Category Archives: Chemistry

This is a guest post from one of our judges for the Chemistry World Science Communication Competition

50 years ago, while taking a gap year teaching in India, I used to write home to my parents every week (no email or mobiles then). In one letter, I asked my dad, a highly respected editor, how to write good English. He wrote back: ‘Use short sentences, and don’t start them with “It…”‘. I have followed this advice ruthlessly ever since, also applying it when editing texts of all kinds from various unfortunate authors, and it has served me well.

I have spent my entire career trying to make science accessible, and have found that short words and phrases help, as well as short sentences. So I tend to use ‘chose’ rather than ‘selected’ and ‘now’ rather than ‘at the present moment in time’ – just as William Tyndale, translating the Bible into English for the first time, used words of one syllable wherever he could: ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’.

And I try to avoid hype. Listening to commentary on recent tennis and cricket matches, I have been dismayed as shot after shot is described as ‘unbelievable’ or ‘incredible’. No; we have just seen them; they were brilliant, but not unbelievable.

So my advice is: keep the language simple. Using long words, excessive hype, and scientific jargon may make your text sound more important, but will always get in the way of understanding.

Adam Hart-Davis is a writer and broadcaster based in Devon, UK

Read Philip Ball’s competition blog post.

Find out about the Chemistry World Science Communication Competition and submit your entry here.

                  

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On your marks, get set, GO! With the Olympics just days away, Brian Clegg dons his speed-suit to take a quick dash through the chemistry of Lycra (also known as spandex in the US) in this week’s Chemistry in its element podcast.

                  

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Archimedes’ principle does not work in the nanoworld. So say Roberto Piazza, from Milan Polytechnic in Italy, and his colleagues. The principle, a law of physics established 23 centuries ago, states that a body immersed in a fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces, but, as Piazza has found, this does not hold for objects a millionth of a millimetre in size.

‘It works for footballs, but not in the microscopic world,’ Piazza said in a recent interview. ‘What we have done is just a generalisation; had Archimedes had such small particles at his disposal, he could have done the same,’ he added.

Piazza’s team noticed that when they added gold nanoparticles (20 times more dense than water) to an aqueous suspension of plastic particles just slightly denser than water and six times larger than the nanoparticles, the gold nanoparticles floated to the top, forming a thin layer on the surface after a few days. ‘What happens is that not only is the liquid displaced, but the submerged object gets an additional upward push owing to the perturbation induced by the distribution of the other particles,’ explained Piazza. The larger particles slowly push the nanoparticles towards the surface.

The finding may have implications for biology and geology research, Piazza said. These include techniques to separate biological fluids from nanomaterials and getting a better idea of how sedimentary rocks form.

Elinor Hughes

                  

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Half of the felony charges stemming from a 2008 lab accident that killed UCLA research assistant Sheri Sangji were dropped Friday when the University of California regents agreed to follow comprehensive safety measures and endow a $500,000 scholarship in her name.

"The regents acknowledge and accept responsibility for the conditions under which the laboratory operated on Dec. 29, 2008," the agreement read in part, referring to the date that Sangji, 23, suffered fatal burns.

Charges remain against her supervisor, chemistry professor Patrick Harran. His arraignment was postponed to Sept. 5 to allow the judge to consider defense motions, including one challenging the credibility of the state's chief investigator on the case.

Sangji was transferring about 1.8 ounces of t-butyl lithium from one sealed container to another when a plastic syringe came apart in her hands, spewing a chemical compound that ignites when exposed to air. Her synthetic sweater caught fire and melted onto her skin. She died 18 days later.

UCLA and Harran have called her death a tragic accident and said she was a seasoned chemist who chose not to wear a protective lab coat.

In December, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office charged Harran and the regents with three counts each of willfully violating occupational health and safety standards.

In settling the case, the regents agreed to maintain a comprehensive lab safety program across UC campuses, including enhanced safety training and protective equipment. The board also will endow a $500,000 environmental law scholarship in Sangji's name at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, from which Sangji had received an acceptance letter.

Her older sister, Naveen Sangji, has pressed for prosecution of Harran and UCLA but welcomed the admission of responsibility.

