A Girl's Best Friend is the Blue Diamond*

The structure of graphene got me to thinking of that other form of carbon, viz., diamond:

3D movie: link

Why is diamond so tough, so adamant, so opposed to physical change? I think the answer is called "perfect covalency" but not in an electron sharing sense:

The paradox of the diamond is interesting. Its atoms are not arranged in a tight, closest-packing order. They lack the triangulation of sound architecture. In order for its remarkable rigidity to be understood, I assume that the electrons which surround this meager structure supply it with its resistance to deformation. This is one reason why I cannot assume that electron clouds can infiltrate one another like vapors or ghosts. link

Pure diamond is also colorless and transparent, so what gives fancy (colored) diamonds their colors? The answer is not simply: "there must be something blue inside." An impurity is involved, but not the usual colored metal atoms like iron or chromium found inside other gemstones. The impurities in blue and yellow diamonds are carbon's left- and right-hand periodic neighbors--boron and nitrogen--playing little tricks on the lattice electrons.

Take the perfect 3D lattice of carbon atoms pictured above. Now suppose that we could randomly go in and replace every millionth carbon atom with a boron atom without perturbing anything else. What we get is a boron-doped diamond lattice. Because boron has one less electron than carbon, the entire lattice structure of the diamond is riddled with electronic "holes."

Now it just so happens that reddish-orange light has just the right energy match to promote an electron on an adjacent carbon atom into a "hole" next door. That jump in turn creates a new "hole" and so the next neighbor carbon jumps at the chance to fill the new hole and so on and so forth throughout the entire diamond lattice. Really, a blue diamond is rather like a doped silicon p-type semi conductor. In fact, blue diamonds are semi-conductors--albeit rather expensive ones!

Because only reddish-orange light is absorbed, the remaining visible light appears bluish to our eye because the white light lacks its reddish-orange component: remember the color wheel and complimentary colors!

Likewise, water in a white bathtub appears bluish because it absorbs some of the reddish component of the incident white light. That's also why heat lamps are red too--they are more or less tuned to the wavelength (infrared) that water in food absorbs and converts to heat. Microwave ovens are even better at this.

So what makes yellow diamonds? The answer is slightly more complex. If nitrogen atoms, carbon's other nearest neighbor, are doped into the diamond lattice instead of boron, each nitrogen brings an extra electron into the lattice which is easily promoted to the existing conduction band of diamond by violet light--ergo yellow appearing diamonds. Yellow diamond is analogous to an n-type semiconductor. Here's a link explaining in more detail why blue diamonds are blue and why yellow diamonds are yellow: Link.

Meanwhile, here's a very pretty picture of the Hope Diamond:

____________

*I don't mean "blue diamond-shaped" Viagra either.

50 Years Of MyTunes: 1967

One man's opinion:

There were three essential albums in the Magic Summer of '67: Sergeant Peppers's by The Beatles, Surrealistic Pillow by The Airplane, and The Doors by Robbie Krieger, Ray Manzarek, John Densmore, and Jim Morrison--and in some ways, it is only the last of these that seems far away in time, as if we remember it from another world and another lifetime.

~Bruce Harris (1972)

Another man's opinion: Are You Experienced? ~ Jimi Hendrix

A few of my favorite Singles:

Purple Haze ~ The Jimi Hendrix Experience
White Rabbit ~ The Jefferson Airplane
Time Has Come Today ~ The Chambers Brothers
Brown Eyed Girl ~ Van Morrison
Tears Of A Clown~ Smokey Robinson & the Miracles
Get Together ~ The Youngbloods
I Think We're Alone Now ~ Tommy James & the Shondells
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds ~ The Beatles
Gentle On My Mind ~ Glen Campbell
San Francisco ~ Scott McKenzie
Break On Through ~ The Doors
Incense And Peppermints ~ Strawberry Alarm Clock
Spooky ~ Classics IV
Tuesday Afternoon ~ The Moody Blues
Strange Brew ~ Cream
Pictures Of Matchstick Men ~ The Status Quo
Itchycoo Park ~The Small Faces
Both Sides Now ~ Judy Collins

Some people really dislike "Incense and Peppermints" but I have this fantastic indelible memory of running around in the backyard when I was 7 or 8 singing:
Beatniks and politics nothing is new, a yardstick for lunatics, one point of view

Oktoberfest!

