Show threadSellaTheChemist1d ago
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
@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
@Catvalente Thank God for scribes, copyists and translators who keep such wonders in our collective memory. #ClassicKit
SellaTheChemistJul 17
Just submitted a #ClassicKit column that muses about book burning and the risks of losing knowledge and accumulated human thought.
It is in my thoughts for many reasons, but not because my elderly mother has about 12,000 volumes in her flat.
Show threadSellaTheChemistJul 4
@MrInappropriate @rmartinnielsen @fulelo One of the first chemists to advocate the use of lachrymators for military purposes, Walther Nernst, would go on to win the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on thermodynamics - his low temperature calorimeter led him to formulate the 3rd Law of Thermodynamics that allows absolute entropies to be measured. His daughters married Jews and fled Hitler's Germany and he was eventually forced into retirement. https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/nernsts-calorimeter/4017475.article #ClassicKit
Nernst’s calorimeter

The practical side of a theoretical legend

Chemistry World
SellaTheChemistJul 4
#ClassicKit takes me to amazing places. Today it's a journal published in Cairo, MIDÉO, Mélanges de l'institut dominicain des études orientales (Miscellanies of the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies in Cairo).
I mean, seriously, what an amazing thing to dip into. But infuriatingly there isn't a library in the UK that holds it…
I'm written to them hoping they'll take pity.
Show threadSellaTheChemistJun 24
We're just past the 200th anniversary of Michael Faraday announcing his discovery of bicarburet of hydrogen (that Mitscherlich would call "benzine" and Liebig would rename "benzol") a molecule that would <ahem> resonate intellectually and industrially. for 200 years and counting.
A single phrase in his description caught my eye. He says that "a stoppered bottle… was brought home". It a phrase that speaks volumes. He was a lab rat, pure and simple. #ClassicKit https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/faradays-laboratory-manual-and-the-isolation-of-benzene/4021734.article
Faraday’s laboratory manual and the isolation of benzene

Instruction on how to be as much at home in the lab as was the man himself

Chemistry World
Show threadSellaTheChemistJun 23

@luddchem Meh! Tenor schmenor. Your list of Italian themed minerals won't be complete until you've covered #Sellaite.

If you don't know who Sella was, I've written about him indirectly in my #ClassicKit on William Hyde Wollaston. https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/wollastons-reflective-goniometer/7711.article

Wollaston’s reflective goniometer

It is better to travel than to arrive

Chemistry World
SellaTheChemistJun 23
The latest #ClassicKit is about a lab rat. A man who is remembered for many discoveries for fabulous explanations but who, deep down, liked nothing more than to go "home" to the lab.
SellaTheChemistJun 9

It is the end of the Age of #Mercury in our Department. To celebrate this, I give you the story of how John T Way (the "father of soil science") built a mercury light so brilliant that he sailed with it across the Solent, in the darkness, hoping to catch the eye of the Prince Albert. As he did so, he conducted the first mass demonstration of #fluorescence, causing all the #mauve ribbons on the ladies' dresses and bonnets to light up in the darkness. #ClassicKit

https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/ways-electric-light-and-flashes-of-brilliance/4021523.article

Way’s electric light and flashes of brilliance

The continuing adventures of John Thomas Way under the mercury-powered spotlight

Chemistry World