Chemistry Lab Quotes

I knew chemistry would be worse, because I'd seen a big card of the ninety-odd elements hung up in the chemistry lab, and all the perfectly good words like gold and silver and cobalt and aluminum were shortened to ugly abbreviations with different decimal numbers after them.

I know what love is and it is friendship, set afire. Love is easy. Love is chemistry—a science lab. Love is as simple as connecting this together with that. Her brilliant eyes and my heated heart. But this is not love. Not yet. Genuine love is friendship. Genuine love resides only in the present moment. Genuine love is everyday. Genuine love feels no need to entertain the space away. Genuine love is up, genuine love is down and yet genuine love never wavers. Love is something else entire: it is caring. It is arguing, but with curiosity—it is giving an inch when the other is certainly wrong—it is teasing, it is empathy, it is respect, it is admiration each morning.

The daughter of Lithuanian immigrants, born with a precocious scientific intellect and a thirst for chemical knowledge, Elion had completed a master's degree in chemistry from New York University in 1941 while teaching high school science during the day and preforming her research for her thesis at night and on the weekends. Although highly qualified, talented, and driven, she had been unable to find a job in an academic laboratory. Frustrated by repeated rejections, she had found a position as a supermarket product supervisor. When Hitchings found Trudy Elion, who would soon become on of the most innovative synthetic chemists of her generation (and a future Nobel laureate), she was working for a food lab in New York, testing the acidity of pickles and the color of egg yolk going into mayonnaise. Rescued from a life of pickles and mayonnaise…

For three years, all through junior high, my social death was grossly overdetermined. I had a large vocabulary, a giddily squeaking voice, horn-rimmed glasses, poor arm strength, too-obvious approval from my teachers, irresistible urges to shout unfunny puns, a near-eidetic acquaintance with J.R.R. Tolkien, a big chemistry lab in my basement, a penchant for intimately insulting any unfamiliar girl unwise enough to speak to me, and so on.

I can control what happens in the chemistry lab. There's a formula and an equation, and I know exactly what the reaction will be when I mix one thing with another. Life, not so much. Love, not at all. No matter what elements you combine, you really have no idea what happens next. It's scary not knowing what comes next. But not knowing might also be the best part.

No one was laughing now. But I had a thought, a thought I can’t fully explain, even today: He should be my next scene partner. I have to do a scene with this guy. Maybe he’d cheer me up. Maybe I’d learn some of his fearlessness. What made him so confident? I was desperately curious to discover that. It wasn’t his acting, obviously, which was extraordinarily bad. He was simply magically uninhibited; the only person in our class—or any class I’d ever taken, for that matter—whom I actually looked forward to watching perform. The rest of us were toying with chemistry sets and he was lighting the lab on fire.

7 ALL ELECTRIC J. B. STRAUBEL HAS A TWO-INCH-LONG SCAR that cuts across the middle of his left cheek. He earned it in high school, during a chemistry class experiment. Straubel whipped up the wrong concoction of chemicals, and the beaker he was holding exploded, throwing off shards of glass, one of which sliced through his face. The wound lingers as a tinkerer’s badge of honor. It arrived near the end of a childhood full of experimentation with chemicals and machines. Born in Wisconsin, Straubel constructed a large chemistry lab in the basement of his family’s home that included fume hoods and chemicals ordered, borrowed, or pilfered. At thirteen, Straubel found an old golf cart at the dump. He brought it back home and restored it to working

If your food is coming from a chemistry lab, the safe bet is to leave it alone.

Shaped a little like a loaf of French country bread, our brain is a crowded chemistry lab, bustling with nonstop neural conversations. Imagine the brain, that shiny mound of being, that mouse-gray parliament of cells, that dream factory, that petit tyrant inside a ball of bone, that huddle of neurons calling all the plays, that little everywhere, that fickle pleasuredome, that wrinkled wardrobe of selves stuffed into the skull like too many clothes into a gym bag. —Diane Ackerman

For women, it’s The Virgin Diet by JJ Virgin, which will challenge your rules about calories and exercise and show you that it’s not about how much you eat, but how you combine the right foods in the right order for your body’s “chemistry lab.” 6.

