Preston MacDougall is a chemistry professor at Middle Tennessee State University. His "Chemical Eye" commentaries are also featured in the Arts and Public Affairs portion of the Nashville/Murfreesboro NPR station WMOT (www.wmot.org).

Chemical Eye on The Sound Conservancy - If it ebbs and flows like the Duck, and teems with diverse forms of aquatic life like the Duck, then it must be the Duck. Who questions National Geographic? - More...
Tuesday - April 27, 2010

Chemical Eye on Bras and Kets - Two Tennessee teams made it to the sweet sixteen during March Madness, but only one made it to the final bracket. Congratulations to Governor Phil Bredesen, Commissioner of Education Dr. Tim Webb, and everyone else in an impressive line-up of public and private-sector players that collaborated in President Obama's Race to the Top of a $4.35 billion fund of federal grant money for educational reform. - More...
Friday - April 02, 2010

Chemical Eye on Persian Priestleys - Persian priests, or Magi, followed a twinkling star to Bethlehem, where they glorified a miracle birth. Over two-thousand years later, Iranians by the millions follow Twittering in cyber-space towards a glorious democratic rebirth of their republic. - More...
June 2009

Chemical Eye on Pigs, Poultry, and People - Three years ago the World Health Organization issued a global alert about a dangerous strain of bird flu that was migrating from China. Now they're warning us about a highly contagious Mexican strain of swine flu - or, as vegetarians might prefer to call it, the other white meat influenza. - More...
Monday - May 04, 2009

Chemical Eye on Songs of Innocence and Experience - April is National Poetry Month. So to pay homage to my favorite poet and extol some of the rhyme and reason of chemistry, I would like to share two poems. - More...
Wednesday - April 29, 2009

Chemical Eye on Carbonated Air: From "Oh, Oh!" to "O-la-lah!" - What goes up, must come down. Or so we thought until the power of scientific thinking both explained the force of gravity and produced equal (or greater) and opposite forces that could be sustained long enough to overcome it. - More...
Wednesday - April 22, 2009

Chemical Eye on Staging a Stimulus - At the risk of being labeled a "ham radio commentator", I want to return to the play metaphor that I used to interpret Barack Obama's Inaugural Address. That's because there's some serious "pork" in the economic recovery that he is trying to stage - and in some cases I'm all for it. - More...
Wedneseday - March 04, 2009

Chemical Eye on RAGS Redux for Breakfast - 1957 wasn't a Leap Year, and it wasn't the Year of the Frog (there is no Year of the Frog in the Chinese calendar). But you might call it the Year of the Leap Frog, since 1957 was the year that the Soviet Union responded to a streak of 20th century American technological successes, which culminated powerfully in the weaponization of nuclear forces - in 1945 with plutonium, and in 1952 with hydrogen. How did the Russians respond? By conquering the force of gravity with the launch of Sputnik. - More...
Friday - December 05, 2008

Chemical Eye is Up for the Rising - From Chicago, news that Barack Obama was elected to be the 44th President of the United States of America spread across the world like a tsunami of emotion - seeming to leave few unaffected. - More...
Saturday - November 15, 2008

Chemical Eye on the Race Factor - The October surprise that everyone has been expecting has finally arrived, and it would be an understatement to say that it came out of leftfield - it actually came from biochemistry labs. - More...
Saturday PM - October 25, 2008

Chemical Eye on the Fellowship of the Ring - If the Large Hadron Collider could take us back to the moment when President Bush decided to invade Iraq, then it might be able to prevent heartache for tens of thousands of American and Iraqi families. Unfortunately for them, and for our exploding federal debt, the international fellowship of physicists and engineers called CERN has designed this circular particle accelerator to recreate the conditions at the beginning of the universe instead. - More...
Monday PM - October 13, 2008

Chemical Eye on Fool's Amethyst - Most chemists can't display samples of a compound that is named after them. So, in a way, I was a very fortunate wannabe chemist when I raided my piggy bank for a gleaming clump of pyrite - also known as fool's gold. - More...
Monday - September 22, 2008

Chemical Eye on Great Olympians - Sports writers have crowned American swimming sensation Michael Phelps as the "Greatest Olympian of All Time". He swims like a fish all right, but I'm not sure if this title holds water. - More...
Sunday - August 17, 2008

Chemical Eye on "Cap and Trade" - On the economic frontline of the carbon wars, a lot of political hot air has been expended over the cap-and-trade strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But is it all just smoke and mirrors? - More...
Tuesday - July 22, 2008

Chemical Eye on Homeopathic Education - In homeopathic medicine, the more diluted a treatment is, the more powerful its effect is believed to be. This branch of medicine dates back to Germany in the late 1700s, before germ theory and DNA added a few twists to our understanding of disease. Nevertheless, this form of alternative medicine has a loyal following despite the skepticism of critics such as James Randi. With the increasing cost of drugs, it certainly has economical advantages. - More...
Friday - June 20, 2008

