Chemistry!

I've officially decided that chemistry labs drive me crazy. Today I was teaching an Organic chemistry lab and guess what! It was nuts. I had brought some homework to do because I thought it was going to be an easy lab and I envisioned getting my students started and then sitting at one of the benches and studying for tomorrow's exam with half an ear in their direction. Oh my, not to be!
It started with the equipment. The person in charge of preparing for the lab had forgotten and I had to hunt around and find all my own chemicals and equipment. (Thankfully my friend Scott was around and helped me). Then when I tried to give my lecture the class in the other room kept coming in and out and banging the door open and I had to shout to be heard. Then we set up vacuum distillation systems and NO ONE could get vacuum. I fiddled and fussed with all the glassware and rubber hoses and the mercury filled manometers and finally after about an hour we got some suction. Two of them were permanently not working.
I went to help a student and their water cooling system exploded, all over my face and clothes and their lab books and.... everything. Twice, it exploded. Finally I pointed out to them a roll of adhesive wax paper and told them to wrap every single connection in it before they turned it on again.
Four students had heating systems that weren't working. Three students couldn't get their product to distill at all and I finally kicked them out of lab at 5:30 because I had to go home. Two students were trying to get in the instrument room downstairs but it was locked and they didn't have the key and the instrument was in use anyway.... someone else spilled toluene everywhere and it started to smoke. Someone else forgot to put grease on all their glass joints and a glass stopper got stuck in a flask. How do you unstick stuck stoppers? We finally had to break it to get it open.
So I think I must be crazy to be studying and teaching chemistry. I should have stuck with French. French grammar doesn't chip your nails and wash all the nailpolish off. French nouns don't make you reek of naphthalene so badly that my brother tells me I smell like a chemical factory. French verbs don't make my hair go gray and my sanity slip away.
I hope I don't go permanently insane. One day is enough.

To be fully alive

But I can cry-
O Enemy, the maker hath not done
One day thou shalt behold,
and from the sight wilt run.
(George MacDonald)

So this is my challenge.... to step out of the boat, to take the risks God has set before me and to let go of my insecurities so I can be all that he has planned for me.
And for all the times I feel that I haven't got enough, I will remind myself that God has not finished working with me yet, and when he does, someday, there will be glory to behold.

#43

Number 43 on my list of 46 things to do before I die: Kiss someone through a kissing gate.

I remember years ago I was in the city of Bath, England. I went for a walk and ended up in this glorious field that overlooked the whole countryside- there were little trails through the long grass and wildflowers sprinkled all over the hill. I sat there in the grass watching the sun go down, the sky streaked with pink and orange. After a while a young man walked by and sat down, starting to talk to me. He was a writer and was travelling from out of town and liked the breathing space of these quiet places. We talked for a long time and then got up to go, winding our way to the edge of the field which was fenced in with one lone gate.
It was a kissing gate- a gate meant to prevent cyclists and horses from getting through- one end of the fence is forked and the other end fits into it with a swinging gate that necessitates two people being within kissing distance in order to get through at the same time.
The man started to laugh as we were going through and I asked what it was. He had this funny look and he said, "Well, I just find it kind of strange that I am going through a kissing gate with a pretty girl in the middle of a beautiful field." He smiled at me and I smiled back, and then we said goodbye and I walked back to where I was staying and I never saw him again. I never even knew his name, but I'm sure somewhere in this world is a writer who will remember that funny evening when he went through a kissing gate with a very naive 18-year-old Canadian girl.
Moments like that recall a warm sense of nostalgia. I suppose a million and one things in my life could have happened that didn't (sometimes quite fortuitiously)- but the things that did happen have served to make me into the person I am now.
Looking back in perspective I can be grateful that God hasn't answered 90% of my prayers, but at the time it always seems devastating. The lesson learned is to look at the big picture and see beyond the practicalities of today. Faith! That's what it is.

Breakfast in bed

Even though it's not on my list of things to do before I die.... I've always wanted to have someone bring me breakfast in bed. Sometimes I imagine it. I will wake up in the morning, feeling sleepy and warm with the sun shining in the window. There will be no rush to get to school or work.... and then someone will come in with a little tray with tea and a muffin and I'll sit up and they'll plump up my pillows and I'll drink my tea while reading a book and feel like a million bucks. It would be wonderful.
I've been dropping hints at my roomate, but seeing as she still hasn't got the idea, this morning I decided to take matters into my own hands.
I woke up with the sun streaming through my window, all cozy and warm. I got up groggily and went into the kitchen and put on the kettle. I had planned this out the night before and actually baked chocolate chip muffins. I cut up a nectarine and put my tea and a muffin on a tray and carried it into my room. Then I plumped up my pillows and jumped into bed.
"Oh, good morning, dear! here's your breakfast in bed."
"Why thank you, Heather. What a thoughtful thing to do. Mmmm, I love these muffins! You must have slaved away for hours baking them! And the tea is exactly the way I like it!"
"Anything else I can get for you?"
"Oh, just pass me my book there."
I lay there and read and sipped tea while the day dawned, and do you know what?
It was absolutely wonderful. I always knew it would be.