I knew chemistry would be worse, because I’d seen a big chart of the ninety-odd elements hung up in the chemistry lab, and all the perfectly good words like gold and silver and cobalt and aluminum were shortened to ugly abbreviations with different decimal numbers after them.

In the chemistry lab at school, did you ever hold a test tube, pouring in liquids and powders and seeing nothing happen until a certain powder is poured in and then everything begins to smoke and fume, bubble and boil, hiss to foam, and sometimes even explode? The tube is suddenly full of action and movement and life. Well there are people like those certain liquids or powders; at a given moment they come into a room, or into a town, even into a country-and the place is never the same again. Things bubble, boil, change. Sometimes the whole world is changed.

I hurried forward and looked into the room to my left. It was a chemistry lab with a sweeping view of the snowy terrain outside, complete with large black islands in the middle of the room, independent sinks with an eyewash and a shower in the corner, silver fixtures with gas taps to run experiments with fire— Hrmm. Hmmmmmmmmm. Hehehehehe.

By the way, how’s the lab tech job going? Suicidal yet?

The first rule of chem lab is to never heat a closed system or it will explode.

The wood wide web has been mapped, traced, monitored, and coaxed to reveal the beautiful structures and finely adapted languages of the forest network. We have learned that mother trees recognize and talk with their kin, shaping future generations. In addition, injured tress pass their legacies on to their neighbors, affecting gene regulation, defense chemistry, and resilience in the forest community. These discoveries have transformed our understanding of trees from competitive crusaders of the self to members of a connected, relating, communicating system. Ours is not the only lab making these discoveries-there is a burst of careful scientific research occurring worldwide that is uncovering all manner of ways that trees communicate with each other above and below ground.

Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it. What I couldn't stand was this shrinking everything into letters and numbers...I knew chemistry would be worse, because I'd seen a big chart of the ninety-odd elements hung up in the chemistry lab, and all of the perfectly good words like gold and silver and cobalt and aluminum were shortened to ugly abbreviations with different decimal numbers after them.

Hastings Research Institute TEN YEARS EARLIER, JANUARY 1952 Calvin Evans also worked at Hastings Research Institute, but unlike Elizabeth, who worked in crowded conditions, he had a large lab all to himself.

the thirty-year-old mother of Madeline Zott rose before dawn every morning and felt certain of just one thing: her life was over. Despite that certainty, she made her way to the lab to pack her daughter’s lunch.

Let’s say supper at six, then,” Elizabeth said, not wanting her to go. “The home lab. Everyone—you, Wilson, Mad, Sixty-Thirty, me, Harriet, Walter. You’ll need to meet Wakely and Mason at some point, too. The whole family.

Long story short, you will at least get that one unreasonable impulse to prove to yourself that that the invincibility and imperviousness that you feel during youth. It’s something tangible, something that can yield results like in chemistry lab or through gains in stocks. You want to get high from being at the cusp of adolescence; like the sweet smell of hookah that you know your neighbor smokes and you don’t know why it’s appealing. You know what I’m talking about.

Chemistry was transformed by glass perhaps more than any other discipline. You only have to go to any chemistry lab to see that the transparency and inertness of the material make it perfect for mixing chemicals and monitoring what they do. Before the glass test tube was born, chemical reactions were performed in opaque beakers, so it was hard to see what was happening. With glass, and especially with a new glass called Pyrex that was immune to thermal shock, chemistry as a systematic discipline really got going.

From across the room, Elizabeth straightened her papers, then rose. “Sorry to cut this short, Calvin, but I have a meeting.” “A meeting?” Calvin said, as if she’d just announced she was attending an execution. “If you worked in my lab, you’d never have to go to meetings.

