysis chemistry as well as his participation in the many national institutions of chemistry kept him near the leading edge of his field.

I was a postdoc in the Doyle lab from 1990 to 1992. My interest was in developing a career path similar to Mike’s and his lab was the place to be. During my time with him at Trinity University, Mike’s interest was in asymmetric catalysis and my part in that was asymmetric C-H insertion into secondary carbons with diazoacetates and a chiral dirhodium paddle wheel complex. We used chiral Pirkle-type GC columns to determine the enantiomeric excesses (% ee) of many of our products. The undergrads caught on to this right away and could run a reaction and get GC and NMR results right away on their own.

During my time with Mike at Trinity, the university had a visit and a talk before the whole university community by Margaret ‘Maggie’ Thatcher, former Prime Minister of Great Britain. Of interest is the fact that Maggie was a chemist by training. That day she toured our labs to see what Mike’s research was all about.

He held positions as a Professor at institutions including Hope College, University of Arizona, Trinity University, and the University of Maryland. He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Iowa (Google).

During his career Mike participated in many professional organizations and won numerous awards. He served in the executive committee of the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry for 23 years in many capacities as member, councilor as well as its chair. He served as chair of the Executive Board of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN). He was a founder and first president of the Council for Undergraduate Research and first chairman of National Conferences on Undergraduate Research. He was also president of Research Corporation for Science Advancement.

Mike was immortalized with one of the highest recognitions of all, a named chemical reaction: the Doyle–Kirmse Reaction.

Fellow of the American Chemical Society

2013 – Fellow, National Academy of Inventors

2010 – Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

2009 – Fellow of the American Chemical Society

2003 – Member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM)

1994 – Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

2009- Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry

2006- Arthur C. Cope Senior Scholar Award

2002- Pimentel Award in Chemical Education in 2002 from ACS

1998- Gassman Distinguished Service Award from the Division of Organic Chemistry

A list of citations in Google Scholar can be found here.

Probably the most prominent of the Doyle catalysts is Rh2(5S-MEPY)4, or dirhodium(II) core surrounded by four bridging chiral methyl 2-pyrrolidinone-4(S/R)-carboxylate (MEPY) ligands. In the lab it was just known as “MEPY”. It was a real workhorse, useful in several types of chemistries including cyclopropanation, cyclopropenation, Lewis acid catalysis and C-H insertion.

MEPY catalyst was prepared from commercial dirhodium tetraacetate and ligand and performed in a Soxhlet extraction setup with sodium carbonate to remove the acetic acid produced. It could be cleaned up by column chromatography.


The Doyle Rh2(5S-MEPY)4 catalyst showing the dirhodium core with 1 of 4 chiral, enantiomerically pure, methyl 2-pyrrolidinone-4-(S/R)-carboxylate ligands. The above structure was captured with acetonitrile ligands in the two axial positions.

Mike’s gift for academic research was built on his boundless energy and friendly nature. He loved working with undergraduate chemistry majors and nearly all got their work published in prestigious journals. We postdocs participated his research model and methods for our future academic careers.

I had the opportunity to visit with Mike at his home in San Antonio 2 years ago on the occasion of his retirement from UTSA. He was in good spirits and spent time gabbing with each of us. Glad I went.

Editorial note: I fixed nomenclature of MEPY. Excuse me.

Freedom vs Predation

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Americans, especially those of a particular political bent, love to exclaim that we love and cherish freedom. In America, the word ‘freedom’ is frequently used to amp up political rhetoric and to make people’s chests swell with pride with the aim of making us more receptive to a message. Particularly when playing Lee Greenwood’s song God bless the USA. This will not be the (n + 1)th valentine to freedom. Instead, my purpose is to reexamine a basic idea, i.e., certain pragmatics of freedom.

In America we thrive on a lumpy blend of civil liberties, freedoms and capitalistic ideals. Leading capitalists are both adored and despised, but not universally. Among many, being a millionaire or billionaire is tantamount to sainthood because if they are so rich, they must be doing something right. Luck is never part of the equation. In much of the USA, capitalism is raised to the level of a sacred obligation. Its principles are taken on hearsay or faith, and its boundaries are constantly pressing the limits of the law and ethics. In this way, capitalism is like a gas- it expands to fill the available space. Acquiring everything you can get away with is seen more as the act of a lone ranger. People have always admired a Robin Hood or a Jesse James character. Being one step ahead of the law is viewed as a righteous sport.

