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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • Alkylation is any reaction that attaches a saturated hydrocarbon group through one of its carbons to something else (more loosely, the hydrocarbon group may contain atoms besides H and C and only be saturated at the point of attachment). It’s pretty common in organic chemistry. The meme is portraying a humorous obsession with alkylation by listing alkylation agents and things the author wants to alkylate, including some unconventional or inadvisable targets.

    Incidentally, a lot of alkylation agents are carcinogenic because they alkylate DNA.







  • No dunking, and make sure what you’re buying is mostly alcohol (> 95%) and not water/alcohol mixtures often used for disinfection. Using in combination with e.g., a toothbrush is probably your best bet. IPA (and acetone) can strip some adhesives and cause certain kinds of electrical insulation to swell or dissolve, so a targeted approach is better. IPA is flammable (though less so than acetone), so be careful/well ventilated when allowing parts to dry, and ensure parts are fully dried before reconnecting to power.

    IPA itself is only about twice as toxic as ethanol and certainly less problematic by inhalation than tar in the long run. I wouldn’t bother with a mask mostly because it won’t do shit unless it’s a cartridge respirator. However, IPA can sometimes facilitate skin absorption. IDK specifically about tar buildup but recommend wearing gloves (disposable nitrile is fine).



  • I think the framing as “myths” also helped the show. The experimental result was generally either wonder (“oh wow, it’s really true!”) or self-satisfaction (“we proved wrong something that Other People actually think!”); good outcomes either way. It helped keep the audience happy regardless and made them feel like something was actually accomplished that they could relate to. Sure, you can get some of that with other popsci shows, but the demos/experiments are often presented as a known answer with low stakes, leaving it harder to connect to a “so, what?”


  • … this sounds absurd to me, at least as stated wrt the enzymes “dissolving” the floaters. Your body does not like foreign proteases floating around. I am also skeptical that the enzymes would survive denaturing and pepsin et al. in the stomach and duodenum (empty stomach or not), get absorbed intact, and somehow not get inactivated by the immune system (again, rogue protease = bad). Not to say that your floaters weren’t reduced (though the brain sometimes will just learn to ignore them) or even that the supplement wasn’t responsible via metabolites. Just, action of an intact enzyme itself seems unlikely. Corrections welcome; I’m going off my gut here and am not a biologist.


  • ornery_chemist@mander.xyztoScience Memes@mander.xyzpublication maxxing
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    3 months ago

    I know of a manager who unironically believes this for internal corporate technical reports (ours are academic style and more rigorous and formal than they need be…). It’s not quite to this extent, but I’ve overheard conversations where the manager apparently can’t fathom why their subordinates are incapable of double digits over a year.



  • Do not power law fit your process data for predictive models. No. Stop. Put the keyboard down. Your model will almost certainly fail to extrapolate beyond the training range. Instead, think for at least two seconds about the chemistry and the process, maybe review your kinetics textbook, and only then may you fit to a physics-based model for which you will determine proper statistical significance. Poor fit? Too bad, revise your assumptions or reconsider whether your “data” are really just noise.

    Always run qNMR with an internal standard if you are using it to determine purity. And, as a corollary, do not ignore unidentified peaks. Yes, even if it “has always been that way”.

    DOE models almost certainly tell you less than you think they do, especially when cross-terms are involved, or when the effects are categorical, or when running a fractional factorial design…


  • ornery_chemist@mander.xyztome_irl@lemmy.worldme_irl
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    4 months ago

    It’s not necessarily the cleanest reaction, but yes. That said, if you’re thinking of its Hollywood use case as a quick knockout agent, it’s not very effective for that purpose. It’s not non-hazardous, though; exposure for several minutes can cause dizziness and fainting, and prolonged storage can lead to phosgene formation through autoxidation.