True art is by nature moral. We recognize true art by its careful, thoroughly honest search for and analysis of values. It is not didactic because, instead of teaching by authority and force, it explores, open-mindedly, to learn what it should teach. It clarifies, like an experiment in a chemistry lab, and confirms. As a chemist's experiment tests the laws of nature and dramatically reveals the truth or falsity of scientific hypotheses, moral art tests valyes and rouses trustworthy feelings about the better and the worse in human action.

She had lived in eight different countries growing up and had visited dozens of others. To most people, this sounded cool, and in some ways, Ayers knows, it was cool, or parts of it were. But since humans are inclined to want what they don't have, she longed to live in America, preferably the solid, unchanging, undramatic Midwest, and attend a real high school, the kind shown in movies, complete with a football team, cheerleaders, pep rallies, chemistry labs, summer reading lists, hall passes, proms, detentions, assemblies, fund-raisers, lockers, Spanish clubs, marching bands, and the dismissal bell.

Support?” Elizabeth said. “But I’m a chemist, not a lab tech.” “No, you’re a lab tech,” Donatti said firmly. “You’ve been out of the game for a while now. Surely you didn’t think you could just waltz in here and get your old job back—not after years of thumb twiddling. But here’s the deal—work hard and we’ll see.

Let’s say supper at six, then,” Elizabeth said, not wanting her to go. “The home lab. Everyone—you, Wilson, Mad, Sixty-Thirty, me, Harriet, Walter. You’ll need to meet Wakely and Mason at some point, too. The whole family.” Avery Parker, her face suddenly familiar with Calvin’s smile, turned back and took Elizabeth’s hands in her own. “The whole family,” she said.

Every day since TUB (The Ultimate Betrayal) had been a disaster. He had English with Anika, who never failed to shoot him a forced smile. Then chemistry with Mason, where they were lab partners. Gael refused to talk to either of them. In the past week, he’d barely exchanged words with anyone. Things were even awkward with Danny. Even though he was Gael’s best friend besides Mason, the dude was gaga for Jenna, and Jenna had long been Anika’s BFF. As such, this had become the unspoken rule among them: Jenna was Team Anika, Danny was Team Jenna, and by the transitive property, Danny couldn’t be on Gael’s side. Gael hadn’t ever thought to make friends outside of their little group. He hadn’t hedged his bets, if you will. He’d put all his eggs in one basket. And those eggs had decided to hook up with each other behind his back.

The blooper’ as Watson described it, 'was too unbelievable to keep secret for more than a few minutes.’ He dashed over to a chemist friend in the neighboring lab to show him Pauling’s structure. The chemist concurred, 'The giant [Pauling] had forgotten elementary college chemistry.’ Watson told Crick, and both took off for the Eagle, their favorite pub, where they celebrated Pauling’s failure with shots of schadenfreude infused whiskey.

Dr. Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for inventing PCR, stated publicly numerous times that his invention should never be used for the diagnosis of infectious diseases. In July of 1997, during an event called Corporate Greed and AIDS in Santa Monica CA, Dr. Mullis explained on video, “With PCR you can find almost anything in anybody. It starts making you believe in the sort of Buddhist notion that everything is contained in everything else, right? I mean, because if you can model amplify one single molecule up to something that you can really measure, which PCR can do, then there’s just very few molecules that you don’t have at least one single one of them in your body. Okay? So that could be thought of as a misuse of it, just to claim that it’s meaningful.” Mikki explained, “The major issue with PCR is that it’s easily manipulated. It functions through a cyclical process whereby each revolution amplifies magnification. On a molecular level, most of us already have trace amounts of genetic fragments similar to coronavirus within us. By simply over-cycling the process, a negative result can be flipped to a positive. Governing bodies such as the CDC and the WHO can control the number of cases by simply advising the medical industry to increase or decrease the cycle threshold (CT).” In August of 2020, the New York Times reported that “a CT beyond 34 revolutions very rarely detect live virus, but most often, dead nucleotides that are not even contagious. In compliance with guidance from the CDC and the WHO, many top US labs have been conducting tests at cycle thresholds of 40 or more. NYT examined data from Massachusetts, New York, and Nevada and determined that up to 90 percent of the individuals who tested positive carried barely any virus.”17 90 percent! In May of 2021, CDC changed the PCR cycle threshold from 40 to 28 or lower for those who have been vaccinated. This one adjustment of the numbers allowed the vaccine pushers to praise the vaccines as a big success.

