Basic concepts: polar and non-polar molecules.

What list of basic concepts would be complete without a primer on polar and non-polar molecules?
You’ll recall that chemists live in a world made up of atoms and various assemblies and modifications thereof, which are, in turn, made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons (which have positive charge and some mass) and neutrons (which are just a squosh more massive than protons) hang out together in the nucleus of your atom, while electrons can be thought of as zipping around the nucleus.
When multiple atoms are part of an assembly in which they are bonded to each other, you have a molecule. For the moment, consider the “bond” between atoms in a molecule to be an electron-sharing arrangement that maintains a certain (average) spatial configuration between the nuclei of the bonded atoms. [1]

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Vote for the best physical science haiku!

Jim Gibbon has opened voting on his academic haiku contest. I urge you to check out all the 17-syllable distillations of scholarly works, but especially those in the physical sciences category.
Two of those haikus are mine. (Technically, one of them ought to be in the humanities category, but I can see how an exploration of philosophical issues in chemistry might look like it belongs in the physical sciences.) Here’s your chance to make me a winner!

Marcel Vigneron was robbed!

I simply cannot accept the final judgment in Bravo’s Top Chef (season 2). Marcel should have won.
Sure, I didn’t actually taste the two meals. But simply on the basis of innovation (especially given that the panel of judges seemed to have really good things to say about the flavors of both meals), Marcel should have had the edge. And that’s before we even get into which of the two finalists showed himself to be more ethical and mature (a category Marcel also won on the merits).
I am now officially interested as heck in learning all about molecular gastronomy. It’s chemistry that non-chemists can see a reason to care about. If Marcel Vigneron or “his people” (if he has “people” at this stage of his career) read this, Marcel has a standing invitation to appear on this blog and educate us about the chemistry of that cool stuff he does in the kitchen.