The end of summer brings a gradual respite from arduous work. October, with its golden days and hazy blue atmosphere, is signalized in some German communities with a harvest festival on the first Sunday of the month. For forty-five years such an event has been observed annually in Sheboygan and Milwaukee by Bavarian societies. Less regularly but over a longer period smaller German settlements have kept up the custom. It is a Thanksgiving event, religious in background, colorful with Old World civic ceremonials. Among the older Germans it is still known as the 'Münchner October Fest.'

~Fred L. Holmes, "Freiheit Ist Meine" Old World Wisconsin (1944)

One Step At A Time

Consider again an uphill change from A to B with a steep barrier (tipping point): link

When faced with such a high barrier, it helps to break the uphill slog into steps. Catalysts (enzymes included) employ this strategy, breaking a reaction into one or more steps.*

Linus Pauling, that greatest of American chemists, introduced the profound notion that enzymes work by stabilizing tipping points (transition state energies in the parlance) and thereby speed things up:
 

Some of the acceleration occurs because requisite energy is just smoothly shaved off the peak, but sometimes a transient intermediate, labelled C above, appears. Thus we have a "stepwise" versus a "concerted" process.
_____________________
*The 2010 Nobel prize was awarded to three inventors of a family of very similar catalysts.

Letters Home: "I hope the other outfits over here are combat ready because we're not"

Click To Enlarge

October 6, 1952
Fliegerhorst Kaserne

Dear Mom,

Well we finally got moved. I don't like this camp as well as the other one. This used to be a town. The barracks look like a college or high school. Long hallways and rooms. I'm in a 3 man room. Number 17.

I'm about 3 miles from Hanau and 15 from Frankfurt. Only 20 miles to the Russian border. [1] We are going there on patrol about the 13th.

I got your letter today. I think Marvin is stationed about 5 miles from here but I don't know his address.

What kind of deal will Le Vake give Dad for the Mercury? I don't think he should trade it before winter. It needs a bigger battery.

I gave Les Jim's address. I doubt if I will write to him. I don't like to write. I'll talk to him when we both get back.

It's not too cold here yet. It will be this winter though. I'll be camping out most of winter I suppose. In Dec. we fire the 90 m.m. for the first time. [2] I think if Russia ever attacked the 141st would have to run. I hope the other outfits over here are combat ready because we're not. [3]

Put plenty of mothballs on my leather jacket and tankers jacket, because I will be wanting them when I get back next Fall.

I go to the show every time it changes. It costs 20 cents; I think the price is going up to 25 cents after awhile.

I took a carton of cigarettes to town and sold them to a German for 15 marks ($3.75).  They only cost us $1.00 a carton but I still can't afford to smoke. I can't see it anyway. You have to be careful who you sell them to because that's Black market. Coffee sells for $2.50 a pound.

Love,

V.

_______________

[1] He was stationed near the Fulda Gap, then strategically considered the most likely flashpoint of a shooting war between the US and the USSR.  The Fulda Gap was defended on our side (in part) by the 3rd Army Armored Division. On the other side was Russia's 8th Guards Army, defending a still prostrate Eastern Germany.

[2] The new Patton tanks were equipped with 90 mm cannons.

[3] I wondered what may have caused this momentary shudder in confidence. Nixon's Checkers Speech? The Brits going nuclear?  I think what may have been bothering him was a sense that Eisenhower really was going to be elected.  Ike was leading in the polls at the time. For a young soldier, this meant that the leadership at the very top was about to change--and that change would come on his watch when Ike took office in January the following year.  What effect could that have had on his mind?  Eisenhower after all had been a very successful general--a European war general.

