Category Archives: Chemistry

My mugshot, for those who want to put a face to the name

In response to SeeArrOh’s ChemCoach carnival call, here is an insight into my small part as a cog in the inner workings of Chemistry World towers.

Your current job
I am one of two staff Science Correspondents for Chemistry World magazine. I am responsible for writing news and feature articles covering the whole range of chemistry research, industry, policy etc. I also edit two of our regular columns – Classic kit from the excellent Andrea Sella, and Totally synthetic, written by Paul Docherty (who some of you may know was once my lab- and flat-mate. It’s great when you can keep in touch with friends through your daily work.)

What you do in a standard “work day”
Like Carmen and a lot of others have mentioned, the nature of my role is very fluid. I can be writing and researching articles on anything from Rydberg atoms to Nobel prizes from one day to the next. That means I get to meet and speak to all sorts of interesting people, from the top researchers and industrialists around the world, to politicians and policymakers.

My usual day is spent hunting for news stories in journals and other sources (I read way more journals now than I ever did as a student), before our daily news meeting where we decide what we’re going to cover from what’s been found that day. Then I’ll be writing, researching or editing my latest pieces.

What kind of schooling / training / experience helped you get there?
I have a MSci in Natural Sciences (specialising in chemistry but including materials science, cell biology and pharmacology) from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD (or DPhil if you’re going to be picky) in synthetic organic chemistry from the University of Oxford. During my undergrad degree I spent time in both analytical and synthetic labs in industry, with a view to a career in med chem, which gave me a tiny insight into how Pharma works.

I have no formal training in journalism, but during my PhD I entered (and somehow managed to win) a writing competition run by the Daily Telegraph newspaper. On the back of that I did a bit more writing for the Telegraph and a few other places, which made me think I should consider it more seriously as a career. After writing up, I joined the Royal Society of Chemistry in Cambridge in a graduate communications role, and was fortunate that a job on Chemistry World came up a few months later.

How does chemistry inform your work?
Every day I am reading, writing and trying to understand chemistry of some kind. While my knowledge of the gamut of organic transformations may have dwindled, my general chemistry is stronger than ever, and I am constantly learning about new topics and applying my chemical understanding to see where they fit in to the bigger picture.

I also teach first year undergraduate chemistry one night a week in Cambridge, which is a great way to keep my basic chemistry ticking over.

Finally, a unique, interesting, or funny anecdote about your career
During my PhD, which I began in Cambridge, my supervisor was offered a permanent lecturer position at Oxford. This meant we needed to move the whole lab from one university to another. While Jon is quite a young group leader, we were fortunate enough to have inherited a reasonably large stock of chemicals and equipment from his former supervisor, who had emigrated to Australia. But that meant we had to transport it all.

My boss got some professional quotes for the move, but the £30k quote was somewhat above our budget, so we hired a couple of vans and loaded up for a group outing cross country. Luckily, my father could advise on the legalities of transporting chemicals, so we packed up pretty much everything that wasn’t pyrophoric, explosive, highly oxidising, overly smelly, strongly alkylating or otherwise likely to cause problems in the event of an accident, and trundled off.

There were, of course, plenty of surprises when clearing out the cupboards and fridges. Arcane glassware that not even the venerable technicians could identify, useful stuff we never knew we had, not to mention the two litre bottle of phosgene in toluene solution…

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/2012/10/26/chemcoach-carnival-an-ear-to-the-ground-and-a-finger-in-every-pie/

With potential uses from solar cells, transparent speakers, tranisistors and more, it’s no wonder graphene is called a wonder-material. Find out all about it in this week’s Chemistry in its element

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/2012/10/24/chemistry-in-its-element-graphene/

…of a recent paper from the RSC’s Analyst, followed by the tagline ‘tuppence-based SERS for the detection of illicit materials’.

In the paper, scientists from Manchester explain how they used a UK two pence piece (a.k.a. tuppence) to do some drug detection work!

Royston Goodacre and team from University of Manchester altered the surface of a copper two pence piece with silver to make it suitable for the vibrational spectroscopic technique surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), which they then used to differentiate between the drugs: 4-methylmethcathinone (mephedrone), 5,6-methylenedioxy-2-aminoindane (MDAI) and 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine (MDMA).

The team made up methanolic solutions of the drugs, soaked the coins in the solutions (the drugs bind to the rough surface) before running SERS on it.

SERS usually works on thin roughened films, but the team says that these are expensive, with the most complex needing specialist equipment to prepare. Their aim in this case was to find a substrate that was cheap and accessible, providing a robust surface that can be used by non-specialists.

US coins have been used for SERS recently to detect melamine in infant formula, but the elemental composition differs from UK coins, say the researchers. It’s this difference in metallic composition that can affect the morphology of deposited silver and SERS enhancement, they add. So, finding the right coin can be tricky. And the team was restricted to pre-1992 coins as these contain 97% copper, unlike the post-1992 coins that are composed of copper-plated steel.

Well, that’s one thing I never thought of doing with my loose change!