Chemical Eye on Regular Unleaded Sputnik - The price of oil is now cruising at levels that were considered unattainable when President Bush gave tax breaks to people who bought SUVs. - More...
Tuesday - June 03, 2008

Chemical Eye on Classroom Magnetism (Parts 1 & 2)- Barack Obama has it, but Hillary Clinton does not. Bill Clinton had it, but seems to have lost it. I'm not sure where it went, but he certainly didn't give it to Al Gore when he needed it during the 2000 election. Al Gore seems to be radiant now, however. - More...
Monday - May 19, 2008

Chemical Eye on Holey Water - I confess to a childhood curiosity about the holy water at my grandparents' Catholic church. I have the deepest respect and love for my 93 year-old grandmother Mazur, so if test-tubes were involved, it's a blessing that any such take-home experiments have been erased from my memory. - More...
Tuesday PM - May 06, 2008

Chemical Eye on a Vibrating Professor - A European friend and colleague reintroduced me to an English word that I haven't heard much since my Beach Boys 8-track tape broke in the 70s - vibrations. - More...
Thursday - April 03, 2008

Chemical Eye on the Borderline - The Peach State is in a parched state and is trying to poach from my state. This is not a playground tongue-twister, but a developing news story involving the state legislatures of Georgia and Tennessee.- More...
Saturday - March 22, 2008

Chemical Eye on Primary Bonding - The electronic interplay between the chemical elements oxygen and carbon results in highly polarized primary bonding. Since the atomic symbols for these elements are O and C, respectively, it also affords a chemical tableau for commenting on the contest, between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. - More...
Tuesday - March 04, 2008

Chemical Eye on the Blue Lagoon - Despite the allure of Audrey Hepburn wearing a Coco Chanel little black dress, a simplistic world where everything is in black and white doesn't excite me. - More...
Sunday PM - February 10, 2008

Chemical Eye on FOX Holes - We cannot directly see or touch individual atoms, nor watch how they behave, so people who teach chemistry rely heavily on models and analogies to get the job done. That's fine with me - my mother raised me on cabbage rolls and metaphors. - More...
Tuesday - January 29, 2008

Chemical Eye on Winter Roses - If Shakespeare's Juliet had been a modern chemist, she would have told Romeo "that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet - at ambient temperatures". - More...
Thursday - January 10, 2008

Chemical Eye on Santa's Love Train - 'Twas the night before Monday, and all through the house, not a peripheral was whirring, not even the mouse. Yet there it was, I could hear the refrain over and over again in my head. - More...
Monday AM - December 24, 2007

Chemical Eye on Teaching Teaching - No matter what she wears - or doesn't wear - Paris Hilton will never be quite the international sensation she was in "One Night in Paris". Even though I haven't seen the infamous home video, I am confident in my prediction because I know two things: sex sells, and you can't sex-up sex. - More...
Monday AM - December 10, 2007

Chemical Eye on Reprogramming Cells - In the classic film "All About Eve", a legendary lead actress was mischievously delayed from taking the stage of the long-running play "Aged in Wood". Eve Harrington was the young understudy's name, and this program change would have been announced to the audience, which contained a curiously large number of Broadway critics. Such is how a star is born. - More...
Thursday AM - November 29, 2007

Chemical Eye on Face Implants - Dow Chemical gained unwanted notoriety with their silicone breast implants. More recently, I imagine that public perception of Dow perked-up considerably after their creative introduction of the human element (Hu) gave chemistry a much-needed face transplant. - More...
Monday AM - November 19, 2007

Chemical Eye on Chasing Arrows - When I first heard the expression "chasing arrows" I had no idea what it meant. It sounded like General Custer's brazen approach to fighting government-labeled insurgents in the American Middle West after gold had been discovered in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory. "Bring 'em on!" - More...
Monday AM - November 12, 2007

Chemical Eye on the Laws of Motion - Newton's Third Law of Motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The same explosive inter-molecular forces that eject hot exhaust gases at supersonic speeds in one direction, also propel the rocket in the other. - More...
Tuesday AM - October 30, 2007

Chemical Eye on a DC Substitution Reaction - In the timeless American film "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", the political machine lost its rhythm after a Western state's Senator kicked the can. In the current upper house drama, Idaho Senator Larry Craig played some footsie while on the can, but the only thing that died was his credibility. - More...
Sunday - October 07, 2007

Chemical Eye on Schrödinger's Bridge - Implicit in the saying "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it", is the assumption that the bridge will still be there if we can't find a way to avoid it. - More...
Monday AM - September 10, 2007

Chemical Eye on Gold Diggers and Mad Hatters - When making "Citizen Kane", Orson Welles only said one word after telling his ground-breaking cinematographer that he was ready for his close-up: Rosebud! - More...
Wednesday - August 29, 2007

