Status Quo vs. The Party Of Change

"...two important aspects of inorganic chemistry (in fact, of chemistry in general) are structure and reactivity.  Someone has said that all of physical science consists of this duality. In physics we could speak of statics and dynamics, and by analogy in everyday life, the status quo and change."

~James E. Huheey Inorganic Chemistry: Principles of Structure and Reactivity 2nd Ed

Yoga practice fits nicely into that dichotomy when juxtaposed with aerobic exercise. Yoga is rather static and structural, consisting of lots of stretched poses. Cross-country skiing--which I've done a lot of lately -- is very dynamic. I'm now doing both on a daily basis. 

Another analogy is political: Conservatism is inherently status quo; the other wing is by nature about change and dynamics. Best to take a little of both in measured doses. 

The Chemistry of Politics

Politics and chemistry share many concepts and even words: coming together vs. falling apart; donor vs. acceptor; tipping point & transition state; polarized vs. neutral; vitriolic & caustic vs. neutral; litmus test; right vs. left; purity vs. impurity; structure & status quo vs. change & kinetics; majority vs. minority; and resonance to name a few off the top of my head. The words "electron" and "election" even look related but are in fact unrelated; electron comes from the Greek word for amber, while the word elect comes from the word to pick and choose.

Years ago, I hypothesized (and published with evidence) that a well-known (but poorly understood) chemical reaction was governed by repulsion: Electronic repulsion at its very core.  Briefly, a catalyst separately held the same substrate in two different ways; an incoming hydrogen molecule would then chose which of the two configurations to ride over the barrier hump while melding into stable products, corresponding to what could be dubbed right and left-handed versions of the same thing. Now, the rate of hydrogen's addition to (choice of) one of two configurations was the deciding factor; it was the deal clincher. Moreover, the two configurations were present in vastly unequal amounts from the start -- around a 10:1 ratio. Prior studies had shown that the incoming hydrogen preferred the minority configuration. That's where I came in. I said that incoming hydrogen was repelled by the major substrate-catalyst complex -- the one with the clingier hangers-on. In effect, I said that substrate binding (clinginess) killed reactivity by swelling a repulsive lobe on the catalyst.

A catalyst is rather like a politician. Its job is to bring us lowly substrates together to make something more stable. But just like my chemistry example, the favored politician with the clingier hangers-on can be the kinetic loser.  It's the repulsion, stupid.

Inspired By Amba

Amba wrote this a while back on her blog Ambiance:

Matter is a corrective. Matter exerts a resistance, a counterforce, like wood to a carving knife or water to a ship’s keel or air under an airplane’s wings, that paradoxically enables us to get somewhere by making it more difficult. link

To which I responded:

OK, this is way off-topic and perhaps I should write it as another “inspired-by-Amba” blogpost, but I had to mention two connections this triggered for me. The first was the old-fashioned way that nations used to settled trade imbalances: there might be trade exchanges in one direction: goods or services for example. At the end of the day, there would be a reckoning and something like gold would flow in the other direction. In this way gold, having gravitas, kept thing[s] grounded. 

The second was the way chemical reactions occur. Chemistry is valence electrons exchanging and rearranging. The nuclei hardly change at all (unless we’re talking nuclear chemistry). Anyways, electrons, being flighty and fleet, are forever waiting around for the heavier nuclei to get into the right configurations for exchange. When the laggard atoms finally are…zip…the electrons are already there like magic. link

She responded:

Anyways, electrons, being flighty and fleet, are forever waiting around for the heavier nuclei to get into the right configurations for exchange. When the laggard atoms finally are…zip…the electrons are already there like magic. 

That is totally what it’s like to write, or perhaps to create in any medium. You have to do the heavy, lumbering work of getting yourself properly aligned, then–inspiration is there. link 

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For too long I've behaved like water or electricity -- always seeking the path of least resistance. If I wish to channel my thoughts -- to steer them in a meaningful direction-- I must also do the work of building the embankments to contain them. I'll have to move a few atoms. I've done this before and so am no stranger.

What You May Have Missed

My modest blog just passed the quarter million views mark which is an inflated way of saying 250,063 pageviews. Thank you dear readers!

Here are the "top ten" posts according to my Blogger statistics, as well as a short recap:

1  The Parable Of The Doorkeeper*  19,420 views

This post is just my favorite Kafka parable and compares the German and English texts. It must be others' favorite too as it was Instalaunched (thank you, Professor Reynolds!)

