The World is Too Much with Us

Today I would like to share with you a poem by Wordsworth.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. --Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Food as Medicine (week 8)

Duh! Considered the "King of Chinese Medicine", Sun Si Miao said, "Before you use acupuncture and herbs, change the diet."

After air and water, we consume food to survive. A proverb goes, "Sickness enters via the mouth, calamities come out of the mouth." According to TCM, when eating, one must understand the nature of each food element: yin or yang, nourishing or draining, flavors, and direction.

Yin or yang could refer to temperature, cold or hot; some food can benefit qi or blood and some can drain excess element from the body (such as heat, cold, or damp). Flavors can determine the organs entered, eg, salt goes to kidneys, sweet goes to stomach. Wine can bring energy up while salt can bring it down; ginger is somewhat floating and vinegar is sinking.

ChemBalancer (week 8)

FunbasedLearning ChemBalancer is useful. However, the graphics and interactivity are pretty crude. It looks like a product made in the early days of computing. The Wake Forest University has much better explanation and graphics and seems more fun to play with.

Semiconductor of the week (week 8)

Let's talk about arsenic. Yup, it's poisonous but combined with gallium, it gives us present day solar panels!

With lead, we get car batteries. With groundwater, it becomes a worldwide problem. When heated, it smells like garlic.

Because it is so poisonous, China is the top producer of this material. It has been used in chemical weapons, insecticides, alloys, and even in treating cancer.

Avogadro's Hypothesis (week 7)

The science of Avogadro's time was impressive but what was more remarkable was how politics can stifle scientific development. Our understanding of chemistry was severely delayed by scientists who clung onto their "theories" and by political turmoil of the times causing the untimely death of Lavoisier.

Imagine what chemistry would be like had Dalton recognized Avogadro sooner and had Lavoisier been spared. Would we have achieved the perfect electrical battery today?

What is a mole (week 7)

Moles are a unit of measurement for chemicals, in a way feet is a measurement unit for length and pound for weight. When a chemist wishes to make a chemical reaction happen, he or she wants to make sure there is the right amount of each kind of chemical. Moles are used so that chemists know how much of different kinds of chemicals to use to have reactions that work out correctly. A chemical can be atoms of a single element or atoms of many elements combined into molecules, so a single molecule of a chemical can weigh three or four times what a single molecule of another chemical weighs. For this reason, chemists can't just measure the weight of different chemicals to have the right proportions of reactants.

When chemists want to have a chemical reaction come out they need to know how many molecules of each kind of chemical they have, so they measure the chemicals in moles. A mole is the atomic weight of a molecule of the chemical in grams. So a mole of a molecule like hydrogen (H) with an atomic weight of 1 is one gram. Meanwhile, a complex molecule like glucose (C6H12O6) has an atomic weight of 180, so one mole is 180 grams. But even though the weight is different, the two moles contain the exact same number of molecules, 6.02 x 10 to the 23rd power.

Alkali Earth Element of the week (week 7)

Remember Chernobyl? After the fallout from 1986 disaster, a large swath of land was (is) contaminated with Strontium 90 (90sr). 90SR is a by product of nuclear fission and has a half-life of 28.78 years. It, like calcium and magnesium, has strong tide with our bones. Hence, if 90SR gets into the bones, it would be bad news indeed!

Yet, the good SR can help the bones and prevent osteoporosis.

Food color in kitchen (week 6)

Surprise surprise, or maybe not, the food color in my kitchen matches that of the color of my house: green and white.

As a vegan, I find my myself eating mostly leafy green veggies; kale, chard, collard green, cabbage, arugula, squash, zucchini, cucumber, bell peppers, ad infinitum.

For white, I eat tofu and white rice (a little bit). And there's the soy and almond milk in the fridge.

This is great to keep my pH level between 7.5 and 8.

Halogen of the week (week 6)

How apropos that almost one year from today that we are talking about the halogen of the week: IODINE!

It like to discuss Potassium Iodine (KI), a stable and nonradioactive iodine. After nuclear radiation fallout, radioactive iodine is released. This evil iodine enters our body and is absorbed by the thyroid gland thus destroying it and the body. KI comes to the rescue because it can block the radioactive iodine from entering the thyroid, preventing damage to the thyroid gland.

To learn more about this, check out http://www.bt.cdc.gov/radiation/ki.asp

A matter of perspective (week 6)

I came across this brilliant animation illustrating the totality of our existence from the infinitesimal to the infinite. Pretty amazing the universe we live in and the ability to wonder and contemplate our existence.

http://static.flabber.net/files/scale-of-the-universe-2.swf

Inert gas of the week (week 5)

This week, I went "windows shopping." That's right, I went shopping for Windows! As the local windows store/showroom, a gentleman told me about the practice of putting ARGON gas between two windows pane reduce air current conductivity hence improving energy efficiency. Cool!

Argon is the third most abundant element in the atmosphere and it's name mean "lazy" or "inactive" because it undergoes very little chemical reaction. What a noble element! I wish I could be called "noble" for lying on my couch all day!

Gone bananas? (week 5)

We were talking about bananas going extinct. Well, according to snopes.com (http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/bananas.asp) it won't happen anytime soon. We can all breathe a sigh of relief. When will bananas be gone completely? One possible bellwether is Trader Joe jacking up the price per banana from 19¢ to $5!