Chemical Eye on a King Street Diamond - "Shine on you crazy diamond" was recorded in the'70s by the psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd as a tribute to Syd Barrett, their estranged founder, who was suffering from mental illness. The song became less metaphoric for others when General Electric's organic-based diamond synthesis technology was adapted for use in crematoria. - More...
Tuesday AM - July 31, 2007

Chemical Eye on Poor Man's Chemistry - Before robots were able to manipulate chemical equipment, chemistry was called the poor man's physics. And in the same outdated hierarchy, biology was called the poor man's chemistry. Nowadays, the poor man's chemistry is likely to be cooking up a batch of crystal meth. -More...
Friday - June 29, 2007

Chemical Eye on Resistant TB Patients - Lou Dobbs may have been grossly wrong about the "epidemic" of leprosy cases among the U.S. illegal immigrant population, but he was right about one thing: "weapons of mass destruction" have recently crossed our borders undetected. - More...
Wednesday - June 06, 2007

Chemical Eye on Tennessee Idol - "Yo dog, listen up. Check it out, check it out. That project was the perfect choice for you!" - More...
Tuesday AM - May 08, 2007

Chemical Eye on a Hokie CAVE - Romanian-born engineering professor, Liviu Librescu, who specialized in materials designed for unsteady aerodynamics, survived the Holocaust, and escaped a brutal communist dictatorship. But, in what might have been his most heroic moment, his body's life force was spent dissipating the chaotic whirlwind of hate that has sent shockwaves all around the world from the campus of Virginia Tech. - More...
Thursday - April 19, 2007

Chemical Eye on Giving Mules Their Sexy Back - Justin Timberlake, a Memphis-born pop superstar, was recently dissed by the State Senate in Nashville - apparently he is too sexy. If Idaho Gem were to make an appearance during Mule Day (April 12 - 15) in Columbia, Tennessee, I'm sure that he would receive a hero's welcome - from the mules at least, since he represents them getting their sexy back. - More...
Wednesday AM - April 11, 2007

Chemical Eye on Red Ink Rising - When I think about Georgia O'Keeffe, I think pink. Pink flowers, pink shells, and the pink hues that graced the Western slopes of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Northern New Mexico at sunset - framed by a picture perfect window in my family's previous home. - More...
Monday - April 02, 2007

Chemical Eye on Capitol Flora and Fauna - Readers who join us here each week, know that I was on Capitol Hill recently, listening to the Iraq debate in the U.S. House of Representatives. I also paid a visit next door. I wasn't prepared for what I saw - it was a jungle in there! - More...
Wednesday - March 28, 2007

Chemical Eye on Lincoln Blogs - If money really could talk, I presume one of the first things it would say is "What does E Pluribus Unum mean? After all, Latin was a "dead language" long before anybody started whispering their heart's desires to amphibious pennies. - More...
Sunday AM - February 25, 2007

Chemical Eye on Dixie Chick-Lit - "I was never so amazed in my life as when the Sniffer drew his concealed weapon from its case and struck me to the ground, stone dead." - More...
Wednesday AM - February 21, 2007

Chemical Eye on Seeds of Genius - What can brown do for chemistry?

If you were in Times Square in New York City on Mole Day last year - that's October 23rd for any non-chemists - then you might have noticed a series of geekish visual vignettes on the Jumbotron. - More...
Saturday AM - February 03, 2007

Chemical Eye on the Me U - There is an interesting new phenomenon afoot. I call it the Me U. - More...
Friday PM - January 26, 2007

Chemical Eye on Wishful Thinking - At some point in this first fortnight of 2007, you may have already broken your New Year's resolution. It has only just dawned on me that I forgot to make one, so I'm good. - More...
Monday - January 15, 2007

Chemical Eye on the Web-Wired World - From me to you, Happy New Year!

And, if you have uploaded this commentary to your blog, or added to the information content on the Internet in some other way, congratulations on being a co-recipient of Time's Person of the Year for 2006 - for "founding and framing the new digital democracy". - More...
Thursday PM - January 04, 2007

Chemical Eye on Atoms on a Plane - How would you complete the following list: tinker, tailor, soldier, (blank)? - More...
Tuesday AM - December 12, 2006

Chemical Eye on Cage Compounds - Habeas corpus is Latin for "You should have the body". As an avid NPR listener, I recall hearing Nina Totenburg use this phrase umpteen times - even before September 11, 2001. To be perfectly honest, I had no clue what it meant. The laws of chemistry were much more important to me - that is until October 17 of this year. - More...
Tuesday PM - December 05, 2006

Chemical Eye on Words - Ribosomes may make my bones, but words are just as much me. - More...
Wednesday - November 15, 2006

Chemical Eye Up in the Sky - In a galaxy far, far away, one of the building blocks of proteins, an amino acid, was synthesized in a chemical reaction that occurred a long, long time ago. - More....
Thursday AM - November 09, 2006