2   Hail Britannic!  16,311 views

This one concerned the RMS Titanic's younger sister ship, HMHS Britannic and her sad story. Also, I drew a link between Jacques Cousteau's TV coverage of the shipwreck and the plot of James Cameron's Titanic. But I think many people were just looking for the interesting photo. 

3  Titanic Centennial: at the real Café Parisien  9,698 views

I think it odd that this post is number 3. It's just a famous old photograph of a very hip cafe on board the Titanic. Maybe that's all people were looking for. I did a series of posts on Titanic.

4  Forgotten Americans: Jack Thayer, Titanic Survivor  3,918 views

This post tells the story of young Jack Thayer and his heroic account of surviving the sinking. He was the first to publicly assert that Titanic broke in two. His views were contradicted in the official investigations and reports at the time, but he was vindicated when the wreck was actually found. Sadly, he committed suicide. 

5  The SS Great Eastern  3,452 views

Another famous ship and shipwreck story here. The photo is a haunting one and is worth a look. 

6  It's No Lye That Soap Is Made From Pot Ash  2,087 views

This post concerns the element potassium and was one of a series of posts I did covering the chemical elements. I got as far as rhodium with that series and plan to pick it up again with palladium.

7  Newlands' Law of Octaves 1,676 views

This post retells the interesting saga of John Newlands, the man who first drew attention to the chemical periodicity of the elements, a very favorite topic of mine. 

8  Last Letters From Stalingrad: #23  1,572 views

This post is one of a series of letters I transcribed from Last Letters From Stalingrad, an out-of-print, but very haunting book. See the links at the bottom of that post for more on that series. 

9  Last Letters From Stalingrad: #9  1,271 views


10  The Essence of Distillation 972 views

This is actually my personal favorite of the 10. If I could write more of these, I'd do it all day long. 

How Air Separates Water And Goes Boom

Fertilizer bombs typically use ammonium nitrate, NH₄NO₃. Bombers use it because the stuff is so ubiquitous and so plentiful.

Wiki draws a pretty picture of ammonium nitrate, which partially reveals its explosive potential:

Don't skip over that structure--it's a work of art: two very different nitrogen atoms separate elements of hydrogen and oxygen. On the left, four hydrogens surround a central nitrogen while on the right, three oxygen atoms surround a central nitrogen. There's an unbalanced symmetry. Those H's and O's would love to get together and quench, making water, leaving the naked nitrogens to couple, making N₂ which is essentially air. The chemical structure of ammonium nitrate is a depiction of air separating water.

We never hear about spontaneous explosions of ammonium nitrate. Why is that? An old word from the Greek called stoichiometry answers why. Try and balance the chemical equation of NH₄NO₃ making N₂ and H₂O:

             NH₄NO₃  =>  N₂  +  H₂O

Look easy? I gave up. The reason is that the hydrogen to oxygen ratio is inherently 4 to 3 on one side and 2 to 1 on the other. No amount of tweaking the coefficients will balance that reaction. The stoichiometry just doesn't work.

This brings up just how fertilizer bombs do work, because they do make air and water from ammonium nitrate. There is always a little admixture of carbon (typically fuel oil) but charcoal would work too. The carbon combines with the "excess" oxygen present in NH₄NO₃, making CO₂. This trick even has a name: cf. detonation vs. deflagration

Here's a question for any munitions experts out there: were ANFO's involved in Boston? I've heard that the differing sounds of detonation versus deflagration are diagnostic.

A second question is technical: is it possible (in theory) to isotopically label the nitrogen in manufactured ammonium nitrate and thus, after isotopic analysis of air samples at the bombing site prior to mixing, identify the source?
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[Added]  Well this breaking news should cause a spike in ammo and food prices. The report says that water sprayed on NH₄NO₃ made it explode. That may actually have been heat from the fire or could have resulted from of what's called heat of hydration when a dry salt suddenly mixes with water. Some salts suddenly mixed with water actually make the water colder.

Ammonium nitrate (AN) is not known to chemically react with water in an explosive way. However, if heated it reacts explosively:

             2NH₄NO₃  =>  2N₂  + O₂  + 4H₂O

Now that reaction really produces a sky-full: nitrogen, oxygen, & cloud.

Fundamental Inequalities

Equality is a cornerstone of the law, but it's not at all a feature of natural law.