"UCLA and the regents have finally admitted that they wronged Sheri terribly," she said. "Our family's pain will not diminish, but our hope, of course, is that no one else has to suffer the way Sheri did and that such tragedies are avoided in the future."

UC officials said Friday that they stand by Harran. They and Harran's lawyer, Thomas O'Brien, expressed sympathy for Sangji's family, but said charges against the professor are unwarranted.

See original here:
UC regents strike plea deal in UCLA chemistry lab death

Criminal proceedings against UCLA chemistry professor Patrick Harran took a bizarre turn Thursday when the defense alleged in court papers that the state's chief investigator in the accidental death of a lab worker committed murder as a teenager in 1985.

The investigator, Brian Baudendistel, denied it.

"It's not true," he told The Times earlier this week. "Look, it's not me."

Baudendistel, a senior special investigator for the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, was instrumental in building the criminal case against Harran and UCLA with a 95-page report that blamed both in the death of 23-year-old Sheharbano "Sheri" Sangji. She suffered fatal burns when a experiment burst into flames in December 2008.

Sangji, who graduated that year from Pomona College in Claremont with a bachelor's degree in chemistry, had worked in Harran's organic chemistry lab for less than three months. She was transferring about 1.8 ounces of t-butyl lithium from one sealed container to another when a plastic syringe came apart in her hands, spewing a chemical compound that ignites when exposed to air. The synthetic sweater she was wearing caught fire and melted onto her skin. She died 18 days later.

From the outset, UCLA and Harran have cast her death as a tragic accident and said she was a seasoned chemist who was trained in the experiment and chose not to wear a protective lab coat.

In late December, however, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office charged Harran and the UC regents with three counts each of willfully violating occupational safety and health standards. After months of plea negotiations, the defendants are due back in Superior Court on Friday to be arraigned or to announce if any deals have been struck.

In his filing, which includes a motion to quash Harran's arrest warrant, his defense attorney, Thomas O'Brien, signaled that he would seek to put Baudendistel's credibility on trial. The filing states that a judge would not have relied on the investigator's report in issuing a warrant for Harran if the investigator's juvenile record had been known.

"Incredibly, the affidavit failed to disclose ... that at age 16, Investigator Baudendistel murdered a man in cold blood during a failed drug deal and almost certainly lied or deliberately misled the District Attorney within the past two months about his involvement in that heinous crime," the filing states.

If the warrant were quashed, Harran's lawyers contend, it would mean that "no prosecution was properly brought" against Harran within the three-year statute of limitations. That could mean the charges would have to be dropped.

Read the original:
Focus turns to state investigator in UCLA lab death case

ALBANY, Calif. (KGO) -- A former Albany High School student is taking legal action for a "C+" he received in chemistry. Bowen Bethards say he was earning an "A" in the class until the teacher refused to let him make up missed work.

Based on grades, Bowen is a good student. In his first two years at Albany High School, he received only two "Bs," the rest were "As", which is why he was so devastated when he received a "C+" in chemistry, a grade he and his mother say, he didn't deserve.

Bethards is a year away from college and dreams of going to UCLA. But the "C+" he received in chemistry his sophomore year at Albany High could jeopardize his chances.

He and his mother Laureen are now suing the chemistry teacher, the principal and the district.

"They allowed a rogue teacher to deny him what he had worked so hard for and what he had earned to basically steal from him," Laureen Bethards said.

She says the whole ordeal began when Bowen missed a lab to attend an adoption hearing of his younger sister. Bethards says the teacher, award-winning, district veteran Peggy Carlock initially agreed to let Bowen make-up the lab, but then changed her mind and gave him a failing grade for lab work.

Bethards says because of that, Bowen's "A+" in chemistry turned into a "C+" for the semester.

"If Laureen is a helicopter mom, she's a Black Hawk attack helicopter and we're going to get justice," family attorney Daniel Horowitz said.

District officials have since changed Bowen's "C+" to a "B", but the Bethards family wants either an "A+" or the opportunity to make up the missed work. They are also seeking $10,000 from the district and damages for severe emotional distress.

Bowen's mom says there is much at stake.

Continue reading here:
Former students sues school over "C+"