Chemical Eye on Family Traditions - When asked "Hank, why do you drink?", or "Hank, why do you roll smoke?", Hank Williams Jr. has lyrically replied that he's "just carrying on an old family tradition." - More...
Monday - October 30, 2006

Chemical Eye on the November Ballots - I think I know why voter participation rates are so low among newly eligible voters, and it has nothing to do with the candidates. - More...
Tuesday PM - October 24, 2006

Chemical Eye on Exchange Deals - Oscar Wilde quipped that "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life". Along these lines, and assuming that Reality TV bears any resemblance to real life, then Life also imitates Chemistry. - More....
Monday AM - October 16, 2006

Chemical Eye on Cyber-Jazz - Time for a coffee break. Close your eyes and take a virtual trip with me to your favorite café. (Just for a minute, then open them again so you can keep reading). Mine's in Milan, where's yours? We can close our eyes, but we can't close our ears. What did you "hear"? - More...
Monday - October 09, 2006

Chemical Eye on Match Play in the Course of Science - Sending a son or daughter off to college is never easy. You are hopeful for their success, but at the same time you expect the intellectual challenges to be daunting - just like the cost. Sending a son or daughter off to college is also never cheap. - More...
Friday - September 29, 2006

Chemical Eye in a Music Box - Whether you're in the lab or at the dinner table, the sense of hearing is probably the least important when making observations of a chemical nature. Unless you count hearing someone yell "Hey! Don't mix those!" - More...
Monday - September 18, 2006

Chemical Eye on Jacking-up Testosterone - Gretchen Wilson's country music smash hit, "All Jacked Up", wasn't exactly the most ladylike song to take-off from Nashville's Music Row last year. This isn't surprising considering that previously she became famous for confessing to be a "Redneck Woman." - More...
Tuesday - September 05, 2006

Chemical Eye on Gold Medals and Rubber Doughnuts - According to The New Yorker, "seventy is the new fifty", so I still have a ways to go before I'm "over the hill". But back in the day, when I was learning bits of machine language for my senior thesis in computational chemistry, 10 was the new 16. - More...
Monday - August 28, 2006

Chemical Eye on Plutonic Angels - Once upon a time, theology scholars argued about how many angels could stand on the point of a pin. This isn't just a saying; numerous medieval scribes actually burned the midnight oil copying out proceedings of such debates. - More...
Monday PM - August 21, 2006

Chemical Eye on the Odds - There is no such thing as a sure bet. Exhibit A is a limping horse named Barbaro. - More...
Sunday - August 13, 2006

Chemical Eye on Phosphorus and Flamel - "Burt, you haven't been a scientist long enough to wear your hair like that." - More...
Monday AM - August 07, 2006

Chemical Eye on Raveling DNA - The normal fate of a pair of jeans is to be worn out. Never mind the different definitions of "worn out" on either side of the generation gap. - More...
Friday - July 28, 2006

Chemical Eye from A to B - When you're late - for a very important date - the shortest path from A to B is always under construction. Or so it often seems. - More...
Sunday - July 23, 2006

Chemical Eye on Bleach Bonds - I teach chemistry at a large public university, so my daughter's green hair wasn't shocking, just puzzling. - More...
Friday - July 07, 2006

Chemical Eye on Independents' Day - It seems like almost everyone is a walking tinderbox these days. Some folks think that the country is going to hell in a Longaberger basket, while others are convinced that the devil - when he shows up for work at The New York Times - wears Prada. - More...
Monday - July 03, 2006

Chemical Eye on Yellow Stars and the White Rose - With the alarm set at 4 am, to catch an early flight into Washington, D.C., alone, it wasn't shaping up to be the happiest of birthdays. So, for the full effect, I went to the Holocaust Museum - for almost seven hours. - More...
Thursday - June 22, 2006

Chemical Eye on Rank Magazines - Read this!

Knowledge is solving problems no one else can. Expand your knowledge and get a degree in less than 2 weeks - no study required. 100% verifiable B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. diplomas!
Call now 1-206-984-2822, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Take care, Hazel.

Thanks for the e-mail Hazel, if you're reading this. I am very much interested in expanding my knowledge, but I already have the highest degree in my profession. Furthermore, in my experience, knowledge that can actually solve molecular problems has either come from studying what others have done, or personally studying molecules themselves. I see from your area code that you are in Seattle - can you get me a deal on Starbucks coffee? - More...
Sunday - June 11, 2006

Chemical Eye on June Bustin' Out - In like a lion, out like a lamb. That's March for you, weather-wise. Botanically speaking, April showers bring May flowers. What about June? - More...
Wednesday pm - June 07, 2006

Chemical Eye on Paths of Glory - Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

This thought has come to mind recently, frequently actually. Then, last week, I was reminded of who said it and why. - More...
Sunday - May 28, 2006

Chemical Eye on the Da Vinci Mode - Larger than life, there it was. There He was. Even though I was standing motionless, Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper painting moved me. - More...
Friday - May 19, 2006