Consider Heisenberg's famous Uncertainty Principle (but not in any deeper sense than the nature of the symbols):

 

On the left, Δχ and Δρ (position and momentum) are physical variables; on the right is a fixed value—i.e., half of ħ, the imponderable Planck constant.

Equations are like sentences with the equal sign being like the verb "to be;" they represent either equality or the more subtle notion of equivalency. Inequalities are also familiar from algebra but an inequality also expresses—more or less—an important direction of inequality. In this case, the observables are greater than or equal to the constants.

Bell's Theorem has been called "the most profound [theorem] in science" and it too reduces to an inequality. There's another: the Clausius Inequality, which embodies the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and which expresses changes in entropy against a value of zero. Comparing all three—without even understanding them—it strikes me that they all specifically pit observables against abstract constants. Is this general?

Conversations with Henry

Henry:  Did you see that business in the news about negative absolute temperatures?

Me:  You mean this?

Henry:  Yeah, that.  Good thing you know how to manipulate the Internet. I never got the hang of it. You know what that news reminded me of?

Me: No, what Henry?

Henry:  The inverted Marcus region.

Me: Remind me what the inverted Marcus region is.

[Henry moves to the white board, grumbling that people no longer use chalk & blackboards. He sketched three related figures, and then explained them in words]:

Henry: Rudy Marcus laid out three different scenarios for the reaction coordinate of a simple "downhill" reaction using intersecting parabolas to represent reactant and product. Parabolas have a long history in physics (think of pendulums, and they "track" the potential energy in molecules). In the first, notice that the "initial state" reactant parabola is slightly higher in energy than the "final state" product parabola; where they cross represents a moderately uphill barrier given by the distance, ΔG^‡.

In the second (middle) scheme, the initial state (left) parabola is higher in energy while the final state parabola stays the same—follow?  He got there by translating the left hand reactant parabola straight upwards and their intersection slides "down." The barrier to the more downhill reaction is now zero. See that?

Me: Yes!

Henry:  Here is where Marcus was an absolute genius:  if you keep on going as in the third scheme, the initial state parabola gets higher still—this is now a very downhill reaction—but notice that the barrier, ΔG^‡, goes back up because the intersect climbs up the other side!  This is the so-called "Marcus Inverted Region" and is utterly counter intuitive that a more downhill state should require more energy to reach. Boy, he really shook things up with that one!

Me: Fine, but how does that translate to the real world?

Henry: What?  Didn't you read my other stuff?

Me: Here's what I think...I've been saying all along that uphill effort requires more energy than downhill effort, for example here.  But suppose that we have something really severe like the Fiscal Cliff.  Suppose that the fall is so downhill that we will actually face a higher hurdle to get down there than if it weren't so precipitous.

Henry: Hair-brained economics!

Another Quantum of Solstice...

Rutherford and Bohr

[this story continues in part from here.]

Ernest Rutherford discovered the atom's very kernel, the nucleus, but his tiny solar system model of the atom failed. It failed because it had a fatal flaw according to classical electromagnetic theory: Viewed side-on in the plane of the ecliptic, the orbiting electron oscillates charge from side to side and should behave like a miniature transmitter, broadcasting electromagnetic energy like a Marconi transmitter. Giving off energy, bit-by-bit, the electron should spiral into the nucleus. Rutherford never explained that away.

The Importance of Being Near Ernest

Luckily, Rutherford confided his 1909 experiments to young Niels Bohr prior to publishing them. Rutherford had invited Bohr to Manchester to study physics after a brief (and apparently unsuccessful) stint at Cambridge. Inspired,* Bohr spent the summer of 1910 and the subsequent spring (taking time off to marry and to honeymoon), devising his own theory which he published in 1913 (two years after Rutherford finally published his planetary model in 1911).

Bohr got around Rutherford's electron death spiral problem by postulating that it didn't happen! That may sound audacious and even glib, but he overcame "illogical leaps" by solving a bigger mystery which had puzzled generations of scientists: he explained the long-known but little-understood signature hydrogen lines observed in the spectra of stars (recall that stars are mostly hydrogen). According to Bohr, the lines represented quantum leaps in units of energy. He did the math for the hydrogen atom to prove it. The simplistic hope that atoms and the universe were fundamentally similar -- the too small to be seen and the too big to be noticed were whirling masses in motion or "turtles all the way down" -- shone briefly.

