Facial Expressions

I sometimes write things here to sort things out. This is a perfect example. I've long been confused by two 1960s British bands, The Faces, and The Small Faces. Both groups never really charted well, but the Small Faces did better. Both groups eventually dissolved (The Small Faces became the Faces) and their former members went on to greater things: Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Kenny Jones, Rod Stewart, Ron Wood to name a few.

Henceforth I shall always remember that the Small Faces came first because Steve Marriott was short.

Here's an oldie but goodie:

Why doesn't the world just spontaneously combust?

Rhetorically speaking, the question seems absurd. We don't so why even care.  It's like asking why don't we all die tomorrow--the potential is there--but it's just not a physical reality.

Half of the recipe for world conflagration is the fuel--the other half is the oxygen. Thermodynamics say that we should burn up. So why don't we? Why don't we ignite like a puddle of gasoline or at least slowly rust away like a piece of iron? Rust never sleeps--ask Neil Young.

I threatened a while back here to explain why oxygen in the air doesn't spontaneously ignite with all the organic fuel on earth in one big conflagration.  The short answer is a little matter of about 23 kilocalories of energy per mole needed for oxygen to react with most things. 23 kcals/mol is not a high barrier.

Spin provides why we abide (that's not a political jingle)

Molecular oxygen is chemically inert in the presence of hydrocarbons and carbohydrates because of the unusual nature of its electrons.  It's really not hard to understand this uniqueness of oxygen if you've had even rudimentary chemistry. One trick is to consider it in light of nitrogen.

Nitrogen is oxygen's periodic table next door neighbor. Nitrogen is surrounded by five valence electrons, while oxygen is surrounded by six.  If we put two atoms together, we get 10 and 12 valence electrons respectively. Lewis might have drawn N₂ like this:

:N:::N:  

The more usual Lewis structure for nitrogen is:

:N≡N:

Both Lewis structures predict a nitrogen-nitrogen triple bond between the atoms. [true chem nerds will appreciate that the bond order of three is understood as a single hot dog shaped sigma bond along the line connecting the atoms and two bun-shaped pi-bonds at right angles (orthogonal) to each other so as to not overlap. This is how 6 electrons can occupy space between atoms without violating Pauli's exclusion rule].

Now let's use our little Maxwell's Demon to go in and transmute each nitrogen atom into an oxygen atom, leaving everything else the same.  We have to add two electrons to the picture because we added one proton on going from nitrogen to oxygen (never mind the neutron count for now). So we initially get something that looks like this:

 :Ȯ≡Ȯ:

That Lewis structure predicts that there will be two unpaired electrons, one on each oxygen. In fact, oxygen is paramagnetic, having two unpaired electrons. But O₂ doesn't have a triple bond--it has a double bond. Hmmm. What to do. We could simply dissolve one bond between the two atoms, giving two lone pairs on each atom:

:Ö=Ö:

This picture is consistent with the observed double bond in dioxygen. But that picture fails to account for the unpaired electrons in dioxygen.  What is going here?  Nothing less than the failure of simple Valence Bond Theory and Lewis' overly simplistic view of chemical bonding!

There is no acceptable Lewis structure for the garden variety dioxygen molecule.

If you've gotten through this far I'm afraid that I've led you into a little trap.  The answer as to what is the electronic structure of O₂ and why don't we spontaneously combust are in part given by what's called Molecular Orbital Theory, a theory which triumphed over Lewis' theory way back in 1930s.

The two "extra" electrons in O₂ aren't parked on individual atoms nor do they form a bond. Instead, they each reside in separate identical "beds," unpaired with each other. An oxygen molecule possesses two so-called antibonding orbitals which look like this:

One electron goes into the pi*_y anti-bonding orbital and the other goes into an "orthogonal" pi*_x anti-bonding orbital.  Each orbital is singly occupied and electron is unpaired--just as observed.  Oxygen still has a six bonding electrons--just like nitrogen does, but the two anti-bonding electrons partially negate the triple bond. The electrons tally like debits and credits, giving a net bond order of two as observed.

UV light can convert normal O₂ into so-called so-called singlet oxygen which is drawn as:

:Ö=Ö:

When singlet O₂ is loosed on organic material, all hell breaks loose, for example, sunburn and as a growing body of evidence shows, mutations and cancers.