Chemical Eye on Motherly Love - Mothers galore awaited a visit, flowers, a telephone call, or maybe even a public radio commentary from their children this weekend. You should know that she loves you, right down to the molecular level. - More...
Wednesday - May 17, 2006

Chemical Eye on Saving Sussex (It's too late for Wales) - This in from Kingsport, Tennessee: A senior VP at Eastman Chemical Company worries that there are not enough skilled workers to replace a looming wave of retirees. Similar sentiments have been expressed elsewhere in the US, and across Western Europe. - More...
Tuesday - May 09, 2006

Chemical Eye on the Starfleet Academy - Chemist's log - stardate 2006.5. Present location: Belmont University, Nashville, Tennessee. - More....
Monday - May 01, 2006

Chemical Eye on a Nuclear Earth Day - Thank goodness for global warming, otherwise I am pretty sure Hell would have frozen over recently. All those demons would have to go somewhere, and if you've seen any of the Ghostbusters movies - "Not good." - More..
Friday - April 21, 2006

Chemical Eye on Easter Eggs - Build it and they will come.

It is truly surprising how frequently this bit of mysterious advice actually works. It worked for Ray Kinsella in the movie "Field of Dreams", where, planted with his dreams, a cornfield sprouted fulfillment of one man's passion for baseball. - More...
Monday - April 17, 2006

Chemical Eye on the Atomic Deficit - The first rule of holes is: If you are in one, stop digging.

This bit of folksy wisdom came to mind when I heard that President Bush selected the current Director of the Office of Budget and Management, Joshua Bolten, to be the new White House Chief of Staff. - More...
Sunday - April 09, 2006

Chemical Eye on Xenophiles - Compared to "The New Colossus", which is Emma Lazarus's sonnet to the Statue of Liberty, and is engraved at the base of this gift from the people of France in honor of our centennial, the immigration reform bill currently being hammered out in Congress is bound to be a shoddy piece of work. - More...
Monday - April 03, 2006

Chemical Eye on a Sweet Thang - "How sweet it is?"

No, that's not a mispunctuated Jackie Gleason catchphrase. It is a question that one might hear from a flavor chemist with street cred. - More...
Saturday - March 25, 2006

Chemical Eye on the Bogeymen Stealing Our Fresh Air - In "The Sound and the Fury", William Faulkner wrote famously of the scent of honeysuckle in the Southern summer air. His not so subtle metaphor was hard to misinterpret. In certain subdivisions outside another quaint Southern town, the summer breezes flutter the veil over a different "hidden treasure" - garbage. - More...
Friday - March 17, 2006

Chemical Eye on Do-It-Yourself Cancer Research - What do flying toasters, extra-terrestrials, and cancer, have in common? - More...
Saturday - March 11, 2006

Chemical Eye on Redistricting - Inspired by Canadian downhillers like Ken Read and Steve Podborski - two of the Crazy Canucks - when I ski, I like to go fast. When I was young, and went skiing in the Alps, just as for Bode Miller there weren't any Olympic medals hung around my neck. Although an irate, older gentleman did make a hand gesture suggesting that if he ever caught me, he would wring it. - More...
Monday - March 06, 2006

Chemical Eye on the Money - I have been following George W.'s positions for some time now. They were known in 2000, and 2004, but I don't have a clue now. - More...
Monday - February 27, 2006

Chemical Eye on Genes Made for America - Choices. Sometimes you have them, sometimes you don't. - More...
Friday PM - February 17, 2006

Chemical Eye on Love - The digital side of John Mayer's CD "Room for squares" has one of my favorite ultra-romantic songs - "Your body's a wonderland" - but the best part of the CD is the periodic table gracing the other side. (If you didn't know that, but you enjoy the song on your i-Pod, then Napster ripped you off too!) On behalf of chemists everywhere, especially those that are romantics: "Thank you John Mayer". - More...
Monday PM - February 13, 2006

Chemical Eyes Keep on Truckin' - If, as President Bush said in his State of the Union address, "America is addicted to oil", how come it is LSD that is banned, even for psychiatric research? - More...
Wednesday - February 08, 2006

Chemical Eye on Degrees of Learning - "The toe bone is connected to the foot bone. The foot bone is connected to the ankle bone." So went your first class on human anatomy, which, if you are like me, you mastered by singing the material over and over while sitting on the teacher's lap. - More...
Saturday - January 28, 2006

Chemical Eye on Dodgy Leapfrog - If the Guinness Book of World Records contained an entry for the decade with the most entries, it would have to be the 1970s. I recall a peak period where newspapers and television had almost daily updates on record-breaking anatomical anomalies. And although I haven't checked into it, I would wager that the expression "get a life" probably originated at about this time. - More...
Monday - January 23, 2006

Chemical Eye on Chicken Spittle - H5N1 sounds like something that might be announced after a couple of ping pong balls have dropped out of rotating drum - except for the fact that there is no H in Bingo. - More...
January 17, 2006