There is no doubt that capitalism has raised the level comfort, safety and wealth in America and elsewhere. One of the oft-cited merits of capitalism is that it seeks to raise the efficiency in the use of capital. From a distance that sounds like a dandy goal. Examples of the efficient use of capital are all around us and in ways that we may not recognize. Reducing the cost of doing business while retaining or increasing margins is a prime example of boosting the efficiency of capital. This benefits consumers if prices lower or remain level against inflation. But what about those who may have lost their jobs or their operating margins as the result of someone else’s boost in efficiency?

When the cost of doing business increases due to, say, tariffs, those afflicted are forced to raise their prices to pass along the costs. This is inflationary and most people understand this. But what about businesses not affected as much by tariffs? When they look around and see inflation raising prices by 6 %, aren’t they tempted to raise their prices as well? I would be. If customers are acclimated to inflation generally, they won’t mind if I raise my prices too, will they?

A misconception many people make is that if the cost of some raw material or labor drops, then the retailer will automatically pass that savings along to me. Ah, nope. They’ll bank the increase in margins. Why give away the boost in margins? This is just human nature.

The losses resulting from an increase in another’s raise in efficiency is part of progress. What about the buggy whip makers who went out of business after invention of then automobile? Who cried for them? A Pollyanna might say that they had a chance to expand their horizons into the automobile game.

After word processing became widespread and normal, it coincided with the extinction of the office secretary and typist pools. This helped to make Microsoft very wealthy at the expense of career secretarial staff. Today, most do their own secretarial work. Those who were once secretaries are now called administrative staff. Those of us who use word processors now spend our days on repetitive type setting chores.

Main Point

There comes a point where capitalism discolors into a shade of predatory behavior. The 1941 WC Fields movie Never Give a Sucker an Even Break expresses a sentiment held by many seeking easy money. It says that if I can take your money, you deserve it for being so clueless. In American history there are a great many incidents where a confidence man (conman) persuades an easy mark to part with his or her money. This kind of activity is always simmering somewhere. It involves a proposed cash transaction for something a doe-eyed sucker is anxious to exploit. Usually, the conman receives the cash and disappears leaving the sucker poorer and embarrassed. This extreme example is predatory behavior dressed up as a business transaction.

But capitalistic predators aren’t necessarily lone wolves tracking suckers. Many times, they operate from a store front as a legitimate business. Enron is a glaring example of a capitalistic enterprise that used the energy bull market of the 1990’s, creative accounting tricks and highly complex financial statements to mislead regulators and investors away from their felonious activities. So much money was being made that most were transfixed by their apparent success.

Obviously, business isn’t automatically fraudulent. But within the complex world of finance and accounting there exists a spider web of opportunities to lose your money. Predators may work in the shadows of crimes of omission rather than commission. The big investment people measure their strength and gain status through the contracts they land and the services they bill for. It is all very bewildering to outsiders.

So, what about the commercial onset of artificial intelligence, AI? It promises new vistas and opportunities by those who offer its services. Okay, but how and to whom? AI is already showing its worth in problem solving in many areas. Will AI understand context or counterpoints? Will AI eventually prosecute to the letter or to the spirit of the law? Will AI ever give a person a second chance based on past performance or extenuating circumstances in an HR situation?

Everyone has at some time has benefited from slack in the system, value judgements or another’s faith in your ability to improve. Will AI be used mainly to mete out discipline or strictness on the job? What happens when you are fired by an AI “staff member”? An AI staff member will be able to execute all manner of unpleasant duties in nearly every context. When will we have the right to be judged by a human being?

Is the “Vast Empty Space” of the Atom an Empty Idea?

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I’ve come around on this business of the atom being almost entirely empty space. This is an established bit of folklore in intro chemistry and physics. It dates back to experiments by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden under Ernest Rutherford, showing how alpha particles could sail through thin gold foil and infrequently, an alpha particle would impact something hard and scatter. The striking thing about the experimental results was just how infrequent the scattering was. The conclusion eventually drawn was that the atoms in the gold were mostly empty space.

But what if that space wasn’t quite empty? What if that space was a beehive of electrons at maybe half light-speed and mutually repelled by one another yet attracted to the nucleus. Each electron is a single point negative charge. The nucleus has a diameter 100,000 times smaller with equal but opposite charge. The strong positive nuclear charge field holds the electrons tightly but only to the to the point where electron-electron repulsion is balanced in atoms with more than two electrons.