Graphene is Wavy Gravy

Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, both from the University of Manchester in Britain, won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday.

The two were awarded for  "groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene"

CONGRATULATIONS!

(Chemistry should be tomorrow)

Fluorine Gave Uranium Wings*

Fluorospar or Fluorite

Fluorine gas is wretched stuff.  Nothing can tear-out valence electrons like elemental fluorine can. Watch it corrode solid brick here: link  There's another video link along the sidebar there of fluorine eating through a dead chicken. Fluorine was too hot to handle for WW I trench warfare, and even Fritz Haber had to settle for chlorine, the next lower (and less reactive) halogen. Fluorine is superlative in a number of other ways: Uberchemist Martyn Poliakoff explains here: link
[added: an updated video here: link]

The name came from the rock in which it was found, and that mineral, fluorspar, was so named because it helped molten metal flow, a property known since the Middle Ages. Calcium fluoride is still used in welding flux. Fluorospar also glows blue when heated, and that property gave us the term fluorescence.

Fluorine and its heavier halide brethren are the polar opposites of the alkaline earths: Li, Na, K, Cs, etc. Here's some raw video of two polar extremes going at it: link  making salt (halogen means salt-forming in Greek) and a bunch of energy.

Hydrofluoric acid (HF) burns are particularly nasty: a decent amount of it burns right through flesh, overpowering the natural buffering system, and it keeps burning through flesh until it finds bone because calcium is the natural bonding partner of fluorine (as in fluorospar). I once witnessed the aftermath of a grad student who suffered an HF burn: he had to be med-evaced to Denver.

During WW II, uranium hexafluoride (or "hex" as it was so aptly nicknamed) became the vehicle of choice for the gaseous diffusion of uranium isotopes. Consider that nearly every single atom of U-235 that went into "Little Boy" was first borne aloft by six little fluoride wings (as volatile UF₆) before the Enola Gay carried them aloft en mass for Hiroshima. Teflon (polytetrafluoroethylene) was used by chemists during WW II to enable the safe handling of UF₆ during isotope separation.
UF₆ was also of early interest to the Manhattan Project, as told to me by Jacob Bigeleisen: link
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*The title is my homage to Ludwig Mond who in the words of Lord Kelvin "gave metal wings," referring to Mond's discovery of nickel tetracarbonyl, Ni(CO)₄, a volatile compound so insidiously poisonous that it packs a double whammy if inhaled: it nickel plates your lungs while poisoning you with carbon monoxide.

"The End" of Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison and his father on the bridge of the USS Bon Homme Richard ca. 1964

1966 was a time when sons began open revolt against their fathers. Could there be a more egregious example than Jim Morrison and his father, Admiral George "Steve" Morrison (pictured together above)?

Obviously Morrison was a talented lyricist, and together with his looks and charisma (plus three talented musicians) The Doors' success was a no-brainer in hindsight. And yet I've always thought his most interesting material was culled from his pre-fame days: things he had written well before the band gelled in 1965 and honed their act throughout 1966 [for example Indian Summer from 1966].

Morrison's father is interesting in his own right. He doesn't seem at all like the authoritarian caricature that Oliver Stone portrayed in his fawning homage (surpassed in obsequiousness only by the earlier Danny Sugerman book No One Here Gets Out Alive).  Don't get me wrong.  I still love much of The Doors' music. But as I get older, it's interesting to consider the whole spectacle in a broader context. And it's also disappointing that people still don't take Bruce Harris's message seriously, that Jim Morrison didn't want to be an idol "because he believed all idols were hollow." To Jim Morrison, the whole spectacle was a theater art project. 

My backyard neighbor is the son of retired Navy brass and visits his parents down on Coronado Island. He met Admiral Morrison once before he died in 2008: "a good guy" he told me once. According to this San Diego newspaper account, the elder Morrison still biked around the island until the end, inviting friends to "Steve's Happy Hour."

