This week, the New York Times published a nice profile on Nobel Laureate Martin Chalfie at Columbia University. Chalfie shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year for his work on an amazing protein found in jellyfish called Green Fluorescent Protein, or GFP. The article is a great reminder of how very basic research on jellyfish and worms, of all things, yields invaluable scientific tools and knowledge.
GFP has the natural property of absorbing invisible ultraviolet light and producing green light – a discovery made in 1961 by Osamu Shimomura (who also shared the 2008 Nobel Award with Roger Tsien and Chalfie).
Chalfie’s “aha” moment, in 1989 at a department seminar, was a recognition that the light-producing properties of GFP could be harnessed as a sort of molecular flashlight. (Read more…)
Hanging on the wall in my office I still have my very first periodic table. It was given to me in the late seventies by my high school chemistry teacher, Mrs. Clarke. It’s woefully out of date but it has great sentimental value.
There are 103 named elements on my old periodic table. Elements 93-103, the transuranic elements (a.k.a. elements higher than uranium, #92) had all been discovered and were named on the periodic table. Elements 104-106 had been discovered before I took high school chemistry, although they would not be named until 1997. I remember my high school chemistry teacher telling us that scientists would discover heavier and heavier elements until, one day, element #112 would be synthesized. She told us that the synthesis of element #112 would complete what is known as a d-shell of electrons and, with the fully completed shell, the new atom might have interesting properties and be more stable than other transuranic elements.
Element #112 WAS discovered in February of 1996 by a team of German researchers at the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research. The German team created Element #112 by firing accelerated zinc-70 nuclei (atomic mass = 30) at a target made of lead-208 nuclei (atomic mass = 82) in a heavy ion accelerator. 82 + 30 = 112 and hence element #112 was born.
So why have I thought of element #112 recently? Because it was just named this past month! The name? Copernicium. The element was named after Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 – 1543), the first astronomer to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric theory of the universe. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) will officially endorse the element’s name in about six months. So, thirteen years after it was discovered, element #112 has had its existence independently verified and been given a name.
Sometimes I get frustrated when I see public officials demonstrating their lack of scientific literacy. Sometimes I get downright annoyed. In recent memory, a truly annoying demonstration of scientific illiteracy can be found in comments made by Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. Perhaps you’ve seen her in the news making statements about carbon dioxide not being a harmful gas but, rather, being a harmless gas? Perhaps you saw her on C-SPAN speaking from the floor of the House of Representatives making the same statements as part of an effort to convince Americans that the “threat of manmade global warming doesn’t make any sense”? If you missed it, or just want to be reminded of the sheer absurdity of her statements, I’ve included a copy of the video.
YouTube Direct Link
I used to live in Minnesota, not very far from the State Capitol building. There was a time when I could have (and would have) tried to meet with Congresswoman Bachmann to talk with her about her ideas and help her learn some real science. Since I no longer live in Minnesota, I decided to write her the following letter: (Read more…)
In 1987, my alma mater hosted a chemist from the University of Sussex named Sir Harold Kroto. I was fortunate enough to sit in on his lecture which detailed a collaboration between Dr. Kroto and two chemists from Rice University, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley. During the lecture, Dr. Kroto showed a box with a soccer ball inside of it. He closed the lid and waved his hand; when he opened the box the soccer ball had vanished and been replaced by a plastic model of a molecule with 60 points joining pentagons and hexagons, similar in shape to a soccer ball. The plastic model was of C60, a new form of carbon discovered by Kroto, Smalley, and Curl, for which they would eventually share the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
This new molecule also resembled the geodesic dome, a structure popularized by an American architect from Chicago name Richard Buckminster Fuller. Fuller was not the original inventor of the geodesic dome, but he developed and popularized the idea in the 1940s, eventually receiving a U.S. patent for it. Fuller was interested in the geodesicdome because it was extremely strong for its weight and because a sphere has the largest volume with the least surface area. He envisioned using the geodesic dome in all types of structures: houses, cars, museums, etc. C60 was given the common name buckminsterfullerene (buckyball for short) in honor of Buckminster Fuller’s work. (Read more…)
Hanging on the wall in my office I still have my very first periodic table. It was given to me in the late seventies by my high school chemistry teacher, Mrs. Clarke. It’s woefully out of date but it has great sentimental value.
This new molecule also resembled the geodesic dome, a structure popularized by an American architect from Chicago name Richard Buckminster Fuller. Fuller was not the original inventor of the geodesic dome, but he developed and popularized the idea in the 1940s, eventually receiving a U.S. patent for it. Fuller was interested in the geodesicdome because it was extremely strong for its weight and because a sphere has the largest volume with the least surface area. He envisioned using the geodesic dome in all types of structures: houses, cars, museums, etc. C60 was given the common name buckminsterfullerene (buckyball for short) in honor of Buckminster Fuller’s work. 