Hi everyone, I’m Neil, one the new associate editors on Nature Chemistry, and this is my first post here at the Sceptical Chymist. The eagle-eyed chemistry publishing blog aficionados among you may just remember some of my posts over on the Chemistry World blog, about such crucial topics as t-shirts, food and even science.
Today’s topic is inspired by a rather sad story…I found out around Christmas time that my first ever science teacher at my village middle school recently died at a fairly young age of motor neurone disease. So this post is dedicated to the memory of Mr Challinor – Gareth, I believe.
I vividly remember some of his first lessons back when I was a 9 year old, 20 years ago. The school buildings were quite new (10 or so years old at the time), so the little lab was pretty well kitted out. But he really instilled in us the fact that science wasn’t about Bunsen burners or any of the other complicated apparatus we were all seeing for the first time. A scientist’s most important tools, he said, were his or her eyes, to observe what was happening.
One of the first experiments I remember him showing us was incredibly simple, but also incredibly powerful. He’d told us about atoms, and how burning material was essentially just adding oxygen to it. To prove that things do get heavier once you’ve burned them, he carefully weighed some magnesium foil in a crucible, then set fire to it. After the bright white flame died away, he re-weighed the crucible and guess what? The weight had indeed increased.
As well as teaching us about atoms and combustion, something else he did in that experiment also stands out. He got one of the class (Jamie Preece, since you asked) to watch over his shoulder as he did the weighing (we couldn’t all fit around the balance). This was just to show that he wasn’t making it all up, that we shouldn’t believe him ‘just because he said so’, but to show what he said had happened actually did. That’s a pretty important first lesson in science for anyone, but especially a 9 year old: don’t just take someone’s word for it, see for yourself.
So, if anyone else would like to share their first ever experiment with the world, please let us know in the comments below!
Neil
Neil Withers (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)
It’s nice to be retired and not have to manage motor neuron disease as a neurologist (treat is far too strong a word for what medicine had to offer these unfortunates when I was practicing). Familial cases of motor neuron disease are rare and I only saw one in years of practice. 20% of the familial cases are due to mutations in a protein called superoxide dismutase 1 (SOD1 — an enzyme destroying the superoxide radical anion). It contains 153 amino acids, and as of 2006 114 different mutations had been found in 70/153 of them.
Now transgenic mice lacking functional SOD1 or overexpressing normal SOD1 don’t get sick. No one knows just what is going on although theories abound. The best guess is that the mutant protein forms aggregates which kill the cell. Just why only one type of cell in one organ system should be affected by a mutation in an enzyme which is just about everywhere is a question for biology. How all these different mutations could destabilize the protein and cause aggregation is a question for chemistry, although our techniques at present may be too crude to answer it. I doubt that potential energy functions derived from proteins that fold into just one shape will be of much help.
Fascinating questions like this come up all the time at the interface between chemistry, biochemistry, and disease. In addition to their intellectual interest they are of great importance to patients and their families. This is why I talk so much about proteins in the chemiotics posts. There should be another one along shortly.
Welcome to Nature Chemistry, Neil!
Sorry to hear about your teacher. My story is: Though it certainly wasn’t my first chemistry experiment, I do particularly remember one Advanced Organic lab where we synthesized some commonly known drug (I feel like it was aspirin, although that seems too dumb to be an advanced lab??), and, with proof of the product in our hands (in a nice clean NMR spectrum), our professor asked whether we’d be willing to take the drug we’d just made. Without any hesitation, we all said no. What was interesting about this decision, however, is not that it was based on any detailed understanding of good manufacturing practices/sterility, but rather the idea that, since I made it, it couldn’t possibly be ‘good’. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a lack of self-confidence, since everyone had the same opinion (and there were some pretty confident folks in the class!). I wonder what it is about being so hands-on that made the final product seem less valid?
The other thing your post reminds me of is the first time I did a chemistry demonstration for someone else, which was the silver mirror experiment for the freshman chemistry class at my university (only one section; about 250 people). It was such a thrill to watch everyone’s face light up when the mirror formed. 🙂
I think my first chemistry experiment was pretty dull – probably just a litmus paper test. But the experiment that really sticks in my mind was the one where we got to pour molten sulphur into a filter paper folded into a cone. You wait until a crust has just formed on the top of the liquid, and then you open out the filter paper, revealing lots of beautiful yellow sulphur crystals. This was my first experience of what I (rather sadly) call the “joy of crystals”. The pleasure of seeing them was instrumental in getting me hooked on chemistry.
Well what a way to be reminded of a dear old teacher.
Whilst in no way do I attempt to understand in Chemical terms what Msr Retread is on about, I do find the news very sad. I was also a pupil of Mr Challinors back in the day and remember his experiments not with detail, but dewy eyed romanticism.
I found this thread via Facebook and it should therefore not surprise you dear reader to discover that I am no Chemist. In fact, I am an IT Analyst. What I do have from Mr Challinor is a passion for big fat science. You see I am no lay person, and though I do not have years of education and training under my belt (although 2 years of Cognitive Psychology was somewhat of a challenge), I do have a thirst for knowledge which can only be instilled by such great teachers with a passion for their subject. This thirst extends to understanding the facts and issues surrounding our world – a thorough understanding of articles on the BBC Science & Nature website for example. The specifics I leave to experts such as yourselves but keep going, because us normal folk do care about what you guys do there in the detail.
We (the normals) regularly read of scientists spending years devoted to an area of science so mind bogglingly specific that it is easy to laugh it off as a waste of time and resource, but not I. I cherish those moments for the benefit they give our understanding of the world around us.
If everyone cared for big fat science instead of dumb stupid drama, idiotic contradictory war and self-indulgent sycophancy then maybe we could live in an informed intelligent utopia yet.
Mr Challinor R.I.P.
Thanks for your words Neil. Get in touch!
Probably many amino acid substitutions in proteins aren’t important (unlike SOD1). There was no way to really quantitate this until recently. Now that James Watson’s entire genome sequence is in [ Nature vol. 452 pp. 819 – 820, 872 -876 ’08 ] it can be compared with the standard genome of the human genome project. He differed at 3,300,000 sites. Interestingly 11,000 of them are predicted to change one amino acid for another in a protein coding gene. Aside from being associated with political incorrectness, they appear to have done him no harm.