The electron is a point charge manifestation of the electromagnetic force, but with mass and angular momentum. It is a perturbation in the electric field. It doesn’t fly like a ball, it exists in the manner of a wave of chance. It has none of what humans think of as material substance, rather it is purely a quantum mechanical manifestation. It is shaped by 3-dimensional standing waves of probability density surrounding the nucleus. This probability density is defined by a spherical harmonic wave series. We chemists know this harmonic series as s, p, d and f “orbitals”. Electron probability density extends from the nucleus to the outer orbitals of the atom with s, p, d, and f orbitals occupying space defined by their unique wave equations.

Source: Wikipedia. The atomic orbital series for the hydrogen atom. The blue fringed shapes represent the space available in each atomic orbital. The orbitals have no reality as “objects” themselves. Instead, they define regions of space that an electron can inhabit. The hydrogen atom is used because there are no complications with electron-electron repulsion. The orbital structure of the hydrogen atom can be defined precisely as an equation. Atoms from lithium and up cannot.

As a reminder, the shape of an orbital itself defines a region of space where an electron of a certain energy is most likely to be found. It is not necessary to be able to calculate the position of the electron moment to moment to understand its properties. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle does not allow for high precision determination of both position and momentum simultaneously, so this is where the universe tells us that ‘ya can’t have everything’. However, energy levels and transitions between them can be measured precisely. Exact position of an electron is not necessary. Besides, the 3-body problem shows up very early in the periodic table and spoils the fun anyway.

The edges of orbitals are not sharp but rather feather off into space and are pragmatically defined by a reasonable certainty as encircling an overall 95 % probability density.

What about the ’empty space’ view of the atom? As previously surmised, the filled concentrically overlapping occupied orbitals of an atom define a region of electron probability density that is not ever empty except for the hydrogen cation, H+.

Recall that the mass of the electron is small, about (1/1800)th that of the proton mass. This says that the space between outer edge of the atom and the nucleus is occupied by the electrons which are in constant motion constrained only by the individual 3-dimensional orbitals.

This forces us the think more clearly about what constitutes ’empty space’ of the atom. That empty space is filled with a diffuse, low mass density swarm of negative charges. Only orbital nodes have zero electron density, but all orbitals have some probability density throughout the interior of the atom.

Perhaps better way to describe the space between electron and nucleus is to simply mention the dimensions of the atom and its nucleus in meters as an example.

And for the Rutherford gold foil experiment, the diffuse electron density around the nucleus would pose little resistance to an alpha particle with its larger momentum passing through, giving the illusion of empty space.

A gold foil of larger thickness will easily block all alpha particles. Alpha’s are stopped by losing their energy to ion formation when passing through matter.

Safety With Corrosives

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Back in my undergraduate days I remember finding the CRC Handbook of Laboratory Safety. One photograph really stuck with me. Years later I decided to replicate it and use the image in chemical safety training.

Picture by Arnold Ziffel.

The picture above shows what happens when a solution of soluble proteins in water is subjected to a large excursion in pH in both directions- both highly acidic and highly basic (caustic). The take home lesson is intended to be “wear your damned safety glasses or face shield”. The obvious comparison is between egg white and your corneas. Both have transparency and proteins.

In reality, there is no comparison between the composition between an egg white and a cornea. The human cornea is far, far more complex in composition and structure. Eggs are widely available and cheap. While we see many human corneas every day, they are attached to living people who would, no doubt, put up a tussle with anyone seeking to abscond with one. For a demo, egg white will have to do.

Ribbon structure of ovalbumin. The flat ribbons are called β-pleated sheets. The helical sections are called an alpha helix. Source: Wikipedia.

The major protein in egg white is the globular phosphoglycoprotein ovalbumin at 54 % abundance. According to Google it is “A major storage protein with phosphorylation properties.” Ovalbumin and human serum albumin share a name but little else. Ovalbumin serves as a storage protein source for developing chicks. Human serum albumin serves to maintain balance in the osmotic pressure of blood and to transport substances in the blood stream.

The egg white image is really about the effects of corrosives on protein. Ovalbumin exposed to strong acid will rearrange its globular structure in a way that renders it insoluble and causes agglomeration. Thus the opaque appearance. Trainees look at the image and, knowing they themselves are made of protein, can silently draw their own conclusions about the risk of getting a corrosive in their eyes.