SAWing, Shooting and Bombing

So I promised I'd get back to SAW and related things..... One of my deep interests in chemistry (besides polymers, of course) is ballistics and explosives technology. This started years ago, but was greatly encouraged when I took physical chemistry last year and had to make some kind of explosive every week. One of my first independant successes was a flare. I wasn't sure exactly what I was doing, but I mixed Potassium nitrate and sugar in equal concentrations (Potassium nitrate or potassium perchlorate are great oxidizers, and the sugar is an excellent fuel source as it burns really hot), and threw in a bit of Strontium nitrate for the red colour. I rolled it up like a cigar in a paper towel and sitting it on my lab bench, I lit it. At first just the paper towel burned and I was feeling a little disappointed.
Suddenly, there was a massive fizzing noise and it exploded into life, spinning and bouncing across the table and shooting out red flames and smoke. When it finally stopped my friend Wes and I were standing there, mouths hanging open. Wes turned to me and said, "I think you should try that under the fume hood next time."
But anyway, that is totally off the topic. What I really wanted to say, is first of all, how much the chemistry industry has influenced our quality of life. Chemistry makes possible the reality of clean drinking water, or fuel-efficient cars, of comfy vinyl seats like the one I'm sitting on, of food that doesn't spoil after one day, of medicines and cosmetics, of inexpensive polyester clothes, and of a million other things. On the other hand, we can also thank chemistry for the atom bomb, chemical gas warfare, the disasters at Chernobyl, Bhopal and Seveso; and many other things.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project and a brilliant physicist, spent the latter part of his life lobbying for nuclear disarmament and regretting the massive destruction science had brought about. What should we say about that? My feeling is that chemistry, like any other discipline, is an instrument that can be used equally for good as for bad. It depends, a large portion of it, anyway, on the heart and head of the person who uses it. This is one reason why I'm passionately committed to responsible education- Happy Heather's Hullaballoo categorically supports science education for all ages.
Moreover, I also think it is important to support ballistics, explosives, and other military-related technologies. For example, ballistics technology has enabled the development of full metal jacket and hollow point bullets- full metal jacket bullets piercing right through whatever they're aimed at (including sheet metal or several people in a row) and causing minimal damage to the immediate target, and hollow point bullets mushrooming out upon contact and causing irreparable damage to the target but minimal risk to bystanders. I'll let you think about which one is more ethical, but suffice to say it is important that we pursue greater knowledge in these fields.

Oh my oh my oh my

Can you believe I sprained my wrist? That means (drum roll please) that I don't have to play badminton tomorrow!!!! It's not a big deal, though, seeing as our class is finishing up a tournament, in which I LOST EVERY SINGLE GAME!!!
By the way I'm typing with my left hand now, which is considerably easier than writing with my left hand, which is what I was trying to do in Calculus class today. I got so far behind that I eventually decided to just zone out. You wouldn't believe how fast Calculus goes by when one is zoning out and in another world! It was great.
As for other things I love, I just learned a great phrase in French: Tant pis pour toi. I means: too bad for you. Which is one of those phrases you say when someone tells you they have a sprained wrist and can't go to badminton class. Or you could say, 'poor Zaza, let me comfort you by mailing you a box of timbits' (which would be really horrible since I am off of them for Lent).
And while we're on comforting things... as some of you may know, for a long time there has been no portable automatic detection system for the chemical warfare agent phosgene which has been in use since WWI. However, and this is the comforting news, a new instrument has just been developed called a SAW detector (Surface Acoustic Wave) and although it is still undergoing field tests, there is good indication that it may be able to accurately detect the presence of phosgene in the air! Strike one for chemists! (And for the computer nerds who designed the clever algorithms SAW detectors use)
But I will discuss this more later as it is getting late and I need to rest my wrist.

Faith

Faith is not knowing what God is doing and trusting in it.
Faith is having no idea what God is doing but trusting in him.