SellaTheChemistDec 26
It’s awfully tempting to write another spoof article, inspired by this marvel of artistic and technological creativity. #ClassicKit
SellaTheChemistDec 22
KLAXON! I hope that @helenczerski will get her butt down to Genova for what looks like an amazing exhibition centred around Moby Dick. And for those of you both with butts and in Italy, don’t miss it.
Infuriating that it ends too soon for me to get there. My only quibbles are that absence of Argand lamps (#ClassicKit) and the clunky typography and translations of the catalogue, which is the closest I’ll get to this show. https://palazzoducale.genova.it/mostra/moby-dick-la-balena/
SellaTheChemistDec 4

Does anyone remember Letraset, the scratch and print sheets that could be used to apply professional lettering to sheets of paper? They were part of the pain of writing a scientific thesis before the arrival of the Macintosh and the democratization of (admittedly often second-rate) graphic design.
anyway it's some pre-Christmas #ClassicKit

https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/letrasets-transfers-and-placing-precision-back-on-the-drawing-board/4022562.article

Letraset’s transfers and placing precision back on the drawing board

Professional lettering with a few rubs of a ballpoint pen

Chemistry World
SellaTheChemistNov 21
Looks like the last #ClassicKit of 2025 is done. It is inspired by Marty Feldman's brilliant Four Yorkshiremen sketch that was immortalized with Monty Python. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATCWBuieTzI
Four Yorkshiremen [PL] (Monty Python)

YouTube
Show threadTim CrumptonNov 8
@russss nice. I had to watch this to see if it was @sellathechemist #ClassicKit
Show threadSellaTheChemistOct 23

@Birk_lab
"When I were a lad" doing A-levels, we pipetted our aliquots for titrations by mouth. That's what got me interested in the tastes fo the acids in the lab - nitric hydrochloric sulfuric and phosphoric are quite distinct. I also learned that 0.1 M HCl was by no means "dilute", at least not in the mouth…

And your mention of Eppendorf reminds me that the inventor of the mechanical pipette, Heinrich Schnitger invented it for a reason: https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/schnitgers-pipette/7789.article #ClassicKit

Schnitger’s pipette

Dropping drudgery gets a thumbs-up

Chemistry World
SellaTheChemistOct 23
Yesterday I put the finishing touches on the latest instalment of #ClassicKit that will be out on November 1st.
It was a bit of a fluke. I stumbled across the marvel shown in the picture while learning about extinct distillation glassware. And then to my disbelief I learned that its inventor was responsible for one of the greatest advancements in French public health. But I bet you've not hear of him. #dephlegmator
Show threadSellaTheChemistSep 9, 2025
To my absolute astonishment today, while handing over a few items from our archives to the #UCL200 team, I spotted this: a letter from John Thomas Way's mother telling Thomas Graham (Professor of Chemistry at UCL among other things who discovered colloids, effusion, hydrogen absorption by palladium and more) that her son would be turning up in his lab as a pupil on Monday!
What else is lurking in there. John T Way would establish the phenomenon of ion exchange. #watersoftening #ClassicKit
Show threadSellaTheChemistAug 7, 2025
@timwaterman I hope you also paused, in Fitzroy Square, to pay homage to the Blue Plaque to August Hofmann, who was lured to Britain by that tech need Albert of Saxe-whatnot (apocryphally of the Prince Albert…but I digress) to head up the new Royal College of Chemistry on Oxford Street.
One of my #ClassicKit heroes. https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/hofmanns-voltammeter/3004920.article
Hofmann's voltammeter

As a child, I remember wondering how far one could count

Chemistry World
Show threadSellaTheChemistJul 17, 2025
@Catvalente Thank God for scribes, copyists and translators who keep such wonders in our collective memory. #ClassicKit