Scientific journals tend to have very strict formatting. There is an expected structure. There are templates. If an author tries to deviate, itâll probably get changed back to tradition somewhere in the editorial process. Not to mention itâll annoy the reviewers and you really donât want to do with that. But every now and then […]
In my early days of grad school, I was going to look at the mechanism of reactions with silicon and gemanium triple bonds. Of course, it eventually became clear that my chemistry talents lay in spectroscopy, computational, data analysis and actually writing the paper and not at all in the actual synthesis. But in the […]
There is a tendency to interpret the phrase âhotly debateâ in academic matters as a rather sedate sort of thing. Which is absurd, since scientists are, contrary to popular belief, still people. And that makes them just as prone to absurd drama as knitting enthusiasts and science fiction fans. Though maybe not quite as much […]
As a Terry Pratchett fan, I love a good footnote. Scientific footnotes are generally fairly dry things. However, every now and then you get a footnote that is in fact hilarious. Iâve already shared my favourite, which I love for its pure âReviewer 3 made me do itâ honesty. But there are several other great […]
Angewandte Chemie is one of the top journals in chemistry. This means that knowing a bit of German is very useful for reading older papers (not bad considering I originally took it to be able to eat lunch!). For some reason, this also means that the entire chemistry community gets exposed to on average one […]
Usually, the abstract of a scientific paper is quite a wordy thing. Shorter than the paper itself by a considerable margin, but it still says a lot. It gives a general overview of what the paper is about and what techniques are used. But every now and then you see an abstract where the authors […]
I was going to try to be topical and do a post about odd things that have won the Nobel Prize. But then I read back through the list and was reminded that the Nobel Committee is in fact dreadfully serious. Needs more Andre Geim, apparently. That’s why we have the Ig Nobels. Then I came […]
There was a great discussion this week on Twitter about science communication inspirations. One thing that came up was how important it was that the Magic School Bus encouraged kids to go out there and make mistakes. During the discussion, it became clear that some of the public doesnât realize just how important mistakes really […]
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) is an incredibly useful characterization technique. Assuming certain properties are met, the nucleus of an atom interacts with a magnetic field. The exact nature of that interaction is highly dependent on the environment around the atom. So you can get a ton of information about the structure of a molecule by […]
Iâve spent most of this week writing about science for kids. So for a change of pace, today weâre looking at some naughty science acronyms. We are all very mature scientists who would never giggle upon realizing that the acronym is something a little risquĂ©. Dirty jokes about Uranus are of course rather well known, […]