Nature had on its cover yesterday a great story about transmission electron microscopy (TEM). No, really.

Jannik Meyer, now at Ulm University, and Alex Zettl, at Berkeley, have developed a technique, kind of by accident, to allow them to see single atoms of teeny elements, even hydrogen, in a standard TEM. Check out the paper, related news and views and online news piece.

This is one of the best chemistry videos, nay one of the best videos, full stop, I’ve ever seen.

The video accompanies a paper (abstract here, subscription needed for full paper) in Organic Letters about a photochromic molecule (one that can change between different forms when hit by light of some kind) that flips back and forth really quickly when UV light is shone on it.

The molecule changes from colourless to green, and that’s pretty much the best thing about it – so look at the video.

If you want to know more about the chemistry, which you might, then I can tell you that the molecules are hexaaryldiimidazole derivatives, and are a cyclic systems containing naphthalene units.

These kind of materials are used in spectacle lenses that change colour in bright lights. But really, just watch the video, that’s all you need to know.

[Hat tip: The Chem Blog]

Best song of the 80s? Gold by Spandau Ballet. But it seems that the frilly-collared Spandau boys were far from original in their lyrical choice. According to a survey undertaken by Santiago Alvarez, in the department of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Barcelona, the most popular elements referred to in music are, from the top; silver, gold, tin and oxygen.

I was amazed to hear that tin was so high in the elemental hit parade, until a quick survey of the Nature News team opened my eyes to its prevalence elsewhere than in the Wizard of Oz (incidentally the tin man’s song never mentions his eponymous metal).

How could I have forgotten the brilliant And the band played Waltzing Matilda, by Eric Bogle (and also performed by the ever-slurry Pogues), with the line “They gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun”. And a quick google search shows that even soft-focussed Katie Melua mentions tin in her song What it says on the tin. I’m not sure that the suggestion that tin’s ranking was due to the Belgian cartoon character Tintin is right, though.

Other gems plucked from the minds of the Nature News team include: platinum wheels in Minnie The Moocher; lithium in Nirvana’s Lithium; silicon in the Boomtown Rats’ I don’t like Mondays; hydrogen and helium in They might be giants’ Why does the sun shine? and almost every single element there is in the genius elements song by Tom Lehrer.

Iron has to be way up there too, what with all those rockers – "Iron man, by Ozzie and friends,” one Japan-based member of the team enthused when asked what element-containing song sprang to mind.

I’m very impressed that the New Journal of Chemistry published this comprehensive opinion piece, which goes much further than simply being a survey of a “musical cyberstore”, as suggested in the press release.

Alvarez goes to great lengths to discuss the history of scientific elements in music – from the original earth, fire, water and air, to Mendeleev and the periodic table. It’s well worth a look (although you might need a subscription) to learn about elements mentioned by some of the world’s greatest composers – Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Handel to name a few. Here’s factoid from the paper: Edgard Varese wrote a piece dedicated to platinum, called Density 21.5 – it was a solo piece for the flute, and the performer Georges Barres was trying out his new platinum flute – platinum has a density of 21.5 grams per cubic centimeter.

If you can think of any other element containing songs (Pocket full of kryptonite doesn’t count) let us know. Here’s a selection of songs to inspire you, written by school kids, set with the task of composing a song that mentions 80 elements. As expected, this is pretty difficult unless you just list the elements. Still, some imagination has gone into an elemental version of an Eminem song.

Of course, music is an element in its own right, according to the periodic table produced by the BBC’s Look around you team; symbol Mu, atomic number 4, atomic weight, 4.

It’s been a while since I blogged here – apologies. I haven’t been neglecting chemistry though – far from it. I’ve been ferreting away on a feature article, just out in Nature this week.

It’s all about trying to find ways to copy the processes in photosynthesis to split water and produce a fuel – hydrogen. Yes yes, I know it is already possible to split water, but the latests efforts have a longer-term goal of finding sustainable, friendly materials to do the job. And it is a lot harder than it might sound.

Nature uses catalysts to drive complex multielectron processes, but exactly what the molecular nature of these catalysts are isn’t known. So trying to directly copy them is challenging. And finding a completely different system that works as well, nay, better, is harder still.

A recent paper in Angewandte Chemie has a catalyst that can perform half the job, and impressive it is too, working as it does at room temperature and with reasonable turnovers. But still, it is a tetra ruthenium compound. Not likely to come in as an economic competitor to fossil fuels, unfortunately.

There will be a session at the ACS, organised by UCLA graduate students, called NanoPOWER that will likely address many of the challenges remaining for power, and fuel production. I’m hoping to be there to see what alternatives chemists can offer.

A couple of papers about some N-containing annulenes have been retracted and/or corrected after it was pointed out to the authors that the reaction they claimed made these exotic rings was actually 103 years old, and that they were much more likely to have made a pyridinium salt. There is a news story about it here

Does anyone know of this kind of any famous examples of a literature-search oversight leading to an erroneous claim like this?

Nature’s second chemistry podcast is now live!

Plug your iPod in and have a listen. In this issue we take a look at high-throughput screening; go on a literary detour thanks to Nobel prize winning chemist, and poet, Roald Hoffmann, and learn why chemists spend years mimicking Nature’s methods to make molecules.