Hung Up on "Gallows Pole"

The Led Zeppelin song Gallows Pole foreshadowed the masterful (but overplayed) Stairway to Heaven which appeared on their next album. The song introduces each stringed instrument one-by-one, with an increasing tempo. I love how the mandolin chimes in near the beginning, sounding almost like a piano.  Gallows Pole also features a banjo, an unusual instrument in rock music.  You can hear it kick in with the drums here.

More about that drumming: John Bonham is really playing more than just a steady beat. Listen for example here, exactly when Plant sings "upon your face a smile"--his drumming mimics the cadence of Plant's words.

Of course Gallows Pole wasn't standard rock fare to begin with. There's a whole long history behind the song and Led Zeppelin were late to the party. link

50 Years Of MyTunes: 1970

Here are my favorite albums from the beginning of another great decade in music. At the time, I would have gone with Hendrix' Band of Gypsies as my favorite. Yes I was only 10, but I had positive exposure to the music of the time by an older brother and other older kids in the neighborhood.  A few short years later, when I started to play the drums, Led Zeppelin and The Who became favorites because I worshiped the playing styles of Keith Moon and John Bonham.

Led Zeppelin III ~ Led Zeppelin
Abraxis ~ Santana
Band of Gypsies ~ Band of Gypsies
Paranoid ~ Black Sabbath
Bridge Over Troubled Waters ~ Simon & Garfunkel
Cosmo's Factory ~ CCR
American Beauty ~ The Grateful Dead
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs ~ Derek And The Dominos
Live At Leeds ~ The Who
Bitches Brew ~ Miles Davis
Morrison Hotel ~ The Doors
Moondance ~ Van Morrison

Notable singles that year:

Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine ~ James Brown
Lola ~ The Kinks <--- my pick
Mr Bojangles ~ NGDB (Jerry Jeff Walker song)
War ~ Edwin Starr
American Woman ~ The Guess Who
Ain't No Mountain High Enough ~ Diana Ross
ABC ~ Jackson 5
Spill the Wine ~ Eric Burdon and War
I'm Your Captain/Closer To Home ~ Grand Funk Railroad
Coal Miner's Daughter ~ Loretta Lynn

Letters Home: All Quiet on the Eastern Front

I just wanted to wish all the veterans in my circle of acquaintances (real and virtual) a great day and to also thank them for their service. There was a time when I was around people who cared very little for people who were or had been in the service.  Most of them were students and academic types, mostly of a different generation.  I'll never forget the looks on some people's faces about 10 years when we decided to moved to Oceanside. And also what one Canadian dweeb said to me all in earnestness: "You do know they have flagpoles in their yards up there?"
Priceless. 

"Letters Home" is a year old today. I posted the first letter here: link.  I know it gets boring but there is sporadic excitement. Not this time though. Here he doesn't even mention Armistice Day (the name wasn't changed until two years later); nor does he mention Eisenhower's election victory.  He was 20 at the time and the 26th amendment (giving 18 year olds the vote) was still decades away. Plus I remember feeling distanced from American politics myself while overseas. I missed Clinton's whole campaign and election in 1992. I didn't vote that year.

The Eastern Front of the Cold War as is looked in 1952

November 11, 1952
Fliegerhorst Kaserne

Dear Mom and All,
I just got back from the show. It sure was funny. Abbott and Costello, "Lost in Alaska." [1]
I still haven't got the boys watches. I sent that stein and a book today. [2] I suppose it will take a month for them to get there.
We had one snow here so far. It melted before too long though.
I forgot about Halloween this year. You know we were on those maneuvers and I didn't remember about it till we got back last Tue.
I got that letter quite a while ago. The one with the pictures of R's car. I thought I said something about it in one of my other letters. In that picture of duke standing by the planes, sure looks like R.
Tell Jr. not to get me a Spot Light. It will be a long time yet before I need one. I suppose 9 or 10 more months of here.
This picture of myself is a 8 minute job. It isn't took bad for a quick one. I still got the same old mug.

I weigh 175 and am still 6 foot tall.
Have Jr. snap a picture of his pickup and sent it across the pond. I guess this is it for now, no news.


Love,

V.


P.S. I heard R. is going steady again. I'll have to write to him. How's P. coming with the (fussy) boys? [3]

_____________________

[1] IMBD for "Lost in Alaska": link

[2] I wrote about the stein here. I wish I knew which book he sent back.
[3] R and P were his teenaged brother and sister. His seven siblings were all spaced less than two years apart.

