Selected Science Writing — Enrico Uva 🧪 Origin-of-life & Biochemistry Changing Ideas About The Origin Of Life Autumn Leaf Chemistry: More Than Just Eye Candy 🧬 Basic Chemistry Specific Heat: a Beautiful Characteristic Property Even When Pure, Water Is Blue Relativistic Effects In Your Wedding Ring…

Iridium, Why Was it Named After a Goddess? What got me thinking about iridium this morning is that it's currently at $234/gram---more expensive than gold. Its volatile price, has gone up by a factor of 7 between 2018 and 202. It is influenced by the growing demand for iridium in the aerospace,…

Sherlock Holmes: "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly, one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."

Sunday morning formula. Can easily be derived by induction. For n = 0,1,2,3...

Oak forests are now rare due to human exploitation, with old-growth forests—those with very large, long-lived trees and abundant deadwood—comprising only 1% of Europe’s forests. Deadwood, often dismissed as “useless,” stores carbon, enriches soil as humus, and supports countless saproxylic organisms

#mathhumor #mathematics

This reminds me of Sagan's book, Cosmos, which I read in my youth. It also featured a proof of why the root of 2 is irrational.

The Search for Truth: Why Do We Value It? A friend of mine asked several interesting questions. Something I've always found strange: the universe didn't have to be intelligible, yet it is. Why? Why does mathematics map the physical world so uncannily?  Wigner called it ‘the unreasonable…

Corny #sciencehumor Apparently neutrinos have mass. I didn’t even know they were Catholic; I was going to tell you a time travel joke, but you didn’t like it; Did you know Mr. Spock had 3 ears? Left, right and the final front ear; Why didn't the photon have any luggage? He was traveling light.

Robert Bateman(1) spent 20 y teaching Geography in high school. He chose the discipline as an excuse to be outdoors. (2) was originally an abstract artist (3) has never had his works displayed at the National Gallery (4) his foundation uses art to promote a connection to nature and the environment.

This is may have served as the inspiration for the #BatSignal: In 1875, from the roof of the Siemens Halske factory in Berlin, electrically-generated rays were bounced off a large mirror and projected onto dark clouds while an awe-stricken crowd looked on. (Shown: 1875 Scientific American article)

Oceanus Procellarum is the largest of the #Moon's seas, and the only one classified as an 'ocean', its area is greater than that of the Gulf of Mexico on Earth. All "mare" are large, dark basaltic plains formed when ancient lava-flows filled impact basins. Photo credit: greg dunlap

Superb symposium included Weissman's insights into in vivo CAR T therapy's advantages over in vitro; serendipity's role in the mRNA vaccine development; #RKJr 's dangerous hepatitis B policy; Joe's witty intro to #vaccines and a lot more @mcgilloss.bsky.social www.youtube.com/live/tmF0CDq...

In vivo CAR T therapy for killing cancer cells has several advantages over the ex vivo approach www.thelancet.com/journals/ebi... Nobelist Drew Weissman described it at the 2025 Trottier Public Science Symposium last night @mcgilloss.bsky.social

Cooking tips( temperature& pH included) to encourage Maillard reactions, which enhance appearance and especially the taste of food containing protein and sugars.

💫 Celebrate the festival of lights safely, and let the chemistry of joy shine bright! Wishing you and your loved ones a very Happy Diwali filled with love, light, and laughter. #RSCIndia #ChemSky #Diwali2025

Consumers in New Mexico and beyond may soon see a new warning label put on everything from nonstick pans and furniture to cosmetics and baby clothes that contain intentionally added per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). cen.acs.org/policy/New-M... #chemsky 🧪

'Love #nerdyFacts. The chemistry consultant for the Breaking Bad series, organic chemist Donna J. Nelson from Oklahoma State University, was also 2016 ACS President and is currently on the Scientific American's board of advisors. Not every chemist gets their pic flashed on 7th Av! I ❤️ NY. #chemsky

#chemsky Bierling found that among smells perceived to be disgusting, those containing only 1 compound scored 67%; spices 42%. The categories with the most pleasant smells were sweet, scoring 88%, followed by bakery& fruit(44%), whose smells consist of many compounds. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The author criticizes both alarmist narratives, which emphasize worst-case scenarios, & dismissive ones, which treat pesticide fears as mere “scare stories”. It's not a “science vs. vibes” thing— public concern is more than irrational emotion; it's a legitimate risk perception. #pesticides

