Mar
9
9
Lauren Wolf
Celebrating The Laser
Posted by Lauren Wolf on March 9, 2010 in Ripped From the Pages
In honor of this week’s laser-rific cover story, which takes a look at the laser’s impact on chemical research during the past five decades, I’m also giving a nod to its influence on pop culture.
After all, what would movies and television be without lasers that blow up planets and sharks that use them for frickin’ nefarious purposes?
Here, then, are my top five picks for the Best Uses of Lasers in Film:
5) Countless movies have used “laser fields” to protect some sort of data or priceless artifact from being stolen. And characters have always gotten by those laser grids with a lot of practice and, well, flexibility. Take Catherine Zeta-Jones in “Entrapment,” for instance. She and Sean Connery practiced really hard to defeat a laser-based security system and steal a desirable Chinese mask in the film. An even more elaborate dance through a laser field in a much better movie, however, was undertaken by the Night Fox in “Ocean’s Twelve.” He dances his way through the lasers to steal the Coronation Egg, an antique he eventually finds out was a fake all along.
4) No one could forget the moment the Death Star blows up Princess Leia’s home planet of Alderaan in “Star Wars.” An entire planet gone in the blink of an eye, my friends. And what technological wonder was responsible? You guessed it: a really, really big laser.
More Holiday-Related Chemistry Fun
Dec
24
24
Posted by Lauren Wolf on December 24, 2009 in Education
In November, I wrote a Newscripts about Diane Bunce’s public lecture and demonstration of the chemical principles of Thanksgiving dinner.
Well, she’s at again. This time, she taught her students a thing or two about making holiday crafts in the lab. Check out this video, also available at the ACS podcast “ByteSizeScience,” for tips on making your own snow globe, bouncy “snow balls,” and marbled Christmas cards. Follow it up by making some chemical Christmas ornaments, and you’ve got yourself a holiday schedule full of geeky goodness.
Thanks again to the wizards in the ACS Office of Public Affairs for sharing their footage.
Happy Holidays, everyone!
More On Dan Brown And Liquid Breathing
Dec
7
7
Posted by Lauren Wolf on December 7, 2009 in Ripped From the Pages
In this week’s Newscripts, I wrote about some of the science Dan Brown used to spice up his latest novel, “The Lost Symbol.”
Schematic of partial liquid ventilation being applied to an infant in respiratory distress. Courtesy of Thomas Shaffer
As mentioned, Brown uses the concept of “liquid breathing” in the book as a way to snatch his hero, Robert Langdon, from the jaws of death. That Langdon survives really shouldn’t surprise anyone: A) He’s the main character and therefore cannot die, and B) Brown couldn’t write another cash-cow story about symbology and secret societies without the code-breaking protagonist. But I apologize if I’ve ruined it for you.
So Langdon survives being trapped in an enclosed tank that ultimately fills with liquid. It turns out that the tank is a total liquid ventilation (TLV) chamber, and Langdon is “drowning” in oxygenated perfluorocarbons rather than water. No fewer than eight chapters go by while Langdon is enveloped by the fluid, seemingly in limbo. (Yes, I said eight.)
I asked Thomas H. Shaffer, professor emeritus of physiology and pediatrics at Temple University School of Medicine, whether the scenario Brown describes is plausible. According to Shaffer, “a person could survive for a limited time without circulation of [perfluorocarbons], provided the liquid was rich with oxygen and devoid of carbon dioxide.” In addition, he says, if the fluid is cold (to lower metabolism) and treated with drugs to alter the subject’s state of mind (as Brown mentions), it could assist the process. (more…)
The Chemistry of Thanksgiving Dinner
Nov
23
23
Posted by Lauren Wolf on November 23, 2009 in Chemistry and Food
Safety First: Chief Redox (left) and Princess Avogadro are ready to do some kitchen chemistry. Lauren Wolf/C&EN
In this week’s Newscripts, I wrote about Diane M. Bunce, a professor at Catholic University of America (CUA), in Washington, D.C., and her quest to make chemistry accessible to the public, as well as her students. She gave a public lecture (with accompanying demonstrations) about the chemistry of Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday evening at CUA.
Approximately 100 attendees—mostly students—came out to watch Bunce and her teaching assistants, Maribeth “Princess Avogadro” Armenio and Evan “Chief Redox” Bordt, demonstrate some key concepts of kitchen chemistry. A contingent from ACS, including this reporter, also attended, learning about how pop-up turkey timers work, why muffins rise without yeast, and which antacids work best to tame that post-Thanksgiving-dinner indigestion. (more…)
The Benefits Of Sparse Shuttles
Aug
21
21
Posted by Lauren Wolf on August 21, 2009 in 2009 Fall National Meeting, ACS Meetings
As I’m sure many attendees of the ACS national meeting this week noticed, the shuttle pick-up times were rather, um, sparse. This threw a wrench into the works for those who like to hop back and forth between sessions. As a result, many of us had to commit to certain symposia and listen to talks that we might otherwise have skipped out on.
And there are always one or two talks in a session that don’t entirely fit in with the theme running through the others. But sticking around for those talks doesn’t necessarily turn out to be such a bad thing.
The Langmuir Lectures: Of Colloids and Mussels
Aug
19
19
Posted by Lauren Wolf on August 19, 2009 in 2009 Fall National Meeting, ACS Meetings
Yesterday afternoon, I attended the Langmuir Award Lectures, a session the Division of Colloid & Surface Chemistry has been hosting for well over 20 years, according to presider Deborah Leckband.
This year’s awards went to Jennifer A. Lewis of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and Phillip B. Messersmith of Northwestern University. Each gave an overview of the research that garnered them the award, interspersed with tantalizing bits of unpublished results. The differences in their presentations, though, interested me almost as much as the award-winning research.
Scientists Rock
Apr
13
13
Posted by Lauren Wolf on April 13, 2009 in Chemistry is Everywhere
I was catching up on reading back-issues of magazines that tend to pile up on my coffee table the other day when I came across something of scientific interest in Rolling Stone. In their April 2 issue, the gurus at the magazine published yet another “Top 100” list. I use the qualifier “yet another” because the magazine publishes this sort of list—a veritable what’s hot and what’s not of the music and entertainment world—with a frequency that makes my head spin.
This particular list, entitled “The RS 100 Agents of Change,” caught my eye because of the eclectic collection of people it contains.
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