50 Years Of MyTunes: 1969 Long Time No Play LP!

By 1969, pop music singles were uncool. Albums were hip.  To recognize this I decided to nominate best album for the next couple decades or so through the 1980s. MTV had the effect of reinventing the single and so did internet music exchange (Napster) and the iPod/iTunes revolution reinforced it.  The trend was countered beginning in the 80s by the introduction of the CD format. When this series gets up to the 90's (I only have 4 more months to finish the whole thing)  I'll probably switch back to singles format.

The nominees for best album of 1969 in no particular order are:

The Allman Brothers Band ~ The Allman Brothers*
I & II ~ Led Zeppelin*

Abbey Road ~ The Beatles

Bayou Country ~ Creedence Clearwater Revival
Green River ~ Creedence Clearwater Revival

Let it Bleed ~ The Rolling Stones  <-- my pick!

Chicago Transit Authority ~ Chicago*

Tommy ~ The Who

Santana ~ Santana*
Stand! ~ Sly & The Family Stone
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere ~ Neil Young & Crazyhorse
In The Court Of The Crimson King ~ King Crimson*
The Stooges ~ The Stooges*
__________
*Debutantes

Also released as singles that year:

Honky Tonk Women ~ The Rolling Stones

My Way ~ Frank Sinatra

Suspicious Minds ~ Elvis Presley

Venus ~ Shocking Blue

Someday We'll Be Together ~ Diana Ross & the Supremes

Lay Lady Lay ~ Bob Dylan

Aquarius / Let The Sun Shine In ~ The 5th Dimension

Sugar, Sugar ~ The Archies

Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town ~ Kenny Rogers & the First Edition

Leaving On A Jet Plane ~ Peter, Paul & Mary
Both Sides Now ~ Joni Mitchell
House of the Rising Sun ~ Frijid Pink

One Nation Rally (1969 Edition)

Woodstock Nation

Click to enlarge

The iconic photo used on the album cover (top) seems to have cropped out a lot of the trash and litter. Hippies weren't exactly proto-Tea Partiers.  

I'm in a fowl mood tonight.

All In The Family

Here is a fascinating chart showing the partial lineage of PhD degrees in the field of chemistry. It's a bit dated now (1979), and is tailored to University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty (whence the "Badger Geneology") but fortunately older geneology never changes--you just have to know where to jump in.

Basically, every PhD chemist can trace their Doktorvater lineage back to just three prominent 18th century chemists: C.L. Berthollet, A.F. Fourcroy (both of Paris) and J.J. Berzelius (of Stockholm). I am descended from Fourcroy.

Double click to enlarge

Conversations with Henry

Henry: Back in my day there were still holes and notches in the Periodic Table.
Henry sketched:

Me: But aren't the notches just from how we think about things?

Henry: Meaning?

Me: Meaning that the "notch" in the s- and p-blocks are because hydrogen and helium don't really belong to either block?

Henry: That's bullshit.  They certainly do belong with those other elements.

Me:  OK. So the notches come from discontinuities. Hydrogen and helium are completely s in character--and so are lithium and beryllium.

Henry: So why is helium parked over the p-block?

Me: Exactly! It really shouldn't be there.

Henry: Bullshit.  Helium is a noble gas. Of course it belongs there. Duh.
Henry looks at his cards and frowns.

Henry: I'll take two.
He discards two cards and I give him two more.

Conversations with Henry

Absence is the highest form of presence.

-- James Joyce A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man

[Henry and I are sitting at a table in his backyard, about to play a game of cards. Henry picks up a .22 rifle leaning against the table and aims it out at the garden and fires. A puff of soil dust appears near a gopher hole.]

Henry: Damn! Missed! He's been eating my turnips.
Henry picks up his cards and looks at them. I do likewise.

Me: What did you think of the election?

Henry: We can basically do two things: build schools or build prisons.

Me: OK, but do the teachers and guards have to break the bank?

[Long pause]

Me: Henry??  Where'd you go?