Admiral Morrison visited his son's grave in 1990 and placed an engraved plaque written in Greek which translated recites:
 
True to his own genius

I wonder if the son, were he still alive, could have eventually forgiven the father for whatever drove him apart. I wonder if the poet-son could have spared even one poetic phrase for his father.

Tijuana Taxi

Friday drives to the middle school are Cash Cab Friday, but Monday through Thursday mornings have become Spanish lessons!  We (me, son, daughter, and the neighbor kid) are learning to speak Español using the Pimsleur method which involves talking back to cued questions.  So far so good.  The neighbor kid already took some Spanish, but my two blondini are pretty clueless.  Their middle school is 57% Hispanic and I figure that being bilingual will be a useful tool in the future. Their electives are already filled with Art and Shop. Hell, it might even help me if I find myself out of a job.

[Added: special shout out to Freeman Hunt for first telling me about the Pimsleur methods and kids]

The Tavern

Among the Germans the tavern is a community club house. After church, the whole family, before returning to the farm, is likely to enter to drink beer, while sitting around a table talking with friends and neighbors. These taverns are different in atmosphere from the crowded bar familiar to other communities. They have the attributes of family sociability rather than commercial activity.

-Fred L. Holmes, "Freiheit Ist Meine" Old World Wisconsin (1944)

More from the Wiki:

In Germania (the German-American districts of cities) a beer culture flourished in 19th-century America in taverns, saloons, and especially beer-gardens which operated on Sundays and attracted entire families. Germans operated nearly all the nations brewries, and demand was high until prohibition arrived in 1920. German immigrants acquired a reputation rivaling the Irish for heavy drinking and alcohol-associated violence. By the late 19th century family-oriented beer gardens provided all day recreation on Sundays. German newspapers promoted temperance but not abstinence. From the German perspective the issue was less the ill effects of alcohol than its benefits in promoting social life. For American Germans, the pub stood alongside the church as one of the two pillars of German social and spiritual life.

Rural Italy maintains such a family tavern culture, or least they did 30 years ago when I spent some time there.  Ironically the Italians don't call taverns "taverns"--they call them bars--il bar--a word and custom which I always thought strange but never bothered to fathom.

Letters Home: "No wonder our taxes are so high."

September 19, 1952   Friday

Dear Mom,

I got a little news for you. We are moving again, up near Frankfurt. That's about 200 miles north of here. By the time you get this letter I should be there. I suppose my A.P.O. number will change again.

I got a letter from Dad yesterday. My driver's license came too with it. I won't lose them this time. I can get all the film I want at the P.X. Most everything is a lot cheaper than back in the states. Everything is tax free and that makes it cheaper. 17 jewel watches are about $10.00. American made Bulova sell for 1/2 price in the P.X.

Does Jim J's folks still live in R.C.? That Muller boy would like to get Jim's address. He went to Korea.

Has Jr. applied for his combat pay yet? He will get $45.00 a month for every month in combat. Also under the new law you can get a GI loan. [1] Go to school and get $110.00 a month. They pay 75% of the costs of learning to fly. I might take them up on that after I get out. [2]

We were told it cost $3 billion to equip the 141 tank Bn. When all our tanks, trucks, jeeps etc. once running it takes 250 gallons of gas a minute. No wonder our taxes are so high. I don’t know for sure how many tanks is in the battalion but each one is worth a quarter of a million. The Range Finder in one alone costs $36,000. [3] I'm going to send a picture of one as soon as I can. They sure ride smooth. 810 HP motor. No shifting either. Automatic transmission. [4]

It's raining again today. It won't be too long before it turns to snow. I think my pen is running out of ink. It did. It's the ballpoint one I got from R. last Christmas.

Love, V.

______________________
[1] He's probably referring to the Veterans' Adjustment Act of 1952.  His older brother, Jr., reenlisted and did a second tour in Korea.
[2] He never did return to school.
[3] Those numbers must have seemed mind-boggling at the time to rural folks.  Adjusted for inflation, the numbers astound even now, and this was 1952!  This was the sense of out-of-control spending that Robert Taft warned about. And though Eisenhower prevailed in 1952, even Ike famously warned about the Military-Industrial Complex upon leaving office.
[4] The new M48 Patton class tank.  I linked to their specs here: footnote 5.

