Friday, November 4, 2011

Chromium (III)

I ran across a website with interesting monographs on several metals under the rubric "Toxic Metals."

The one on chromium vindicates the element's reputation as besmirched by the movie "Erin Brockovich."
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11 comments:

  1. Ritmo Re-AnimatedNovember 5, 2011 at 9:18 PM

    Lol. Using the third oxidation state to rescue the sixth oxidation state of an element. You crack me up, Chickie. ;-)

    Shiny metallic auto accessories alone would "vindicate" the reputation of the element, at least in my mind.

    Still, it was nice to be learn how many colorful uses can be made out of the material, as the etymology suggests.

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  2. Ritmo Re-AnimatedNovember 5, 2011 at 9:29 PM

    In Philly, the Chemical Heritage Foundation is apparently making a "comeback?" as a cultural center. I even saw crowds of people being ushered into and out of a lecture hall to attend a talk on the chemistry of apple cider last night. This event was apparently timed to coincide with the same monthly "First Friday" event catered to by the many nearby art galleries and the amateur sommeliers looking to patronize them.

    Across the hall from the lecture was a medium-sized room full of multi-media museum-type exhibits of the elements. Cool stuff.

    A very strange (and oddly yet, appropriately and professionally credentialed) guy at work dropped by unexpectedly last week to inform me and my boss about the wonders of the CHF. I was pleasantly surprised to see it humming with a decent amount of interest by the public on a Friday night, especially given all the theaters a mere few blocks down the road.

    With all the recent news about the life of Steve Jobs, I'm reminded of that trope about the intersection of science and the humanities...

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  3. Ritmo Re-AnimatedNovember 5, 2011 at 9:39 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. Ritmo Re-AnimatedNovember 5, 2011 at 9:41 PM

    I guess I had the romantic notion that we might enter a time not unlike the nineteenth century, when a member of the public would be invited to observe decently attended demonstrations of scientific phenomena and technical developments without fear of being labelled a geek.

    I think these sorts of events ultimately gave way to "World's Fairs", when say, demonstrations of something like a vintage battery turned into carnivals of marketing and hype and grandiose visions of how our lives would be lived in "the future".

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  5. Ritmo Re-AnimatedNovember 5, 2011 at 9:41 PM

    Fixed a syntactical flaw and upped your comment count.

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  6. chickelitNovember 6, 2011 at 7:14 AM

    Lol. Using the third oxidation state to rescue the sixth oxidation state of an element. You crack me up, Chickie. ;-)

    Actually, I titled it Cr(III) because this is the third post I've done on chromium. No rescue necessary. Cr(VI) is a known airbourne carcinogen, but the aqueous carcinogenicity is not established as depicted in the movie.

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  7. chickelitNovember 6, 2011 at 7:23 AM

    I guess I had the romantic notion that we might enter a time not unlike the nineteenth century, when a member of the public would be invited to observe decently attended demonstrations of scientific phenomena and technical developments without fear of being labelled a geek

    Like Michael Faraday's The Chemical History of a Candle?

    That would be cool indeed. We should all get behind this somehow. Commenter LL linked to a cool demo of silk's properties link.

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  8. Ritmo Re-AnimatedNovember 6, 2011 at 8:04 AM

    Exactly so.

    LL embeds TED links?

    That too is an idea worth spreading. ;-)

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  9. Ritmo Re-AnimatedNovember 6, 2011 at 8:06 AM

    I'm actually intrigued by the topic of that video. I'd like to watch it and see if there's anything more I can't add/take away from it.

    Tell LL that anyone who thinks play is more important than work is ok in my book.

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  10. chickelitNovember 6, 2011 at 11:32 AM

    Tell LL that anyone who thinks play is more important than work is ok in my book.

    I replied to you over there.

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  11. Ritmo Re-AnimatedNovember 6, 2011 at 1:15 PM

    Back at ya over at LL's -

    I guess I'd assumed he wasn't synthesizing the silk peptides in glass or transgenically, and was just modifying their processing following extraction from a natural source; but of course either one of those first two scenarios would also be possible. I'm just not as used to seeing them used for non-therapeutic applications.

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