According to Bohr's new 1913 theory, electrons encircled a nucleus, but only in stable, fixed-distance orbits (shades of Bode's earlier but discredited planetary law?) but without the continuous death spiral energy radiation. Bohr called his quantized orbits "stationary orbits" (whence my title). A quantum of solstice or standing still.

Electrons in Bohr's stationary orbits still gained or lost energy -- but only by jumping from one orbit to a bigger orbit and vice verse. That was revolutionary. Bohr's math worked out too and depended on Planck's constant which was only 13 years old then.

Planck quantized radiation and Bohr quantized matter--viz, electrons. Scientists struggled in subsequent years with the question of whether electrons were waves or particles and whether light rays were waves or particles. They worried about the meanings of such apparent dichotomies until they gradually realized that they were fighting about language and not about science.
 _______________
*Inspired is an understatement

****

My inspiration for the "Quantum of Solstice" is here at Victoria's old blog, to whom I dedicate this blog post.

Ecce LUMO

Ecce Homo, Caravaggio (1605)

Behold the HOMO (Highest Occupied Molecular Orbital), seeking reception;
Behold the LUMO (Lowest Unoccupied Molecular Orbital), offering reception.

Chemical reactions are electronic transfers. I don't mean electronic transfers like PayPal is (although there are similarities between electricity and money). I mean electronic transfers like oxidations and reductions, substitutions, proton transfers--which all involve electron donors and acceptors.  I still think that BH₃NH₃ best illustrates how chemistry is like sex: link

Presumably, the chemistry of memory has some donor and acceptor aspect at the molecular level. Long term potentiation. Learning is also like transubstantiation--words becoming neuronal flesh and all that. But there is more to learning than replication.  As Plutarch noted, learning is less like bucket filling and more like igniting little fires; Jefferson echoed that same thought: knowledge is contagious.

Here are some mnemonics for today's lesson:

HOMO/LUMO
Donor/Acceptor
Base/Acid
nucleophile/electrophile
Plug/Socket
Hand/Glove
Foot/Shoe

You can guess the rest.

Que Sarin, Sarin

Sarin is in the news, or should I say Syrian sarin is in the news. Odd how only that event struck my interest and how quickly I can see its insidious nature.

Sarin blocks an important enzyme which hydrolyzes esters. When I look at its structure, I see the makings of a transition-state analog for the hydrolysis of a carboxylic acid ester:

For non-chemists, let me try and explain what I'm seeing without dumbing it down.

An enzyme catalyzes a simple displacement reaction:

A—B   +  C   --->    A—C  +  B

Think of a couple divorcing or swapping partners. A begins bonded to B but winds up bonded to C and B is freed from bondage to A.  A is the central player--always bound to at least one other. Now there is a crucial moment (not shown but implicit in the reaction arrow, -->) when A simultaneously binds to both B and C; it's the unstable moment before A fully lets go of B to fully clutch C. It's an ephemeral moment or "state," requiring A to partially bind one more atom than it's used to doing: B--A--C has an awkward, fleeting existence. Because A ultimately binds C more strongly than B, A will momentarily contort "uphill" to ultimately wind up more stable with C.

The enzyme's job (or more generically, the catalyst's job) is to stabilize the awkwardness of the transition state: B--A--C. In the divorcing or partner swapping analogy, the social milieu, (acceptance, enablement) will facilitate the transition. In the absence of a catalyst, the displacement would face a much higher barrier.

Back to sarin.  The sarin molecule closely resembles the transition state for the normal enzymatic process. Sarin looks just like hypothetical "B--A--C" transition state.  Sarin goes into the enzyme and monkey wrenches the whole process: A—B never gets a chance to react with C because sarin comes in and blocks the whole transaction. And Sarin sticks like glue to the enzyme.  Life processes end.

Cultural Metamiction

The term is synonymous with "cultural rot" but avoids the loaded politics and challenges the reader to hunt the meaning of the term. Once cornered, the quarry yields a new gem, asking only for meaning in terms of change versus status quo.

Forces of Exclusion

Forces of exclusion are repulsive. Talking chemistry, it's called hydrophobia. Grease, for example, will not dissolve like salt does in the sea; instead it clots together, usually floating on top because it lacks the gravitas of water. And while grease is hydrophobic, it is lipophilic, a word that, like hydrophobia, also comes to us via Greek, rooted in the word lipos.

