Another scientific concept that is hard to grasp by laypeople and that to my opinion has been the center of much distortion in the chemistry classroom, is the thermodynamical function Entropy, S . More often than not, S is said to be a measure of “disorder” and people just take it! If one was to define disorder then one would have to also define order: Is my apartment too entropic? what about my life?

Although classifications and rankings do not define the range or scope of work a person/group can do, they are usually popular to look at, unfortunately these views are sometimes misleading in the decision making process, e.g. funding. How expensive is in average our science compared to that of say organic chemists?

A new paper is coming out! These are always good news for someone whose productivity is evaluated by the number of his/her publications, and in my case the pleasure is double.

As part of the research project I’m working on here at the Babes-Bolyai University in Romania, I must now pay a visit to prof. Sandor Kunsagi-Mate in Pecs, Hungary. I’ve met prof. Kunsagi in several occasions before and I’m looking forward to working with him in his research team, although unfortunately he will have to leave next week to the far east to check on some of his multiple collaborations around the world.

Once again an awful title. This post follows my previous one on graphs and chemistry, and it addresses an old idea which I have shared in the past with many patient people willing to listen to my ramblings.

Is the C atom in methane sp3 hybridized because it’s tetrahedral or is it tetrahedral because it’s sp3 hybridized? It’s funny how many students think to this date that the correct answer is the latter; specially those working in inorganic chemistry. I ignore the reason for such trend.

Most awful post title ever, I know, but maybe I’m still hooked on prof. Schaefer’s conference from two weeks ago. I went fishing on Sunday and although my luck was better this time (I caught four fish!) I spent a great deal of time tying hooks, untangling my line from others or even from my own. Whenever the knot became too complicated to solve I just cut the line and tied a new hook or floater.

Last week we had the visit of prof. H. F. Schaefer III here at Babes-Bolyai, that awarded him an honoris causa doctorate for his contributions to computational chemistry, which I must say have been groundbreaking and paradigmatic. Nevertheless his visit is not without controversy.

The Computational Chemistry List  (CCL) is a web based forum in which is possible to discuss basically every aspect regarding computational chemistry, from fundamental concepts to technical assistance, the latter being the most popular form of posting.

Although the popularization of science is an important task, I’ve always believed it’s not always addressed properly and way too many attempts have been made to emulate Carl Sagan’s COSMOS TV show.

In the last week there have been many stories related to the outbreak of a swine flu which has taken the life of approximately 150 people in Mexico. Of course this is no time to give into panic but to take action, mostly by keeping oneself well informed. It has also been the origin of many plot theories according to which the outbreak isn’t real but more of a diversion from other issues such as the world crisis.