Chemical Eye on Snapdragons by Candlelight - "If you play with fire, you will get burned." That's what my father told me, and it's what I have told all of my children. Except for recently, when my finger was on fire and I told my son "If you watch a trained chemist play with fire, you will get learned." - More..
January 12, 2006

Chemical Eye on Frankincense and Myrrh - Imagine that you are at a baby shower, and three Persian priests, or Magi, mysteriously appear, each offering a gift for the newborn child. (Hey, it could happen, I've heard of flash mobs doing stranger things. And I seem to recall a similar story being told around this time last year.) - More...
December 23, 2005

Chemical Eye on Merry Gentlemen - Even if they're not particularly religious, many freshman chemistry students will say a prayer before taking their Fall semester final exam, usually just before Christmas. It might go something like this: - More...
December 21, 2005

Chemical Eye on a Glass Menagerie - Things are not always as they seem to be. While on stage, magicians rely on their skills in the art of illusion. And you don't have to be jaded to cast many politicians in the same role. - More...
December 12, 2005

Chemical Eye on Energizers - In "Scent of a Woman", Al Pacino's character was a blind veteran, with a decorated past. He was also quite fond of saying "HooAH!" - More...
December 02, 2005

Chemical Eye on Counting our Blessings - Even if the poetic genius of William Blake is new to your ears, how can you fail to hear the voice of an idealist? To my chemical ear, which has a fondness for history, I can also hear the sound of someone trying to apply the brakes to a runaway train of deterministic thinking. - More...
November 28, 2005

Chemical Eye on Webb Feet - Bubbles Smith probably had many secret admirers in Toronto during the roaring '20s. Poems such as "Ojistoh", by Canadian poet Pauline Johnson, were among her repertoire as an elocutionist in what is now known as Old Massey Hall. - More...
November 21, 2005

Chemical Eye on Blue 'n Gold - "My ???? girl. Hey my ???? girl."

So repeats the chorus of a new, techno-pop tune - "Girl" - by Beck Hansen, or simply Beck. If you've heard it, and couldn't understand what kind of girl, then join the club. Lately, it has been getting lots of play on a radio station that my children and I, their chauffeur, can agree on. It always starts a debate. - More...
November 14, 2005

Chemical Eye on the Bucky Guy - Now I know how my mother felt when she learned, while strolling thru Sherway Gardens in Toronto, that Elvis had died. Her tearful reaction is the only reason that I recall that day so clearly. - More...
November 05, 2005

Chemical Eye on the para-Scopes Trial - Eighty years ago, Tennessee science teacher and football coach (surprise, surprise), John T. Scopes, was found guilty of teaching evolution in a high school biology class. At the time, this was illegal under state law. His conviction was overturned, however, because his $100 fine was double the limit on fines that Tennessee judges could impose. - More..
October 28, 2005

Chemical Eye on the Competitive Edge - To stay on top of their game, some athletes develop their own extreme training regimen. My favorite example is the Czech long-distance runner, Emil Zatopek, who trained with his wife on his back. - More...
October 24, 2005

Chemical Eye in Nostradamus Mode - Call it providence, or perhaps the promise of "better living through chemistry", but the first female President of the United States of America will be a chemist. My apologies to Hillary and Condi. - More...
October 19, 2005

Chemical Eye on WowyZowy Toys - To borrow an expression, if science isn't fun, then you're not doing it right. - More...
October 13, 2005

Chemical Eye on Four Weedlings and a Floral Moral - Once upon a time - actually it was 15 years ago - I was invited to Marburg, Germany, in order to give a lecture and collaborate with a professor who was just getting his research group started. This was quite an honor since some of the most famous names in chemistry have called the quaint town of Marburg home: Bunsen's name burns ever brightly, and Hückel's "4n + 2" still rules. - More...
September 29, 2006

Chemical Eye on Plan B - Latex is a water-based suspension of natural rubber. If properly tapped, it is secreted by Hevea brasiliensis, which is better known as the rubber tree. For sexually active college students, latex is also referred to as Plan A. - More...
September 19, 2005

Chemical Eye on the City of Dreams - "Good morning America how are you?"

In the aftermath of Katrina, with New Orleans looking more like a concrete bayou than the City of Dreams that was evoked by Tennessee Williams, it is too easy to lament about the "train-wreck" they call The City of New Orleans. It takes some imagination, and unshakeable confidence in the indomitable spirit of Americans, but I prefer to dream about the new Big Easy - rebuild it and we will come. - More...
September 09, 2005

Chemical Eye on Jobs, Jobs, Jobs - In springtime, everywhere you look, the rural Texas landscape is decorated with colorful wildflowers. Stop and talk to people, and you will soon find that the Lone Star State is also full of colorful characters. Take Kinky Friedman for example. - More...
September 03, 2005

Chemical Eye on Superheroes vs. Superbugs - Disbelief. Anger. Derision. But ultimately pity.