Lipids and water don't mingle. It's not that lipids are weak--they are very strong internally, giving us energy--they just lack enough polarity to part water like salt can. Salt ions actually direct water: cations attract the oxygen part of H₂O and anions attract the hydrogen part. These are electrostatic forces. They are intermolecular forces meaning between atoms and molecules:

While lipids have strong intramolecular forces, they lack intermolecular forces like hydrogen bonding in water (this also explains hydrocarbons' volatilities). Because lipids don't mingle with water, they appear to seek their own kind, separating out. But why don't they mingle with water? It's because they restrict water's freedom. They have no charge to slake. Most lipids don't hydrogen bond like water does:

Notice the orientation of white to red (hydrogen to oxygen, plus to minus),  H-bonding is an attractive force, not unique to water, but best exemplified by it. When a lipid or a hydrophobe enters the picture, the waters give up their ordered coziness and are forced to reorient around each hydrophobe to make what's called a cage--without enthalpic recompense as with a salt. Thus the exclusion is an entropic effect because it relates to physical law and order.

Tipping Points And Change

Bill Whittle makes a number of excellent points in this video.  I can relate to his mention of tipping points and change at 14:48.  I tried to convey some of this abstractly and mathematically back here: Tipping Points And Change. Downhill change always has an easier (lower energy tipping point); uphill change comes late and requires sustained effort. Inevitable change is downhill.

Kudos for also mentioning the Titanic at around 24:30.

More Tipping Points And Change

The "tipping point" is a useful construct for understanding how things happen in real life--even in politics--and I tried making this point back here with the help of this graphic:

The notion comes from chemical dynamics which is the study of how chemistry happens at the molecular level. Chemical reactions have hurdles too and that cartoon is an easy way of visualizing energy barriers.

The tipping point is just another name for something important in chemistry called the "transition state." Henry Eyring at Princeton introduced the "activated complex" in 1935 as a specific geometric structure that is highest in energy along the way from reactants to products. Michael Polanyi (Eyring's mentor in Berlin) named it the transition state and that name stuck, but the theory, Transition state theory--remains more closely associated with Eyring.

Transition states are ephemeral, just as tipping points are in everyday life. Who's to say when they occur?  Yet they are the sine qua non of chemical reactivity. Tweeking them--to lower them in energy--is the goal of most chemical catalysis: link  A recent link put up by Instapundit makes this clear.

Fathoming Good and Evil

Photo negative of a pool taken underwater by my father ca. 1975

We humans look bilaterally symmetric, but inside we are not. Our hearts and stomachs are not symmetrically balanced, nor is our digestive tract. Bilateral (and higher) symmetry is common in nature and also appears unseen in right and left-handed versions of the same molecules.* We even speak of left and right in politics.

Then there is the symmetry of matter and anti-matter. And the symmetry of good and bad. This is something different altogether. Though the symmetry of matter and anti-matter is as symmetric as a number line, with plus and minus arrayed symmetrically about zero, only one side prevails in the world we know.  I asked a while back:

Who broke the mirror so long ago?

Who can fathom why matter prevails while the equal and opposite realm of anti-matter remains all but unrealized? 

__________________
*Right and left handed versions of the same molecules are chiral, a word which stems from a Greek word meaning handedness.

Quantum of Solstice

The sun tracks lower across the sky each day now...have you noticed?  I do because I tend to wake up everyday at sunrise. Summer's worst heat hasn't even hit and the sun, always a leading indicator of the seasons, is already ebbing. Heat is a lagging indicator. Out here, the best summer days are in the fall when the ocean has finally warmed and the sun sets earlier allowing spectacular seaside sunset bonfires: link  And there are far fewer tourists in September and October. I just hacked up a stack of wooden pallets to use as bonfire fodder this fall.

solstice

mid-13c., from O.Fr. solstice, from L. solstitium "point at which the sun seems to stand still," from sol "sun" (see sol) + pp. stem of sistere "to come to a stop, make stand still" (see assist).  

The etymology of solstice captures a 13th century optical illusion, when people still thought that the sun moved across the sky by day. It traced a bit higher each day in the summer until the end of June when it appeared to stop and reverse course to a lower arc each day until the end of December when it again stood still and then headed back up. The process appeared discontinuous or "quantized" because each day the motion started in a slightly different place than it began. Of course the whole coupled motion is a continuous process, but imagine being the first to figure how things all really worked: eppur si muove.