Why are barns usually RED? (week 5)

This week we talk about color. It reminds me of a decade old question: why are barns usually red?

One possible theory is that farmers had lots of rust (ferrous oxide) laying around and mixed them with their paint. Ferrous oxide is poisonous to fungi and mold which often cling onto barns. Hence, the rusty paint was used to protect and preserve barns.

Another, albeit less likely, theory is that farmers had lots of animal blood laying around and used them to paint their barns. Hmmm, not sure about this one.

Catylyst of the Week (week 4)

Ever wonder how margarine is made? Well, one starts with the worse kind of oil, e.g., cottonseed oil. It is then steamed and a catalyst nickel is added to aid the hydrogenation process. It is then pressurized to create trans fats. Soapy emulsifier is added to make it less lumpy. Another round of steaming to remove the odor. It is then bleached and imbued with synthetic vitamins and color. It is then marketed as healthy food!

Close to Green Energy (week 4)

We are darn close! In fact, in the past 25 years, we have actually used, as a percentage, less oil as a primary source of energy. We have used more natural gas, nuclear, and other renewable sources. I believe that we are just one or two breakthroughs away from green energy dominance. There are lots of good ideas out there, such as Jeremy Rifkin's proposal to using solar to charge hydrogen fuel cells during the day, which we in turn use during the night. Excess hydrogen fuel could be transported and sold to those who need more power. Excellent idea! That's why EU has officially endorsed this as its official energy policy!

Another MIT scientist, Richard Sears, claims that we will not run out of oil before green energy takes hold; he claims that technology and innovation will take us there LONG before we run out of oil. Check out his TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/richard_sears_planning_for_the_end_of_oil.html

Green Chemistry as Social Movement (week 4)

I remember in public speaking class in which we learned about ethos, pathos, and logos. For something to be persuasive, we must impact a person's sense of ethos, pathos, and logos.

A movement begins with a person that has been affected in a genuine way. His/her experience deeply affects our heart. Coupled with facts and data, one can truly effectuate lasting change.

For green chem to take hold, the public has to be made aware of the problem. Several years, a friend of mine sent me a link showing pictures of pollution in China. It was so heartbreaking to see! It made me grateful of the laws we have to protect the environment and inspired me to seek "greener" ways to live my life. We must do it or else there won't be blue sky in the future.

http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/

Ozone

Discussing about ozones with my family and friends reveals two types of responses: 1) I don't know or 2) oh yeah, i remember something about a hole over Antarctica.

People nowadays have not being notified too much about the ozone layer. Is it because we have banned cfc from refrigerants? The fact is that since the peak in 2000, the ozone hole has not decreased by much. Maybe because there are so many other news in the world such as climate change, wars, financial collapse, kim kardashian, etc that we lost interest.

Older generation can still remember the alarming news in the 1980s but has since forgotten about it.

Element of the week: aluminum

The element of the week is Aluminum (Al). Its atomic number is 13 and is the third most abundant element in the earth's crust, after oxygen and silicon. It is low in density and has high resistance to corrosion. It was discovered in the mid 1700s and first produced in 1825. Currently is extremely useful in our daily lives.

I picked this element because i remember a scene in Star Trek 4 in which Scottie showed this guy how to create a giant whale tank out of "transparent aluminum". Interestingly enough, transparent aluminum became somewhat of a a reality in 2009 when Oxford scientists were able to bombard xray onto aluminum to make "transparent aluminum."

http://www.physorg.com/news167925273.html

Atoms and Hard drives

According researchers, 1 bit on your hard drive requires over 1 million atoms to store. Last week, IBM scientists have been able to store the same bit using only 12 atoms! This means that in the near future your ipod could store over 10 terrabyte of videos, pictures, and music--all in a tiny little chip.

Existing hard drives use electrons from iron, which spin in the same direction and in perfect alignment with each other. Newer hard drives can use antiferromagnetic (nonmagnetic) elements which allows closer packing of the atoms. Stay tuned!

Electric cars

I am delighted to see many new electric cars coming out this year. I have made a vow that my next car shall be an electric vehicle. No more gas, smog, and foul emission. i am hoping that EV will be affordable enough for financial mortals to afford.

True, there is no free lunch. Electricity must come from somewhere. However, I believe that power plants can and will be more efficient using renewable sources of energy.

I agree with the EU's plan for a new economy, developed by Jeremy Rifkin, which involves a complete energy transformation using solar and hydrogen. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Industrial_Revolution

Fossil fuel should go the way of dinosaurs!

Chemistry "quiz"

Got 75%.

Interesting to understand the differences between physical and chemical transformation. Makes me wonder: is nuclear fission a chemical or physical change?

I think it is a physical change because, like the "crushing a rock" example, it involves a physical object to bombard another physical object with the concomitant release of a massive amount of energy.

Another question: does a chemical require energy? Actually, it doesn't always require energy, as in a spontaneous process involving a diamond turning into graphite over a very long time.

brief bio

I am a third-year student studying TCM. I am never bored studying the healing techniques passed down by the ancient masters. This path accords with my Zen spiritual practice, Shaolin kungfu, Taiji, qigong, calligraphy, and drinking green tea.

I wonder, pause, gaze, and rejoice in the beauty of the universe. i believe compassion comes spontaneously when i quit judging, talk less, and listen and wonder more. From the place of peace and stillness, positive changes occur.