Elinor Hughes

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/2012/10/17/2p-or-not-2p-that-is-the-title/

It’s not often that a compound finds a use as a drug AND in fireworks and ceramic glazes – to say nothing of featuring in popular soft drinks! Get your dose of lithium carbonate in this week’s Chemistry in its element

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/2012/10/17/chemistry-in-its-element-lithium-carbonate/

Theres a guest post on the Washington Post Answer Sheet blog by David Bernstein entitled Why are you forcing my son to take chemistry? in which the author argues against his 15-year-old sons schools requirement that all its students take a year of chemistry.

Derek Lowe provides a concise summary of the gist:

My son will not be a chemist. He will not be a scientist. A year of chemistry class will do nothing for him but make him miserable. He could be taking something else that would be doing him more good.

Bernsteins post is a slurry of claims about chemistry, secondary education, and the goals of education more generally with respect to human flourishing in other words, the kind of thing I need to take apart for close examination before responding.

So, thats what Im going to do here.

Lets start with Bernsteins account of the dawning of the horror:

I discovered that my 15-year-old son must suffer through a year of chemistry because a Committee of Ten academics was assembled in 1892 in order to standardize the curriculum (hows that for a bad idea?) and recommended that chemistry, among other subjects, be taught to everyone everywhere.

Bernstein is right that tradition is not in itself a good reason to require that all high school students take a year-long chemistry course. On the other hand, tradition is not in itself a good reason to assert that a year-long chemistry course is a wrongheaded requirement.

The author proceeds to make noises acknowledging that he is glad that someone in our society is doing chemistry, what with all the goodies it delivers to enhance our modern lifestyles. He even writes:

[M]y very own mother, who if I am lucky will never lay eyes on this article, is a chemist, and believes that chemistry is the most noble of human pursuits and doesnt understand how I, a former philosophy major, was able to eke out a living.

Read more here:
On the apparent horrors of requiring high school students to take chemistry.

Almost exactly 15 years since the Thrust supersonic car broke the sound barrier and the land speed record, last week the team behind Bloodhound SSC tested the rocket system that they hope will break that record.

The Bloodhound engine roars into life © Stefan Marjoram

Based at RAF St Mawgan in Newquay, UK, the test brought together hundreds of engineers, sponsors, media and schoolchildren. The RAF base was chosen because of its hardened air shelters (HAS), bomb-proof hangars originally designed to protect fighter planes during the cold war. This meant that those of us gathered to watch would be well-protected if the rocket exploded.

The rocket system consisted of a Cosworth Formula One engine, a pump from a 1960s Blue Steel cruise missile, 400 litres of ultra-pure hydrogen peroxide and 180kg of solid rubber rocket fuel (HTPB). You might think that a Formula One engine would be used to power the wheels, but then Bloodhound isn’t one of the ‘small, slow cars that goes round in circles’, as its driver Andy Green describes F1 cars. In Bloodhound, that powerful engine is needed just to push the peroxide into the rocket chamber at a high enough pressure.

That peroxide is fed through a silver-plated grating to break it down into oxygen and water, releasing energy and raising the temperature to 600°C. The combination of high pressure oxygen and heat ignites the rubber fuel, burning at 3000°C and unleashing up to 27,000 pounds of thrust.

There were a lot of unknowns before the test: would the pump withstand the high pressure, would the fuel burn evenly, would the chamber withstand the high temperature? In a year’s time, Andy Green will be sitting directly in front of that rocket system and the team need to be certain that the answer to those questions is a resounding ‘yes’.

We assembled 200 metres from the rocket in a neighbouring HAS to watch the test streamed live. The atmosphere was tense as we sat in complete silence while the engineers went through the final checks and the bombproof doors closed behind us. On the screen we could see the rocket chamber pointing slightly downwards, held in place by a large concrete rig. As the engine roared into life and started pumping the peroxide, we could see the flame leaving the back of the chamber as the fuel rod ignited. The engineers then unleashed the full power of the engine, pumping the peroxide at 820psi – the equivalent pressure of four family cars sitting on your palm. At this point, for a split-second, the screen turned white as the camera tried to adjust for the brightness. This was just long enough for it to appear as if the rocket had exploded. That was always a possibility and the engineers had even said beforehand that an explosion would be better than nothing happening. Happily, the camera quickly adjusted to reveal the incredibly smooth shape of the flame bursting out of the chamber. But we didn’t need the camera to know that the rocket was burning steadily, we could feel it in the ground. The quaking of the earth and deafening roar were clear signs that the engineers had got it right.

After 10 seconds, when the fuel was exhausted, the hangar erupted in applause. We had just witnessed the largest rocket test in the UK for 20 years and it was a great success. The rocket will be tested four more times over the next year, before the first record attempt in South Africa in late 2013. But the team don’t just want to break the 763mph record; they want to smash it. In 2014 they will return to South Africa and push the car to 1000mph. Keep an eye on http://www.bloodhoundssc.com to follow them every step of the way.

Ian Le Guillou

                  

Source:
http://prospect.rsc.org/blogs/cw/2012/10/10/bloodhound-rocket-test-whoosh-or-bang/