50 Years Of MyTunes: 1968

The nominees for my favorite song of 1968 are:

Magic Carpet Ride ~ Steppenwolf
Sympathy For The Devil ~ The Rolling Stones
Time Of The Season ~ The Zombies
Helter Skelter ~The Beatles
Voodoo Child (Slight Return) ~ Jimi Hendrix Experience
Different Drum ~ Stone Poneys (Go Linda and Christine!, and good luck Jerry Brown, hee)
Crimson And Clover ~ Tommy James & the Shondells
Mrs. Robinson ~ Simon & Garfunkel
Stand By Your Man ~ Tammy Wynette
Love Child ~ Diana Ross & The Supremes
Going Up The Country ~ Canned Heat
Abraham, Martin And John ~ Dion
Fire ~ The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown
Stoned Soul Picnic ~ The 5th Dimension
Ride My See Saw ~ The Moody Blues

Conversations with Henry

Henry: I read your blog post--you forgot about Döbereiner.

Me: Doober-who?

Henry: Döbereiner. Johann Döbereiner. He was before Newlands. He arranged elements into triads.

Me: Huh?

Henry: Triads.

Me: What are triads?

Henry: Döbereiner's Triads. Groups of three elements. All related.

[Henry explains]:

Me: That's pretty scanty.

Henry: So, are we going to play cards or what?

Me: OK.  What are we playing?

Henry: Triads

Henry had a special deck of cards, each one a different chemical element instead of the usual playing card.  I took out everything but the D-block elements (Sc through Hg) shuffled them, and then dealt us each five cards, face down.

Newlands' Law of Octaves



John Newlands was a 19th century chemist, inglese italianato, and an avid musician. He was among the first to see underlying rhyme and reason in the matter of the elements—even before Mendeleev did. But he mistook his insight as a fundamental harmony like the one between musical notes and for this he was rebuffed by his peers at the time.

Newlands arranged the then known elements in order of increasing atomic weight. He noticed that the eighth element (fluorine) resembled the first one (hydrogen), and that the ninth element (Na) resembled the second one (Li), and so forth. His observation that every eighth element had similar properties led him to compare his "chemical octaves" with musical octaves, and he called it his law of octaves. The first two octaves of elements behaved:

Do    Re    Mi    Fa    So    La    Ti     Do 
H      Li     Be     B      C      N      O     F
F      Na    Mg   Al     Si     P       S     Cl

One obvious problem with Newlands' octaves is that he left no room for the noble gases (which hadn't been discovered yet). So what Newlands described was not a law of octaves but rather a law of "nonaves":

Another problem with Newlands' scheme was that he tried to fit elements beyond chlorine into his scheme, including some known transition metals and he made some real errors. But give the man some credit.  Like Theo Boehm tweeted to me:

Well, Newland was on to *something* Just that musical analogy didn't quite make it. Tricky to work music into other areas! link

Imagination Sufficed

Click twice to magnify & to read the text about Titanic

That drawing is from Logan Marshall's The Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters and has intrigued me since I was kid, especially the little stick figures tumbling off the stern. It affected me the same way the jumpers from the Twin Towers affected some people. But as a kid I didn't need such graphic "reality" footage.  Imagination alone sufficed to horrify.

Neon Rhymes With Helium*

Nothing says periodicity like neon and the other six noble gases. From top to bottom, they shore-up the whole right-hand side of the Periodic Table:

click to enlarge

A noble gas appears at the end of each row like a rhyming element. There are seven complete periods (rows) in the table above. Work has begun on the 8th period.  Don't let the gaps in the table fool you; they are just an artifact of our Cartesian thinking: link.

At the very bottom right of the table is Ununoctium, the last noble gas. Only a few atoms of Uuo have been made, not enough to characterize in detail, but I'm sure that the properties of Uuo would make radon (Rn) look tame. Most transactinide elements are not of this earth.

Back to earth. Neon's colorful history and etymology are covered here by van der Krogt.  The entire noble gas family eluded scientists for decades and for good reason. Interestingly, Neon's name was suggested by its discoverer's 13 year old child.

I think neon signs are cool. I didn't know until today that there's a Museum Of Neon Art (MONA) in Los Angeles link.  I'll have to add it to my list of places to see.

_______________
*The name "Helium" is a bit of misnomer. It should called Helion. The suffix "ium" really and truly belongs to metallic elements. At the time of helium's discovery on the sun, it was assumed that helium was metallic.