Heroes On Stamps



1942-1970



Old World Wisconsin: Deutschtum Über Allis-(Chalmers)

Blatz-Milwaukee's Finest Beer

Many German "Forty-Eighters" settled in Milwaukee, helping establish that city's progressive politics and decades-long flirtation with Sewer Socialism. Milwaukee's tradition is distinct from Robert "Fighting Bob" La Follette, Sr.'s Wisconsin Idea, which for the most part was a wholly Madison-based idea.

Holmes observed:

Meantime, among the German immigrants, leaders arose to found new industries that were to make Wisconsin known through the nation. Every German community had its Braumeister. The names of Pabst, Schlitz, Blatz and Rahr became synonymous for malt beverages; Kohler for plumbing fixtures; Vollrath for porcelain enamel ware; Vits for aluminum products; Pritzlaff for wholesale hardware; Heil for oil burners; Reiss for Great Lakes coal shipments; Pfister, Vogel and Rueping for leather; Harnischfeger for heavy machinery; Lauson for tractor engines; Stoppenbach for sausage. The list might be extended indefinitely. Perhaps it is the German example of thrift that has resulted in Wisconsin attaining the second highest percentage of homeownership in the United States.

-Fred L. Holmes, "Freiheit ist meine" Old World Wisconsin (1944)

The President chose to speak from Milwaukee last Labor Day and I suppose he was hoping to resonate with the crowds there. I was secretly hoping that he would run into Ron Weisflog of Pewaukee or Michael_Haz (from an undisclosed location) when he was there.  You remember Ron Weisflog:



I salute Ron Weisflog and Michael_Haz and hope that their legacy is not fading anytime soon.
______________
The title is a pun on Deutschland Über Alles. Allis-Chalmers is a huge manufacturing firm in Milwaukee. The word Deutschtum literally translates as "Germandom" but the word is more germane to "German-ness" and is typically applied outside of Germany to designate a region with predominantly German culture.

Old World Wisconsin: Oh the Germanity!

Holmes:

Milwaukee's vocabulary is still replete with adopted German words and expressions. Hannah Jacobson found the city's dialect sufficiently unusual to furnish her theme for a B.A. degree thesis at the University of Wisconsin. She discovered :"Ach" being used as an exclamation in everyday speech. Many Milwaukee children say "tante" for "aunt"; the streetcar bends (turns) the corner"; people "stay to home" (zu Hause) instead of "stay at home"; "I go by my aunt's house" instead of "I go to my aunt's house"; "make my apron shut" is a current idiom for the English "tie my apron"; "nix come eraus" is a customary byword for "nichts kommt heraus"; "set yourself down" is a translation of the request "setzen Sie sich nieder" and "Aufwiedersehen," a friendly farewell word, may be overheard on any Milwaukee street corner as companions part to go different ways.

Near the turn of the [20th] century, with the discontinuance of language papers and decline in the preaching of sermons in German, many of the cities began to lose their Old World flavor. The change is less noticeable in rural communities.*

-Fred L. Holmes, "Freiheit Ist Meine" Old World Wisconsin (1944)

________________________
*I noted a few of my father's own curious rural Germanic idioms expressed in his letters home: here (footnote [2] and here (footnote [1]).

Old World Wisconsin: Freiheit ist Meine!

Revolutions roiled nearly the whole European continent in the late 1840s. Alex de Tocqueville said of that period:

Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy, and those who had anything united in common terror. link

Wisconsin entered the Union in 1848, just as waves of European emigrants sought new lives. The Revolution of 1848 led to a diaspora of German-speaking peoples, some of whom settled in Wisconsin. They were the intellectual seed for the Wisconsin progressive liberal tradition.

