All Blogs / Academics / Chemistry / Posts With Video
“Get a job, Ken!” Part 7: Research/Proposal Talks and Meeting with the Chair
The research talk and proposal talk are arguably the most important parts of the on-site interview. This post, part seven in the “Get a job, Ken! series” delves into both, as well as the final [...]
[Guest Post] Best of the Annals of Improbable Research (Part 2)
The following is a guest post by Brandon Findlay, who regularly blogs at ChemTips. — Best of the Annals of Improbable Research (Part 2) It’s time for another best-of from the Annals of Improbable Research. [...]
If Necessity is the mother of Invention, is Invention’s quirky uncle named Accident?
In a previous post, The Life Cycle of a North American Research Project, I described how an unexpected publication came out of what I initially thought was a calculation anomaly. I now have another, even [...]
Reality Show of Chemistry Undergrads
MIT has fully embraced the power of the internet to educate outside the walls of its lecture halls. It offers anyone with an internet connection the ability to watch lectures from a large variety of [...]
Emergent Complexity: The Fourth Law of Thermodynamics?
The transfer of energy dictates everything on earth from the movement of atoms to the global economy. In high school/first-year chemistry we learn that the rules governing the movement of energy are simply defined by three laws of thermodynamics (four if you count the zeroth law). Yet, this simplicity can be misleading - as demonstrated [...]
Lab Muppet Theory
Quick: What do Pinky and The Brain, Kirk and Spock, Bunsen and Beaker...and your research group all have in common? Give up? They all subscribe to "Muppet Theory," a very recent label on a very old phenomenon. As Slate writer Dahlia Lithwick explains, Muppet Theory reprises the age-old struggle between archetypes: Order fighting Chaos, Kermit against Animal, maybe [...]
The Source Code Debate
Few researchers were using computers 30 years ago. This quickly changed with the release of several commercially viable personal computers in the 1980s. Since then, processing power has increased and the cost of computers decreased at an exponential rate (see Moore’s Law). It’s no surprise that computers are now pivotal in chemistry research. We use [...]
Air guitar
Have a you ever wondered what you could do with an acoustic guitar, a tablet computer and a limitless supply of small pneumatic gas valves? No, of course you haven’t. But it turns out that the creative chaps at US valve maker Clippard Instrument Laboratory have, and better still they’ve put it together. Here is the [...]
Magnetic grapes and NMR
When I was an undergrad I found NMR to be one of the trickiest techniques to get my head around. I think it was because the technique involves so many concepts that run counter to everything we've learnt before. After all in school we get told about ferromagnets and thats it. Then at uni suddenly [...]
Lizzie in the sky with diamonds
Here at the Chemistry World homestead we’re coming over all patriotic with the diamond jubilee of the Queen this year. So the news that the chaps responsible for the wonderful periodic table of videos have engraved the world’s smallest portrait of the Queen onto a diamond to celebrate the jubilee brought a tear to my [...]
ACS San Diego Day 2 – Impacts and entrepreneurship
The ACS Award for Creative Innovation Symposium in honour of Chad Mirkin was a who’s who of clever nano chemistry with bio applications. John Rogers presented his flexible circuits and you can read my story here. But the flexible circuits are also being used in a way I didn’t mention in the story – for imaging [...]
Chemistry World’s roundup of money and molecules
Merck KGaA talks restructuring – Abbott in $1.3bn autoimmune deal – And focus on rare diseases in Europe and UK PHARMACEUTICAL – German chemical and pharma company Merck KGaA is talking about job cuts over the next two years as part of new ‘efficiency measures’. The company says that it has started a consultation with employees, [...]
The chemistry of the champagne bubble
It’s Valentine’s Day and here at the Chemistry World cabana, we want to make sure our readers have the best one yet. No doubt many of you will be spending the evening with a special someone and to make sure the conversation flows, you may share a glass or two of that most romantic of [...]
Flutes let the bubbles go up your nose
Everyone enjoys a nice glass of bubbly – no one more so than us here at Casa del Chemistry World. But some people go that bit further to investigate just what it is that makes a glass of champagne taste the way it does. And in this case it turns out that the glass can [...]
The science behind Marks & Spencer’s fruit packaging
— Red strawberry
Ground breaking packaging news has reached CW Towers, British retailer Marks & Spencer is launching new packaging to extend the life of strawberries. The store, whose food adverts have become much copied in recent years, say their new packaging will extend the life of fruit stored in the fridge by up to two [...]
How do your reindeer fly?
— Is it Christmas Spirit that powers Santa’s sleigh?
So, on Saturday evening, Santa will fire up the reindeer and set off around the globe once again. In fact, you can track his flight. But how do those reindeer fly, it could all be to do with Christmas Spirit, but it’s long been suggested there’s a [...]
Science tricks for the Christmas table
Fancy some science tricks to wow the guests around the Christmas dinner table with? Chemistry World has put together a small collection of videos that should help keep the kiddywinks quiet, wake up the snoozers and amuse even the more cynical table guests. If you like them let us know and if you have other [...]
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas…
Somehow Christmas time always feels more magical when there’s snow about. As snowflakes drift down and stack against frozen panes, you sink deeper into the sofa to sleep off the lunchtime overindulgence. And as you sit there the world goes silent as a white blanket settles leaving the landscape an undulating mass of indistinct shapes. [...]
And we worry about class sizes!
What’s the ideal class size for a chemistry lesson? How about 4207. It’s been confirmed by Guiness World Records that Israel has smashed the World Record (previously 562 people in Belgium) for the number of participants in a mass chemistry lesson with 4207. OK, that wasn’t all in one classroom, instead the Iraeli Science and Technology initiative [...]
Crawling Snot Robot
The ever prolific George Whitesides is at it again. Last year he made a soft pneumatic gripper that picked up eggs (and as I recall, anaesthetised mice), now he’s modified his work to make what someone in the office described as a ‘crawling snot robot.’ Check out its moves: The undulating crawling robot is made in [...]
- American Chemical Society
- International Year of Chemistry
- Nobel Prize
- Imperial College London
- Derek Lowe
- Academy of Sciences
- Robert Burns Woodward
- Rudy Baum
- Drug Discovery
- Scripps Research Institute
- Thomson Reuters
- University of Manchester
- Royce Murray
- Molecular
- Angewandte Chemie
- Periodic Table
- Ei-ichi Negishi
- Sheri Sangji
- UNC-Chapel Hill
- Hong Kong