Letters Home: #31

October 25, 1952
Fliegerhorst Kaserne
Sat morning


Dear Mom,
We are getting ready to go on a road march with the tanks. We have to load them on flatcars and take them to the Russian border. [1]  It will be about 2 week before we get back. 400 miles round trip.
Last Sunday I went to Sababurg to see the castle. It was just like the ones you see in the movies. High walls, and a moat around it. Looked something like a fort.
I haven't been to Frankfurt lately. I am going in before December and get some things to send home. Tell R. I will write him, one of these days.

I bet dad would really cuss if he was over here. It rained 42 out of the last 54 days. It's been cool here, but no snow yet.

How is Jr. coming along? Has he got that new pick up yet? I hope I can save enough money to get a new car when I get out. At least the down payment.  How much does John want for a Hudson Hornet? [2] I suppose around $3,000.  I won't have any new a.p.o. number, it's still 46.

I sure was surprised to hear Donna B. and Skip C. and Bill K. got married. Things sure will be changed before I get back. So Vern and Ilene are supposed to get hitched too, but the last time I heard Ilene's mother wouldn't sign for her. I think there all foolish to get married the way the world is now. You always got the Draft Board to face.

I heard they wasn't going to draft any more 19 year olds till they got all the 20-21 year olds. R. might not have to worry for year. I hope he don't have to come. I know he would hate it worse than I do. I'm just easy going enough to put up with it. Just waiting till they cut me loose. The 29th of this month and I've been in 1 year, and still a private. Ha! Ha!  Sure different than Jr. I don't care myself if I get anything.

Love, V.

___________________

[1] I found a link with several photos contemporaneous with my father's service here.
[2] Ah, the Hudson Hornet. He must have been smitten back here. (footnote 2).

Resonance is in the Air

I came across the following last night which resonated with me:

When you have two guitars tuned alike you also experiment with the phenomenon of resonance or sympathetic vibration. If you pluck one string on one guitar, and the second guitar is just a short distance away, the second guitar's similar string and only that string will sound softly and mysteriously without being plucked.

~Mary Ellen Bowden & Theodor Benfey writing in "Robert Burns Woodward and the Art of Organic Synthesis"

Nancy Duarte wrote a fascinating piece about resonance and public speaking here.  She wrote:

The audience does not need to tune themselves to you—you need to tune your message to them. Skilled presenting requires you to understand their hearts and minds and create a message to resonate with what’s already there. Your audience will be significantly moved if you send a message that is tuned to their needs and desires. They might even quiver with enthusiasm and act in concert to create beautiful results.

We have a real dissonance coming out of Washington D.C. We have public figures and radio personalities demanding that we tune to their frequency, rather than the other way around.  We are not a captive audience.

Past and Present: Now The Twain Shall Meet

Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and `let on' to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far future by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from! Nor `development of species', either! Glacial epochs are great things, but they are vague--vague. Please observe. In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. This is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

~Mark Twain, The Atlantic Monthly, 36, 193 (1875)

_____________________
Mark Twain's autobiography is finally coming out after 100 years of waiting: link.  I'm expecting the unexpected, based on conjecture.

Umpolung: The Strange Case of Dr. Proton and Mr. Hydride

Umpolung is a chemistry term meaning "reversal of polarity." This is a useful trick, to change something from having a plus charge to having a minus charge. Hydrogen is the simplest example and shows how the same element behaves differently depending on whether it is cloaked in electrons or not.

The promiscuous proton, H⁺, flits from base to base in water. But hydride (written as H^-), laden with two electrons, usually seeks an electrophile with which to couple irreversibly. If proton and hydride get together, they make little H₂'s.

Hydrogen usually appears on the upper far left side of the Periodic Table sitting above Li, Na, K,.., emphasizing its usual cationic (H⁺) character.  But umpolung explains why it's sometimes useful to think of hydrogen as belonging on the upper right side (next to He), sitting above the halogens, F, Cl, Br,.., emphasizing its anionic H^- = hydride ~ halide character.

Something Only A Man Would Think...

In chemistry, one's ideas, however beautiful, logical, elegant, imaginative they may be in their own right, are simply without value unless they are actually applicable to the one physical environment we have--in short, they are good only if they work!  I personally very much enjoy the very special challenge which this physical restraint on fantasy presents. 

~Robert Burns Woodward

I liked that quote so much (found here) that I read it aloud to my wife.  She immediately snarked that "only a man would even think to write such a thing."