Holmes wrote:

Roughly that segment of the state with Madison as the string center of the arc and with Manitowoc County as the upper swing and South Milwaukee as the lower tangent is densely settled by the descendants of people representing every class and community of German society. The first settlers arrived as early as 1839. Some came seeking religious and civic liberty; others for the purpose of improving their economic and social status. Some were Protestants, others were Catholics and a third group, composed mostly of so-called "Forty-eighters," were "Free Thinkers." Before the migration ended, the Germans were so scattered that their settlements dotting the map of Wisconsin looked like a uniform patch-work quilt.

Scattered among the early German settlers were many so-called "Free Thinkers." At one time this group had twenty-three societies in Wisconsin alone. Mayville had one of the leading organizations. These people were mostly "Forty-Eighters" --men of culture and means. Some had exchanged titles of nobility for their freedom. They were sympathizers with the German Liberal revolution of 1848, and were the progressive liberals of their times.

It is difficult accurately to define their dogma. They were not atheists but they held a belief in some godlike principle of nature. They spoke glibly of their followership after Thomas Paine, French-thinker and American revolutionist. Some had their children baptized in "the name of the United States of America." Often at their gatherings they would display the cap of freedom on the top of the liberty pole. [1]

"Freiheit ist meine!" they shouted.

For eighty years the little village of Thiensville on the old Milwaukee River resisted Christianizing influences.  They had their children married without benefit of clergy. They buried their dead in the old Mequon cemetery under memorials to their name only. Rural neighbors looked askance upon these strange townsmen, calling their community "Little Paris" or the "Godforsaken Village." When a non-conformist newcomer attempted a collection for the founding of a church he was met with a double offer of the amount raised if no church be founded. Repeated efforts to establish a church failed.

At Sauk City remains the last active Freie Gemeinde hall and library in Wisconsin. [2] A spacious lawn and spreading trees give it the imposing setting of a rural community social center. As its members die they are buried in the nearby Free-Thinker cemetery in the Town of Honey Creek.

-Fred L. Holmes, "Freiheit Ist Meine" Old World Wisconsin (1944)

________________________
[1] The seated Liberty on that 1848 quarter in the photo clutches a phrygian cap on a pole.

[2] Wisconsin author August Derleth (1909-1971) associated with the Freie Gemeinde of his beloved "Sac Prairie." Derleth lived, and was buried, in Sauk City.

Inspired By Amba

Amba wrote here:

There is a fascinating fundamental disagreement here about what is courage and what is cowardice. What is defending our civilization and what is betraying it. The views are diametrically, 180 degrees opposed. And in some crazy way they chase each other in a circle, like a snake swallowing its own tail.

There is the irony of defending an open society by closing it.

But there is also the irony of being so tolerant you tolerate intolerance.

Meditate on that pair for a while.

OK, imagine a line segment having at each end an opposite charge. Along the line between the two ends is a "continuum" with neutrality in the middle.*
It might look something like this:

The views are diametrically, 180 degrees opposed.

Political opposites supposedly repel each other, but suppose that just as in nature, opposites actually attract. They attract but never merge with each other, like two oppositely charged ions: Na⁺ and Cl^-.

A political analogy could be like the "attraction" between fascism and communism along the border between Germany and Russia in WW II. But in that case, the attraction was an action-reaction phenomenon. 

Now suppose that the two ends begin to attract each other, bending the line into a circle trying to meet. We have the makings of: 

The views are diametrically, 180 degrees opposed. And in some crazy way they chase each other in a circle, like a snake swallowing its own tail.

                

The more neutral elements along the continuum between the two extrema are not directly involved in the polarized attraction, yet they "feel" the strain of the curvature.

There is the irony of defending an open society by closing it.

The political spectrum is closing up on itself. Perhaps it's just a reflexive defense posture but I sincerely doubt such polarized "circling of the wagons" is unprecedented. It's been a while since we've had something truly unprecedented and I doubt this is it--yet. Anyways the circle is just a metaphor.

But there is also the irony of being so tolerant you tolerate intolerance.