These were my reactions to the news of a human tragedy unfolding in the Muslim world. You would think that replacing fear of death, with life and liberty, would garner a hero's welcome. But no, some imams are preaching falsehoods, vilifying true heroes, and endangering the lives of countless children. - More...
August 25, 2005

Chemical Eye on Fiscal Science - Bill Frist graduated with honors from Harvard Medical School, and received several additional years of surgical training at world-class hospitals in Boston, England and California. So, when he was on the faculty at Vanderbilt University, and performed the first successful combined heart-lung transplant in the Southeast, it wasn't unexpected. - More...
August 18, 2005

Chemical Eye on Gates of Learning - For John Q. Public, when it comes to making sausage or legislation, ignorance may be bliss. But in the new global marketplace, with its churning information economy, ignorance is a bitch. - More...
July 29, 2005

Chemical Eye on Winds of Change - So, what's new with you?

People, and I think that includes all of us, can't seem to get enough news. Twenty-five years ago, Ted Turner realized that this was quite literally true, and CNN was born. - More...
July 24, 2005

Chemical Eyes in the Getty - Seeing is believing. That much is clear, even though you and I may believe differently after seeing the same thing. - More...
July 10, 2005

Chemical Eye on the Fourth of July - All that glitters is not gold. On the 4th of July, if it is glittering in the sky, and it is gold in color, then it almost certainly isn't made of gold. Plain old iron would be my guess. - More...
July 03, 2005

Chemical Eye on a Natural High - Life is good. Sometimes life is very good. And then there are those moments when, oh man!, life is almost too good. - More...
June 29, 2005

Chemical Eye on Knights Molecular - Diamonds may be a girl's best friend, but under normal conditions they are not the most stable form of carbon. Graphite is. - More...
June 22, 2005

Chemical Eye on Kites and Darts - Long before the Rorschach inkblot test, civilizations communicated a lot about themselves by how they connected the twinkling dots in the night sky. - More...
June 17, 2005

Chemical Eye on the Didgeridoo - When the absolutely impossible is unmistakeably right before your eyes, you can be sure that the ongoing learning experience will be a memorable one. - More...
June 10, 2005

Chemical Eye on a Time Warp - There is no such thing as a time machine, and we can be pretty sure that there never will be. Otherwise, we would have met at least one bona fide tourist from the future by now.
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May 26, 2005

Chemical Eye on Jazz89 - Solid. Solid. Solid.

When I applied for tenure here at Middle Tennessee State University, those were the grades given to me by my chemistry colleagues in the three areas that professors are evaluated in: teaching, research or creative activity, and public service. - More...
May 13, 2005

Chemical Eye on Motherly Love - Mothers galore will be awaiting a visit, flowers, a telephone call, or maybe even a public radio commentary from their children this weekend. Before you oblige, you should know that she loves you, right down to the molecular level. - More...
May 07, 2005

Chemical Eye on Sweet, Sweet Music - The name Stradivari has the strongest resonance in my mind when I think of violins, and the high-pitched bids called out for so-named instruments, just before the thud of a gavel, suggest that this is a widely held opinion. - More...
May 01, 2005

Chemical Eye on a Greener Environment - Just ask Kermit the Frog, it's not easy being green.

Today is the 35th Earth Day, and as the name implies it is observed all around the world. Here in Rutherford County, Tennessee, the company that runs the landfill gives out saplings for people to plant. My family now has two tall, deciduous reminders of earlier Earth Days. One is a Crimson King Maple and the other is a Tulip Poplar, Tennessee's state tree. - More...
April 22, 2005

Chemical Eye on Waves of Light - In spite of his role as one of the founders of quantum theory, Albert Einstein didn't much like it - too "spooky". He was certain that something was missing, though he never found it. - More...
April 14, 2005

Chemical Eye on Academic Freedom - What's good for the goose is good for the gander. That would be just ducky as an opening line if this was a Biological Eye commentary, but it did happen to be my first thought when I read about the latest assault on academic freedom, which has been under attack recently on multiple fronts, and from surprising directions. - More...
April 13, 2005

Chemical Eye on a Hydrogen Bomber - "Are we there yet?"

