Diamonds in the Deep

Diamond occupies the ideal niche between scarce and rare: it is sufficiently abundant that almost everyone can own one, but rare enough to command millions of dollars for newsworthy large stones.

 

The statement above comes from Robert Hazen’s Symphony in C that I’ve been reading. I’ve been thinking about diamond while doing class prep – looking over my notes on hybridization, pi-bonds and delocalized pi-systems. I usually spend half a class period on the allotropes of carbon (diamond, graphite, buckyballs, nanotubes, graphene) but in a Covid-19 season with a shorter semester, this vignette has become optional rather than essential. Even if we do end up discussing it in class, I will likely not have time to talk about the interesting factoids I’ve learned from Hazen’s book. So to keep the memory alive, that’s the topic for today.

 

While graphite is (thermodynamically) more stable than diamond, high pressure and temperature conditions can convert black graphite to translucent diamond. It’s a mind-blowing transformation if I stop to think about it. Making carbon more dense also makes it less opaque. Wow! So where can we find suitable conditions for diamond formation? In the deep earth! And the churning continental movements bring some of these close to the surface where we humans can dig for it. There are probably a bunch more in the deep, but modern technology allows us to make diamonds synthetically by applying high pressure and temperature in the laboratory. Apparently, there’s even an industry of “memorial” diamonds where you can turn the cremated ashes of a loved one into a gemstone.

 

Previously, “flawless” stones were all the rage, but nowadays “imperfect” stones are what’s in. What are these imperfections? It’s what’s in the stone. Other mineral trapped in the diamond provide new hues and sparkles. They even have fancy marketing names: cognac diamonds, champagne diamonds, etc. Scientists are particularly interested in these inclusions, be they mineral or even trapped gases and fluids, because they reveal something about geochemical processes a long time ago. As someone who does origin-of-life research, it’s important to learn as much as we can about the early earth, so that we can design appropriate experiments under plausibly prebiotic conditions to study how biochemistry came to be!

 

How old are diamonds? The oldest ones measured thus far are over three billion years old, but the wide range allows scientists to make educated guesses about the evolution of Earth’s mineralogy. Apparently, diamonds older than three billion years have noticeably different mineral inclusions compared to younger diamonds, revealing some of the intricacies of plate tectonics. Radioactive dating of trapped elements in diamond (typically with beta-decay of rhenium-187, not carbon-14 which has too short a half-life) allows us to estimate their age. And alas, I had to cut radioactivity and nuclear chemistry in a Covid-semester.

 

But there’s still much we don’t know even if we’d like to play up how much we do know. And I laughed when reading the following vignette Hazen provides from a 1952 publication by geophysicist Francis Birch. “Unwary readers should take warning that ordinary language undergoes modification to take a high-pressure form when applied to the interior of the Earth. A few examples of equivalents follow…” Here’s my reproduction of the table in Hazen’s book.

 

Scientists are generally cautious and use hedging language, likely irritating to politicians, pundits, and the public at large. In a high-pressure world of instant messages and outrage, words take meaning out of the ordinary. Certainty is strongly desired over uncertainty. But uncertainty is likely closer to reality. Such is the nature of complexity, and we live in a complex world. There are more diamonds in the deep. But they might prove difficult to access. And that’s what keeps things interesting. And expensive. Or we could look out to the stars. Apparently there might be a bunch of carbon-rich planets beyond our solar system, at least according to this news report last week. Diamonds in deep space. They’re everywhere!

Fifth Week Grump

It was bound to happen. I’ve experienced my first bout of sustained grumpiness with remote teaching cramping my pedagogical style. The first three weeks went pretty well, but as I approached electron configurations and subtleties of the periodic table, being limited to a small window was very annoying. Here’s a snapshot of me about to explain Hund’s Rule.

 

In my typical in-person classroom, I have lots of board space, a separate are where I can project graphics (usually Figures from the textbook) and I can find places to stand where I can gesture significantly without blocking key written or projected information. With limited board space, I have to plan carefully what and how much I can have on the board at any one time. I have to be very strategic about how and when I toggle between sharing slides and writing on the board. And I have to bob in and out when I’m explaining something that requires gesturing, while being careful not to block the board too much. I happen to think gesturing helps a lot in chemistry because we’re trying to explain things that are too small to observe!

 

I’ve been grumpy about my limitations. I’m also grumpy about having to convert some well-tested pedagogical activities into their less well-tested and I suspect less effective counterparts. This didn’t bother me so much the first several weeks, because I was simply (and perhaps too easily) pleased that I wasn’t completely botching my first experience of remote teaching and that I was doing better than expected. Maybe it’s all about expectations. Now that I’ve overcome some of the initial challenges in online teaching, I’m expecting to do better. I know I can do better.