I hear this mostly from those who feel uncomfortable being "polarized" by the extremes at one end or the other. They are the neutral ones, the "covalent" elements.* In the circle scheme they are around the ring from, and approximately equidistant away from, the polarized heads, yet they feel the strain.  Perhaps the irony comes from being so far removed. As the Dutch learned, there's nothing good about tolerating intolerance.

The polarized ends of the spectrum are actually surrounded by smaller, oppositely charged entities:

 
A coterie of independent detractors surrounds each extreme. They serve an important purpose: they neutralize some of the raw charge of the extreme. They also prevent direct and destructive collisions and arcing between the polarized ends. They are part of free speech and they ultimately help to unbend the spectrum, to relax it back to a more linear shape.
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*The spectrum model is analogous to a periodic row of elements with lithium and fluorine being the two extrema and the covalent elements B, C, N lying in between. link [Fixed the link]

The Parable of the Gas

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) energywise.

[added: an explanation here: link]

Old World Wisconsin: Avant Ouisconsin!

Jean Nicolet lands at Green Bay in 1634

Every Wisconsin school child learned (and I hope still does learn) that the French were the first Europeans to explore and map that territory. The name Wisconsin derives from an Algonquian language, but there's a story of how the French invented the name: link

Author Fred Holmes waxes nostalgic for traces of les Français, already long disappearing back in 1944:

Would you see historic places, authentic relics, hallowed ground? Would you hear the French folk songs of the first settlers sung by present-day descendants? Would you like to walk in paths bordered by old-fashioned flower gardens? Green Bay has all of them. She was the gateway to the Middle West opened wide by Frenchmen whose ineradicable imprint is still discernible after the passing of nearly two centuries.

Wisconsin is cognizant of its debt to the intrepid French explorer, priest and trader. Soon to stand in the shadow of the capitol dome at Madison will be the Bedore statue of Jean Nicolet,* the first white man to come to Wisconsin, who arrived at the Green Bay entrance in 1634; in the streets of De Pere, a tablet marks the site of the first mission founded by Pere Claude Allouez in 1620; the black-robed Father James Marquette, co-discoverer of the Mississippi in 1673, is one of the two representatives of the Statuary Hall in Washington; Charles de Langlade, "the bravest of the brave," who created the first farm out of the wilderness, is memorialized by a bronze cenotaph in the city of Green Bay; "Villa Louis" at Prairie du Chien and the "Grignon House" at Kaukauna have been rehabilitated to perpetuate the high cultural attainments of the French; and two State parks--Perrot and Brunet Island--designate localities where French fur traders conducted extensive operations. 

The early French who came to Wisconsin were pathfinders rather than empire builders. They preferred to trap; to wander in wilderness solitudes, and to puff a pipe at night around the fire, while telling other loiters of the incidents and exploits of the day. Their observations on the cunning of wild animals, the ingenuity of the beaver, the wariness of the muskrat--interspersed tales of their own courage and fearlessness.  The harsh struggle for existence and the rugged outdoor life gave these people an individuality of their own.

But war shattered the silence of their woodland security. The Black Hawk episode that made a trail across southwest Wisconsin in 1832 was to hasten the decline of the fur industry's supremacy. Soldiers scouting through the brush, around silver lakes, across verdant meadow lands and along fertile valley bottoms in search of the fleeing Sacs came to realize the possibilities for developing a home in such a country of contagious beauty and wild productivity. Their letters back home stirred the East. Soon came the the New Englanders and New Yorkers--typical, farseeing Yankee stock, who were to run the governmental affairs of Wisconsin in pretty much their own way until the end of the [19th] century. The greatest advance in American history had begun to take a form that was to roll westward until the vast continent was subjected to settlement. 

Green Bay and Prairie du Chien still radiate French tone and charm. For more than a century the French influence has been fading. Those who came as soldiers and traders in colonial times turned into farmers as economic conditions changed.