Parable Of The Gas Explained

A while back I wrote The Parable Of The Gas without explanation:

Consider a spherical, sealed glass container of gas. Further suppose that the gas inside is all the same -like helium in a balloon. Room temperature and stable. Everything equal inside...but it's not. The individual gas atoms in the container have unequal energies because there's a range--a statistical distribution--of energies present: Some atoms move more slowly than others, some more quickly, some much more quickly.

How can we make things fair? How can we make it such that each individual (atom) has the same energy as its next nearest neighbor? We cannot. The only way to approach that state is to remove energy from the entire system. Cool the economy. Everything slows. Eventually, approaching zero Kelvin, all motion stops. Of course catastrophic things like condensation (downsizing from gas to liquid) and solidification (loss of liquidity) occur along the way. But the goal is achieved: every atom is finally the same (or nearly the same) energy wise.

Here is what I was picturing:

Original

The figure shows how at higher temperatures the average speed increases but so does the spread (inequality). The range narrows at lower temperatures which is what some policymakers seem to want. But what they want is also unnatural and contrived. An Austrian physicist named Ludwig Boltzmann first came up with the mathematical model behind all this in 1877. He based his derivation on entropy--arguing that a situation where all members of a group have identically the same velocity is highly improbable--as improbable as all the gas molecules being located on just one side of the vessel. It's much more probable (favorable) to allow each member of the group to experience a range of velocities and not to constrain them into one single energy or spatial configuration.

Another physicist named Max Planck extended Boltzmann's ideas and also changed the world by extending statistical mechanics to heat and light thus introducing quantum mechanics.  Einstein ran even further with Planck's ideas.  Both men would have their doubts--"God doesn't roll dice" and all that--but neither man denied reality.

Added:  When I liken the economics of wealth and poverty to a gas, it's important to remember that "rich" and "poor" may interconvert: link

Ouroboros For Our Times

Frederick Soddy was fascinated with circles but also with alchemy; he related circles to his discovery of the natural transmutation of elements. Link

Through alchemy, Soddy became familiar with Οὐροβόρος ouroboros, the mythological symbol of the serpent eating its own tail. Ouroboros was also August Kekulé's inspiration for the structure of benzene, a generation before Soddy:

I may have been thinking similar thoughts when I tried to describe the circularity of political extremes and the chemical elements here. Whatever. Consider the following sketch an explicit update--ouroboros for our times--showing the demographic bulge of wealth and talent that must somehow transfer to the next generation (I should make it into an animated flip book).

Ouroboros For Our Times (click to enlarge)
Ball Point Pen on 8 1/2" x 11" white copier paper

A New Periodic Paradigm

Before vanishing from the blogosphere, commenter Ritmo wrote back here:

I remember coming up with an improved periodic table while daydreaming during the inorganic chemistry course I took in college. When we were learning about d and f orbitals it occurred to me that a 2-dimensional table is flawed. Ultimately it should loop around as a cylinder, with the lanthanides and actinides poking out in a raised, textural format. For the life of me I can't remember how I worked it out in perfect detail, but it avoided the unnecessary breaks between groups I and II and reflected the fact that s and p orbitals underlie any expanded orbitals. Putting the transition metals smack dab in the middle of the non-metals and group II just didn't make any sense. And starting over again between the noble gases and group I instead of looping them around to the next orbital seemed an arbitrary convention, like hitting the return key or banging whatever that part was named on a typewriter as you finished a line and needed to move on to the next.

That is absolutely brilliant. It's like a revelation or a prophecy. It's not 100% original, but then few insights are. I will say more about that later. This revelation vexed me off and on for some time and I tried to sketch it until I realized that I needed to sit down like Richard Dreyfuss did in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and build the vision:

So sitting at the kitchen table, I started playing around with a flat periodic table, cutting it up and rearranging and I came up with this:

Cylindrical Periodic Table

Cylindrical Periodic Table

I'll be writing lots more on this in future posts. Lots more!

Ur Analysis

So this friend of mine whom I've never told anyone about invented this at home kit people can use to check whether they have any vitamin or mineral deficiencies. It's basically just a urine analysis kit that monitors your excreted levels of things like calcium, magnesium, zinc, etc.  If you're getting enough, and it's coming through, you should cut back on your supplements because it's wasted or could even be harmful.

The simple analytes are easy--things like calcium, magnesium.  He's working on the organics now. He calls it "Ur Analysis"  Get it?