If my family and I were on one of our numerous cross-country treks, such a question would normally come from somewhere in the back. Lately, however, it is more likely to come from the bookkeeper in the family, seated in the front passenger seat. And the setting isn't likely to be a jam-packed interstate, but rather a local gas station, as I, the chauffeur in the family, pump away. Meanwhile, the numbered wheels in the "THIS SALE" window are spinning at rpm's that I normally associate with a one-armed bandit in Las Vegas. - More...
April 08, 2005

Chemical Eye on a Musical Ear - In late 19th century St. Petersburg, chemistry professor Dmitri Mendeleev became widely known for his periodic chart of the elements. Whereas his colleague, Alexander Borodin, despite synthesizing the first organic compound containing fluorine, was to be remembered for his second string quartet in D, and other beautiful compositions of the musical variety. - More...
March 31, 2005

Chemical Eye on the Pill - A Penn State chemist, named Russell Marker, discovered a very inexpensive synthetic route to several steroid-based pharmaceuticals, including the birth control pill, starting from (blank). Is the answer to this fill-in-the-blank question, A, eyes of newts, B, Mexican yams, C, petroleum, or D, willow bark? - More...
March 24, 2005

Chemical Eye on Nanotech: From Hype to Hysteria, Why all the Hoopla? - If it is true that we fear what we do not understand, then the standardized test scores of American high school students, in the area of science, go a long way toward explaining chemophobia. - More...
March 16, 2005

Chemical Eye on Skull and Boneheads: What the Yale is going on? - It must be rooted deep in our human nature, because despite the fact that, by definition, they do not beckon, secret societies continue to lure us. - More...
March 08, 2005

Chemical Eye on Hockey Sticks and Global Warming - If you haven't heard, the NHL season has been cancelled this year. - More...
March 03, 2005

Chemical Eye on Golden Pond - Henry Fonda was 76 years old when he took home the Best Actor Oscar for the role of Norman Thayer, a retired and distinctly prickly professor, in the 1981 movie On Golden Pond. He was the oldest actor to be so-honored, and would be still, if he hadn't died a year after making the movie. - More...
February 24, 2005

Chemical Eye on Love - The digital side of John Mayer's CD "Room for squares" has one of my favorite ultra-romantic songs - "Your body's a wonderland" - but the best part of the CD is the periodic table gracing the other side. (If you didn't know that, but you enjoy the song on your i-Pod, then Napster ripped you off too!) On behalf of chemists everywhere, especially those that are romantics: "Thank you John Mayer". - More...
February 14, 2005

Chemical Eye on Aesthetics - Judging from the decorating of offices and cubicles, one can readily observe that parenthood changes a person's definition of art. Take my office, for instance. One of the recent additions to my personal art collection is an origami-style cube of many colors made by my then 10 year-old daughter Aurora Claire. - More...
February 12, 2005

Chemical Eye on the Glass Pipeline - "Ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer. That is the essence of science." So said the Quaker scientist, and teacher, John Dalton, two-hundred years ago this year, when his "New System of Chemical Philosophy" created quite a stir. - More...
February 04, 2005

Chemical Eye on a New Moon - For their classic 1973 album, the psychedelic rock band, Pink Floyd, got the optics right, but the astronomy wrong. White light is dispersed into a rainbow of colors by a glass prism, but there is no "Dark Side of the Moon." - More...
January 29, 2005

Chemical Eye on a Cold Snap - "A river of artic air coming down from Canada" is how many weather reports have described the recent cold snap refreshing a huge swath of the country, from Minneapolis to Miami. My nose told me that Murfreesboro, Tennessee, was right in the middle of it. - More...
January 24, 2005

Chemical Eye on Chemotherapy - Nobody knows why chemo rhymes with Nemo, when it is in fact a branch of medicinal chemistry. It just does. Likewise, for most us, a day will come when there will seem to be no rhyme or reason why a loved one has an aggressive cancer. It just happens. - More...
January 17, 2005

Chemical Eye on the Empress's New Dress - In 1837, Hans Christian Andersen weaved a clever tale about an imaginary emperor who strutted among his subjects wearing nothing but an imaginary new suit. Exactly twenty years later, the maturation of the modern chemical industry would be catalyzed by the fashion statement of a real empress, Eugénie, the beautiful young wife of Napoleon III. More...
January 11, 2005

Chemical Eye Up in the Sky - In a galaxy far, far away, one of the building blocks of proteins, an amino acid, was synthesized in a chemical reaction that occurred a long, long time ago. - More...
January 08, 2005

Chemical Eye on Frankincense and Myrrh - Imagine that you are at a baby shower, and three Persian priests, or Magi, mysteriously appear, each offering a gift for the newborn child. (Hey, it could happen, I've heard of flash mobs doing stranger things.) - More...
January 01, 2005

Chemical Eye on Cathedrals in Science - The Duomo, mitered canal gates and The Last Supper. Those are the three things that most strongly resonate in my memory long after Carlo Gatti, my friend, chemistry collaborator and tour guide all in one, transformed the Italian Renaissance from chapters in art books, and the dash between 1400 and 1600 in history books, into magnificent, moving and colorful reality. You can experience this too, if you go to Milan, in the Lombardy region of northern Italy. - More...
December 27, 2005

Chemical Eye on scientific literacy - Dihydrogen monoxide, or DHMO, if inhaled, will cause death in a matter of minutes. This is just one of the shocking facts regarding this chemical substance, which is found in engine exhaust and many other places, that are well-documented at the website www.dhmo.org. - More...
December 16, 2004

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