Getting there slowly (I blame the day job), 100 should be enough!

Hey Scientists and Technical people of BlueSky. I was going to make an open ended pansymmetric heptacube, but got distracted. What is the name for this tetrahedral variant? 🧪 #SciComm #Science #Math #Papercraft #ChemSky

Plastic Tsunami #Sciart #infographic

“It’s been an amazing journey - gaining new experiences, unlearning and learning new things.” A big congratulations to everyone that graduated this winter season, you’ve achieved an incredible milestone. This is just the beginning of an amazing journey. @uofgalumni.bsky.social

Time to build. Simple shapes which show a concerted motion; squeeze one diagonal and the other extends. Just need to make a few more.

Hello #ChemSky people. I'm trying to re-engage after a hectic Semester. #ITeachChem For the record: GenChem labs;Yr-1 Atoms, elements and QM ideas;Yr-2 Quant chem labs;Yr-3 Administrator (2 exams to go);Yr-5 Lanthanide and actinides;PGT Neutron scattering. All done, and so am I.

The best advice I gave today: "Don't put a piddock in your pocket."

I've a lecture course on f-block chemistry comming up. This ferrocerium fire starter is an excellent demonstration of just how electropositive lanthanides are.🧪

Today's beans have arranged themselves in the p4mm plane group. And I'm thinking it would have been a better lesson if I'd given students objects and specified a plane group in which to arrange them. Hindsight!🧪

Ignoring the developmental and genetic differences in my beans, can you tell what I've been teaching? That's right, "How to identify a plane group", and this layout is p4. 🧪

Molecules I've made (in model from). My very first synthesis in a research context; 4-Ethoxyiodobenzene. The paper described a "yellow oil", for me, colourless crystals that blocked the condenser. Downside; having to muck about with the vacuum distillation. Upside; more pure than those guys. 🧪

Self-indulgent, but found my old Cochrane's student model kit. Making molecules to which I have a connection. From those PhD days (~1992) I made this rhenium(I) trithiacyclononane tricarbonyl cation (unpublished). Spectacular proton NMR, magnetic inequivalence, an AA'A"BB'B"CC'C"DD'D" spin system.🧪

Bit of a renovation project. Designed by Prof L.F.Fieser, originally sold by Aldrich, these vintage molecular model kits allow students to understand "... conformational and steric effects as well as geometric relationships". #ChemEd 🧪

First I find this.

Not all of the molecular model sets I've recently acquired are tatty and grubby. I believe this is a Catalin space-filling model with Bakelite atoms. Oh the excitement, it's like Lego from the 1940s, what shall I make? 🧪 #SciComm

This is camphor; a rigid and chiral ketone. It finds little use these days, but you may encounter it as a component of the taste of Rosemary.🧪#SciComm

This is Anethole; the flavour of aniseed. Soluble in ethanol, but not in water, you see this compound as the cloudy precipitate when you pour your Ricard/Sambuca/Ouzo/Raki over ice. 🧪 #SciComm

This decision is inexplicable. I'm very angry that the science is continuing to be ignored by those elected to represent us. It will cost us all, dearly. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Adjacent to this iconic mountain today; Buachaille Etive Mor. Secretly quite pleased when eldest decided it was too midgy to continue, and we could retire to The Green Welly. #Scotland

This is Zingerone. A much better name than the legal IUPAC one; 4-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl) butan-2-one! Cooking ginger chemically transforms the gingerol molecule into sweeter and more flavoursome zingerone.🧪 #SciComm

Another small molecule from the "antique" model set: (R)-Linalool ( C black, H white, O red) is the molecule responsible for the smell of lavender. #SciComm 🧪

"One man's rubbish is another man's treasure" Rescued lots of grubby old chemistry model sets from a teaching lab clear out. This one scrubbed up well. Not so good free standing - heavy balls, long springs- but okay with the right support. (R)-Carvone aka spearmint flavour #SciComm 🧪

Across Loch Long #Scotland

Tiny treasure revealed by the low tide at Cove today. Uranium glass #Everydayelements 🧪 Popular and fashionable between 1880-1920, which coincides with the post industrial movement of wealthy Glaswegian merchants out of the city to large country houses in this corner of the Firth of Clyde.

