Following up on the earlier discussion here and at Chad’s about the “fundamental difference” between chemistry and physics, I wanted to have a look at a historical moment that might provide some insight into the mood along the border between the two fields. It strikes me that the boundaries between chemistry and physics, as between any two fields which train their tools on some of the same parts of the world, are not fixed for all time but may shift in either direction. But this means that there are sometimes boundary disputes.
One locus of the dispute about boundaries is the chemical revolution in France, in which Lavoisier mounted a shift from phlogiston theory to a new elemental theory.
Category Archives: Chemistry
Drawing lines between chemistry and physics.
Over at Uncertain Principles, Chad Orzel tries to explain the fundamental difference between physics and chemistry:
My take on this particular question is that there’s a whole hierarchy of (sub)fields, based on what level of abstraction you work at. The question really has to do with what you consider the fundamental building block of the systems you study.
Temptations that might become irresistable
… as a result of the incessant drive to make learning too darn safe.
Not that this is a terribly new development (I wrote about this sort of thing here and here), but it appears that anxieties about terrorists and meth-labs are sucking all the chemically goodness out of chemistry sets:
Current instantiations are embarrassing. There are no chemicals except those which react at low energy to produce color changes. No glass tubes or beakers, certainly no Bunsen burners or alcohol burners (remember the clear blue flames when the alcohol spilled out over the table). Today’s sets cover perfume mixing and creation of luminol (the ‘CSI effect’ I suppose).
Does valuable information want to be free?
The November 5, 2007 issue of Chemical & Engineering News has an editorial by Rudy M. Baum [UPDATE: notbehind a paywall; apparently all the editorials are freely accessible online] looking at the “Google model” for disseminating information.
Baum writes:
Rudy Baum responds to questions about C&E News.
In response to my open letter to the ACS, Rudy Baum, the Editor in Chief of Chemical & Engineering News, emailed me some information which I am posting here with his kind permission:
Dispatch from SERMACS: surreal moments.
As mentioned before, I’m currently at the Southeast Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society (or SERMACS if you’re in a hurry) in Greenville, South Carolina. I got in last night, just in time to catch the last 25 minutes or so of Dick Zare’s plenary address on “The Chemistry of Propulsion”.
Where I arrived was when he put up the slide that asked, “Is Global Warming Happening?”
An open letter to the ACS.
Like Revere and the folks at The Scientist, I received the series of emails from “ACS insider” questioning the way the American Chemical Society is running its many publications — and in particular, how compensation of ACS executives (and close ties to the chemical industry) might influence editorial policies at ACS publications.
The ACS disputes the details of the anonymous emails, so I won’t have much to say about those. But as an ACS member (who is, at present, participating in an ACS regional meeting), I’d like to ask the Society for some clarity.
C&E News on writing journal articles.
Since scientist-on-scientist communication is a longstanding topic of interest in these parts, I wanted to point out a recent (August 13, 2007) article in Chemical & Engineering News (behind a paywall, but definitely worth locating a library with a subscription) that offers tips for writing journal articles. It’s quite a substantial article, drawing on advice from “dozens of scientists and engineers around the world in academia, industry, and government” — which is to say, the people who read and write journal articles as part of their jobs.
It goes without saying that this crowd has some strong views.
How big a risk is my laser printer?
On the basis of this article about emissions from laser printers, our department administrator came by this week to take my HP 1200 series LaserJet away.
I said I wanted to keep it.
Passing thoughts about conference presentations.
As I mentioned in my last post, I was sucked out of the blogosphere for much of last week by the International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry (ISPC) 2007 Summer Symposium .
I did not live-blog the conference. I did use overheads. Why, other than being a tremendous Luddite, would I use overheads?