Robert Bunsen was the co-inventor (along with Kirchhoff)of the flame spectroscope.The invention relied on the Bunsen burner, developed by Bunsen after asking the university mechanic, Peter Desaga, to build a prototype that improved on Michael Faraday's version . uwaterloo.ca/chemistry/co... #chemsky

"I’m a former creationist. Here’s why ‘follow the science’ failed." archive.ph/2025.09.23-0...

Merely because she was a woman, PhD Maria Goeppert Mayer, spent 1930 to 1960 without a permanent paid post. But 3 years later, she was the cowinner of the #Nobel Prize in #Physics for realizing that spin orbit coupling of nucleons led to magic numbers-why oxygen is more common than elements 3 to 7.

The Swiss Water Process is a clever way of removing most caffeine from coffee without relying on CO₂ or toxic solvents. It's used to produce #decaffeinated Kirkland&Loblaws coffees. Max Morgenthaler came up with the method in the 1930s, but it was only commercialized in the 1980s in British Columbia

Poplar leaves go from green to yellow. Why? After chlorophyll is broken down to recycle nitrogen and magnesium, #autumn exposes oxygenated #carotenoids known as xanthophylls in cottonwood leaves. Lutein is their main xanthophyll, which, in the summer, protects them from high light intensity.

The early bird catches the #sunrise. Aren't you glad that Rayleigh scattering is inversely proportional to the 4th power of wavelength? That way, when you look more directly towards the sun, through a longer path- length of air molecules, you get more scattering of blue & more leftover red?

I've always loved the practice and realized the essentials as a kid: use a flat stone; apply spin; toss it parallel to the surface. "Spin prevents the stone from tilting and hitting the water edge-first, just as fast rotations stabilize a bicycle or a spinning top." www.science.org/content/arti....

We don’t celebrate his death, but we won’t hide the truth about his life.

Reduction of Ag⁺ from silver nitrate by copper metal. The reaction is irreversible because aqueous Ag⁺ is a better electron-thief than Cu²⁺. Why? Cu²⁺ is more stable by being better solvated due to its smaller size: 87 vs 129 pm for Ag⁺. #chemsky

Plant chemistry keeps them alive, and is of course the basis of life on Earth. Luckily, plants don't hate chemistry while they're in high school. 😁 #chemistrysky

#NewLondonDisaster www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/...

#peaches #esters #lactones wp.me/p4TifG-6F6

#iron wp.me/p4TifG-6FA

#chemsky #sciencehumor

A magnetar is a #neutronStar with a magnetic field that is 10¹⁵ times stronger than the Earth’s. A study( iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3... ) suggests that flares burping off these stars could produce heavy elements like gold, platinum & uranium. #chemsky

'Why do you dance?' Dirac asked. 'When there are nice girls, it is a pleasure,' Heisenberg replied. Dirac pondered this notion, then blurted out: 'But how do you know beforehand that the girls are nice?' #physicsky www.theguardian.com/books/2009/f...

14 years ago, while still a student, Mary Anne Ji-Kidwell, made this classic #LadyGaga parody video about grad students' frustrations. She went on to get 11 papers published and now works as a scientist in industry. youtu.be/Fl4L4M8m4d0?... #chemsky

My favorite example of #correlationWithoutCausation is that, among grade school children, there is a positive correlation between shoe size and reading scores.

According to recent Pew Research Data, the public’s trust in science has fallen: 57% say #science has had a mostly positive effect on society, down from 73% in 2019. www.acs.org/acs-webinars...

If #Venus was habitable, you would have to wait 5832 hours before saying good morning again. It's related to the fact that its surface pressure is 92 times higher than that of Earth. #astronomy

In case you missed it in 2022: the 1st empirical evidence that simple RNA molecules can emerge into complex, replicating systems... #OriginOfLife #chemsky www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/pre...

Chronic use of #benzodiazepines (Xanax, Klonopin, Ativan and Valium) could damage the brain's GABA receptors.