This vertex and edge truncated (maybe bevelled) tetrahedron seems to be a great shape to build carbon based molecular models. I need to grow it into the diamond structure.🧪

Seem to be doing an impromptu tour of the erratics of Loch Long today. #notthebedrock #Scotland

My surprising fact for today. Needed the centroid to vertex distance for this cuboctahedron. Thought I'd got the sum wrong; it is the same as the edge length! Apparently the only polyhedron where this is true!🧪

I like this pair: Dodecahedron disguised as a cube and cube disguised as a dodecahedron. Helping to show the related symmetries #SciComm 🧪

I am an academic parent, but my view is that doing this sort of thing with the kids is so much more important. A good day today: There and back again, to the very bottom of Goatchurch Cavern #Mendip Days to remember #caving

Been trying to make some Platonic solids (reinventing the wheel), because every budding scientist should have a set of these. Nearly there. Each of these has the same sized circumsphere, diameter 8 cm, which means the net of each one fits nicely on A4. #SciComm 🧪

One offspring belaying the other. I'm claiming that parental success. And much gratitude to the wonderful Barnaby Ling, my former science teacher and outdoor enthusiast.

Still exploring paper representations of the diamond structure. In this one the atoms are truncated octahedra, which fill exactly half the available space. I'm rediscovering interpenetrating bicontinuous cubic spaces. Need more "atoms" to show this better. 🧪 #Diamond #SciComm #SciArt

Thinking about all the teeth that have been extracted before my visit today. #Glasgow

This one, a minimalist representation of the atomic structure of diamond (just 2 sheets of A4 paper). 🧪 #diamond #chemistry #scicom #sciart #art #papercraft

The internal angle of a pentagon is 108 degrees. The angle from my truncated tetrahedra is 109.5. This shoddy looking dodecahedral cluster might be a good example of cumulative errors, not just poor PVA-skills! 🧪

Results released, academic year over, time pick up some unfinished projects. Making ping-pong ball models of the first 25 spherical harmonics.🧪 #ChemEd #Scicomm #Quantum

Thinking of shapes I could use to make an aesthetically pleasing model of the diamond structure. Thought truncated tetrahedron would be good to try. Made some. Too good! It's an actual space-filling plesiohedron! No holes! A truncated tetrahedron is the voroni cell if the diamond structure. Duh! 🧪

Alright the utahraptor skull base is finally done, got the mouth and jaw interiors done, everything is lifesize, followed as close as I could to everything on this as I could find. Now it’s ready to be prepped for it’s paper mache base #paleoart #wip #cardboard #sciart

Still testing out some ideas. This was quick to make, just 2 sheets of A4. A minimal sphere to represent ions, here assembled into that everyday sodium chloride structure-type. 🧪 #Chemsky #ChemEd #SciComm #SciArt #Art

Here's a minimalist paper sphere representation of atoms. Let's see how it looks when they're stuck together.

Assembly complete. This is a representation in paper, of the diamond structure (if atoms were octahedra). It is observed for the group 14 elements; carbon, silicon, germanium and tin. 🧪 #Science #SciArt #Art #ChemSky #RealTimeChem #SciComm

A work in progress; building a paper model of the atomic structure of silicon, atom-by-atom, to go on display beside this actual lump of elemental silicon. 🧪

That's the bottom layer complete!

My model display at Origami Deutschland Convention Erkner 2025. Due to limited space, I focused on a small number of larger pieces, almost all of them tessellations. More: origami.kosmulski.org/blog/2025-06... #origami #折り紙 #Оригами #origamitessellation #Erkner #OrigamiDeutschland #MichałKosmulski

Sneaky correlated disorder in the fabric of Danish train seats... Must have been a choice, and I totally agree 🙂‍↕️ #CasualDisorder #Crystallography #BraggYourPattern #TotalScattering

Getting familiar with space group Fd3m on my quest to find ways to represent the structure of diamond using paper. This one; 35 Columbus cubes and 52 small linking cubes (to give the right dihedral angle). 🧪 #diamond #chemsky #scicomm #sciart #papercraft

You know when you commit to a plan, and then you realise it might not be the best plan. I'm trying to represent the atomic structure of diamond in paper. Thought of using David Mitchell's interlocking Columbus cubes to represent the atoms. These are the components. Time to build. #chemed #sciart 🧪

"There's nearly always a better way of doing something" - Pismire

You see, this is the sort of thing that happens when you're an ex-crystallographer. Made lots of paper octahedra.....oh, how do they pack?🧪

➤ visualflood.com/aldotolino - Möbius Strips: discover the enigmatic beauty of Aldo Tolino’s intertwined paper sculptures: #art, #crafting, #crafts, #craft, #paper, #papercraft, #paperart, #möbiusstrip, #sculpture, #papersculpture.