Three epochs of history mark the settlement of the French in Wisconsin. Many of the first to arrive were traders and trappers who came directly from France to engage in fur trade; the second influx came mostly from the French province of Quebec just before the Civil War and became active in the lumbering industry; the third were the remnants of both groups who remained to farm, once the timber had been removed and the log drives ended. This explains the the presence of French settlements along the rivers of Northern Wisconsin.

Four generations of life in Wisconsin have not eliminated the sharp inflection given to the pronunciation of many English words; nor removed, from ordinary conversation, expressions that sound odd though literally translated from the mother tongue. Characteristic among the French-Canadian is an emphasis on the last syllable so that "Frenchman" is pronounced as "French man" and "high school" as "high school"; or they pronounce beginning with a vowel with the letter "h" so that "oil" is articulated as if it were spelt "hoil" and "air" as "hair." Among the less educated "she" is commonly used after masculine nouns,---"Mrs. Demarse said of her dull boy--'my son Dolph, she funny boy.'" Expressions that are perfect in French become awkward when translated into English, "Me, I do not know him" (Moi, je ne le connais pas)--or "You, are you crazy, you?" (Vous, etes vous fou?). Among these people I found that the parents speak the native language to their children when they do not want strangers to know what they are saying. Otherwise, English is used in conversation about the home. Less frequent every year are the occasions for songs and recitations in French at school programs and entertainments.

While the romantic, religious days are fast leaving the lives of the French in Wisconsin, their devotion, respect, courtesy and hospitality to Old World ideals continue as inherited traits. 

-Fred L. Holmes, "Romantic Days Are Fading" Old World Wisconsin (1944)
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*The statue never made it to Madison but was instead placed near the spot where Nicolet came ashore in 1634. link  The statue has since been moved to a different site northeast of Green Bay. link

Old World Wisconsin

-Fred L. Holmes writing in the preface to his Old World Wisconsin (1944):

Through many questionings and wanderings in my native state, I have formed an appreciation, beyond ordinary measure, of the people who are Wisconsin. To know them from their racial backgrounds through their New World cultures is to understand more clearly the reason for our hegemony in the family of states. They came from youthful, youthful stock of many Old World nationalities--seekers after freedom in religion and government; pursuers of opportunities; men and women of pioneering strength and courage, anxious to weave their lives into the warp of national existence. Wisconsin history has been enriched by them.

Wars become universal innovators.  During centuries of peace, customs change but little.  Religion, language, and habits strive to keep alive the past.  While sojourning among the Wisconsin people of racial memories, I have listened to the legends of lands across the sea as handed down from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation; visited scenes of their high emprise and holy devotion; observed customs that time has seen practiced through many decades; enjoyed the pageantry of ancient drama.  No other state has gathered in a melting pot such a diversity of rural and urban foreign groups. With them I turned the pages of living history.

Each little transplanted group has its own individuality.  Ways of dress, eating and worship are all different.  My own wanderings through Europe have been taken by the vicarious method of trodding the byways of newer Wisconsin. The wings I saw and the voices I heard in these Old World-New World communities are here told against a background of Yankee advance.

Holmes' book is still in print as a paperback: link

Chromatography is Just a Metaphor for Stains and Skid Marks

Chromatography once meant "color writing" but now it's just an analytical tool in chemistry.   Chromatography started out with scientists dipping paper in solutions of crushed plant juices.  Capillary action drew the solutions up the paper--just like the quicker-picker upper Bounty paper towel does.  Things in the solution-called analytes- lag behind the wetness line creeping up the paper.  You may have even seen this phenomenon if you've ever found an old paper coffee filter with annular stain rings.
Anyway, the phenomenon gets interesting if there are two or more colored substances in the solution which form two separate rings. In theory you can dry the filter and cut the paper up, isolating the two substances.  Voilà, chromatography!

In paper chromatography, the paper is what's called a stationary phase and the water is the mobile phase. Analytes flit between the two phases to different extents-whence the separation.  Nowadays there are a ton of different chromatographies--column chromatography, thin layer chromatography, high pressure chromatography, gas chromatography, chiral chromatography--but they all rely on similar principles.