 

An argument can be made that remote teaching requires substantially different pedagogical strategies compared to in-person teaching and learning. I’ve been reading the primary literature in this regard, and there’s a strong case to be made for significantly overhauling my class and my approach. I haven’t done that. While I have made significant changes to enhance asynchronous engagement of the students with the material and with each other, the core of my pedagogical approach remains roughly similar – within the affordances of the Zoom medium. I think what I’m doing is true of most instructors; we’ve made some changes but we’ve not completely overhauled our pedagogical approach. Over time we might. But in the meantime, the changes are incremental. That’s not a bad strategy. It balances our strengths, our prior experience, and it is more practical time-wise. We also learn a few things along the way, incrementally of course.

 

So perhaps there’s not so much to be grumpy about. My grumpiness has been wearing off as the week progresses. There’s still low-level minor irritation, but I’m still very much enjoying teaching and interacting with students. However as I look to the horizon, it’s likely we will remain remote for the spring semester, and possibly even next fall. Envisioning a longer haul should encourage me to take more steps to refine my remote pedagogical approach, but a part of me wishes things will go back to the “old normal” soon. Thinking about the “new normal” makes me grumpy.

Symphony in C

I am thoroughly enjoying Robert Hazen’s new book Symphony in C. Hazen, who is both geologist and musician, does a wonderful job extolling the wonders of Carbon in a book laid out as a symphony – yes, with four appropriate musical movements covering Earth, Air, Fire, Water! Scientifically, Hazen’s knowledge is both deep and wide. He’s co-written an excellent integrated science textbook aimed at non-science majors, now in its eighth edition. My students also read his book Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life’s Origin the last time I taught an origins-of-life class. (This time around we’re reading David Deamer’s First Life.) One of the joys of origin-of-life research is learning from different fields: biology, chemistry, geology, physics, not to mention some history and philosophy.

 

I’m not going to babble much more about his book other than to say that if you enjoy some of the excerpts below, I recommend his book in full.

 

Here’s an excerpt from his introduction to Movement III (Fire) on carbon and its connection to materials science.

 

To make stuff, you need atoms in diverse three-dimensional combination: chunky masses, flexible sheets, delicate filaments, and branching arrays. You need molecules in every conceivable size and shape: chains of atoms, rings of atoms, solid blocks of atoms, and hollow cylinders of atoms. Our society craves materials with every imaginable useful property: silky, resilient, transparent, sweet smelling, absorbent, colorful, insulating, abrasive, water resistant, opaque, sticky, biodegradable, UV protective, spicy, magnetic, inflammable, dense, brittle…

 

The ever-expanding catalog of society’s needs and desires creates incessant demand for equally varied atomic architectures. Each material must be meticulously engineered, carefully tailored to its specialized role at the atomic scale, for an underlying principle of chemical science is that the properties of any material depend on its atoms – its collection of elements and how those elements are bonded together.

 

No chemical element plays the combinatorial game of bonding to other atoms better than carbon, whose chemistry is so unfathomably rich that scientists who spend their lives studying carbon have been given their own special collective noun: “organic chemists”…

 

Just reading that makes me want to be an organic chemist with a focus in materials science! But here’s a second excerpt which I find appropriate at this juncture since my G-Chem class is delving into the Periodic Table right now and we’ll soon get into chemical bonding and some of the uniqueness of carbon.

 

… Most of the elements in the periodic table adopt this kind of strategy, either giving away electrons or snapping them up to win the bonding game… In this world of mutually beneficial electron bartering and usually friendly takeovers, carbon holds a unique place as Element 6, smack in the middle of the periodic table, halfway between magical 2 and 10. Like a weary swimmer on a lake, treading water equidistant between two shores… Should carbon go one way, seeking 4 more electrons to reach the magic number 10? Or should it head in the exact opposite direction, giving up 4 electrons to wind up at the magic number 2?

 

This ambiguity gives carbon a bonding advantage unknown to most other elements. Unlike one-trick sodium, which invariably gives up a single electron, or chlorine, which readily seizes that one extra electron in its struggle for atomic contentment, Element 6 enjoys many contrasting chemical roles – adding, subtracting, or sharing electrons in combinations that lead to vastly more varied chemical compounds than all of the other 100-plus elements combined. That’s why carbon can create both the hardest of all materials and the softest, the most vivid and varied colors and the blackest possible black, the most slippery lubricants and the stickiest glues.

 

While I warn my student about using anthromorphic language to describe chemical bonding and stability, for example in the Un(Happy)Atoms story, Hazen’s language here is a delight. Yes, I would quibble with him about technical details since my expertise is in chemical bonding, and neither sodium nor chlorine are one-trick ponies, by and large he gets things right in broad strokes and evocative language. Such reading excites me and I can’t wait to get back to my next class meeting!

Maintenance

Maintenance. It’s not sexy. Not like the buzzwords Creation and Innovation. The new is novel. The old is… just old.

 

Maintenance is one chapter’s title in a book I’m reading: David Edgerton’s The Shock of the Old. It’s a very important chapter supporting Edgerton’s thesis, that much of the technologies we actually use much of the time are old, even though we would like to ascribe the twists and turns of technological history on the new and the novel, the innovative and the creative. Yes, your fancy new device feels new, seems new, and has been touted as new, but much of its functionality relies on the old. The new gets the headlines. The old workhorse is still chugging away doing its work. As long as you keep it maintained. Edgerton’s book is chock full of examples cutting across swaths of history and economics.

 

Maintenance is a word I’ve been thinking about as I teach through a semester of Covid-19 restrictions. Yes, I’m resorting to supposedly new technologies (Zoom!) and supposed “best practices” of online engagement. But beneath the veneer, I think the most effective things I’m doing in my teaching are still the old strategies I’ve accumulated over the years. Mediated by new technologies perhaps, but old-style engagement is still its core. Someone from the Cult of the New might be unimpressed, perhaps even Shocked by the Old that they see in my teaching. But I suspect if you asked my actual students if I’m substantially helping their learning, I think most (though perhaps not all) will say yes.

 

Maintenance is key to life processes in the cell, the smallest unit of life. The more I study the origin of life and think about chemical and biological evolution, the more I’m impressed by how much goes into cell maintenance. Most of life’s energy budget goes to maintenance and rightly so, as it fights the inexorable push of thermodynamics to the equilibrium state. The using and reusing of older “systems” is rampant. While there is some assembly required, by and large what we deem to be great organismal transitions come from repurposing the old. There are some new things under the sun. But for the most part, they’re not that new.

 

Maintenance is something I worry about as I get older. I think about how much rest I’m getting, how much exercise, how much food I eat and whether it is of optimal diversity, quality and quantity. Injuries take longer to heal; I have to be more careful to maintain my body in working order. Can I maintain what I’m doing? Or will something have to give?

 

Maintenance seems invisible. Until it is taken away. You notice when it’s gone as the dead and dilapidated begin to accumulate, be it biological or physical. So look around; notice the old and how it’s maintained. If you don’t it might be too late. It is easy to be distracted and allured by the faddishly new.

Third First Week

If there was no Covid-19, I’d be in the midst of my first week of classes for the semester. But because we shifted things so that the semester will be done before Thanksgiving, I’ve now completed Week Three. All virtual. Mediated by Zoom, Blackboard, Panopto, and more.

 

First, the bad. I now understand the feeling of Zoom Fatigue. And my tolerance for sitting in front of the screen has decreased since classes started. That’s probably why I skipped blogging for over two weeks. I’ve been trying to find ways to do some work with pen and paper, although I’m also trying not to print things out. I’ve also borrowed a bunch of physical books from the library to balance the e-reading. When on campus, I mostly stay in my office with the door closed. But I don’t spend too much time at the office, just three mornings per week to teach my General Chemistry class and hold some office hours.

 

Now, the good. I expected to be flailing through my first month of remote teaching, but I felt that I started to get the hang of it in Week Two. Other than the first day snafu, it’s been mostly smooth sailing. (There was a minor Blackboard snafu yesterday afternoon but there was an easy workaround while things got fixed.) I’ve figured out a comfortable routine where I frontload class prep and grading early in the week. That gives me Thu and Fri afternoons to make progress on research and catch up on reading. And I was able to establish that routine last week and it’s carried through to this week.

 

While I wake up in the morning less enthusiastic about the prospect of teaching because I’m not meeting my students in-person, once in class I’m very much enjoying interacting with my students. I think that enjoyment of the wonders of chemistry is permeating through to the students! After each G-Chem class, students stay back to ask me questions about the class material, and that’s been true since Day One. In prior semesters, student visits to my office didn’t begin until a few weeks into the semester. I’ve managed to stay on track with my planned syllabus, and I’ve streamlined my in-class activities – unfortunately there’s less small group work (simply because it takes too long). My afternoon Chemical Origins of Life class is also going well; I think the students are enjoying the material (even though it’s tough reading!) and class discussion is robust. All in all, a good start to the semester. I hope it stays that way.

And Jesus Wept

A receipt used as a bookmark. That’s what I occasionally find hidden in the pages of a library book. Or nothing.

 

Imagine my surprise at finding the following gem folded up in a book from my university’s library. Whoever stuck it there was likely another professor.

 

I have not heard of the Brooklyn Bible and a quick internet search revealed nothing. But I thank whoever wrote this for giving me a good laugh. It’s also very clever. Let me hint at why, without giving away too much.

 

The short Sermon on the Mount (the first paragraph with the “Blessed are…” statements) cleverly paraphrases the final line, “When these things come to pass…” to set up the rest of the humorous bits.

 

The second paragraph is the stereotypical litany ascribed to students who weren’t paying attention. Disciples falling asleep in class? Also if you have some bible knowledge, I think the questions from John and Judas are particularly apt given their statements or roles in the gospel narratives.

 

The third paragraph features the Pharisees and Assessment. ‘Nuff said.

 

And then Thomas comes in late.

 

For those unfamiliar with the bible, “Jesus wept” is the shortest sentence in the bible. It comes after the death of Lazarus. Lazarus will return from the dead. As will this stereotypical educational humor. My final two words on this piece?

 

Great Conclusion!

 

Post Script. I’m planning to fold this up and stick it back in the library book for the next unsuspecting patron to receive a pleasant surprise.