Pointsman is the only one here maintaining his calm. He appears unruffled and strong. His lab coats have even begun lately to take on a Savile Row serenity, suppressed waist, flaring vents, finer material, rather rakishly notched lapels. In this parched and fallow time, he gushes affluence. After the baying has quieted down at last, he speaks, soothing: “There’s no danger.” “No danger?” screams Aaron Throwster, and the lot of them are off again muttering and growling. “Slothrop’s knocked out Dodson-Truck and the girl in one day!” “The whole thing’s falling apart, Pointsman!” “Since Sir Stephen came back, Fitzmaurice House has dropped out of our scheme, and there’ve been embarrassing inquires down from Duncan Sandys—“ “That’s the P.M.’s son-in-law, Pointsman, not good, not good!” “We’ve already begun to run into a deficit—“ “Funding,” IF you can keep your head, “is available, and will be coming in before long… certainly before we run into any serious trouble. Sir Stephen, far from being ‘knocked out,’ is quite happily at work at Fitzmaurice House, and is At Home there should any of you wish to confirm. Miss Borgesius is still active in the program, and Mr. Duncan Sandys is having all his questions answered. But best of all, we are budgeted well into fiscal ’46 before anything like a deficit begins to rear its head.” “Your Interested Parties again?” sez Rollo Groast. “Ah, I noticed Clive Mossmoon from Imperial Chemicals closeted with you day before yesterday,” Edwin Treacle mentions now. “Clive Mossmoon and I took an organic chemistry course or two together back at Manchester. Is ICI one of our, ah, sponsors, Pointsman?” “No,” smoothly, “Mossmoon, actually, is working out of Malet Street these days. I’m afraid we were up to nothing more sinister than a bit of routine coordination over the Schwarzkommando business.” “The hell you were. I happen to know Clive’s at ICI, managing some sort of polymer research.” They stare at each other. One is lying, or bluffing, or both are, or all of the above. But whatever it is Pointsman has a slight advantage. By facing squarely the extinction of his program, he has gained a great of bit of Wisdom: that if there is a life force operating in Nature, still there is nothing so analogous in a bureaucracy. Nothing so mystical. It all comes down, as it must, to the desires of men. Oh, and women too of course, bless their empty little heads. But survival depends on having strong enough desires—on knowing the System better than the other chap, and how to use it. It’s work, that’s all it is, and there’s no room for any extrahuman anxieties—they only weaken, effeminize the will: a man either indulges them, or fights to win, und so weiter. “I do wish ICI would finance part of this,” Pointsman smiles. “Lame, lame,” mutters the younger Dr. Groast. “What’s it matter?” cries Aaron Throwster. “If the old man gets moody at the wrong time this whole show can prang.” “Brigadier Pudding will not go back on any of his commitments,” Pointsman very steady, calm, “we have made arrangements with him. The details aren’t important.” They never are, in these meetings of his.

Okay, so I shouldn't have fucked with her on the introduction thing. Writing nothing except, Saturday night. You and me. Driving lessons and hot sex ... in her notebook probably wasn't the smartest move. But I was itching to make Little Miss Perfecta stumble in her introduction of me. And stumbling she is. "Miss Ellis?" I watch in amusement as Perfection herself looks up at Peterson. Oh, she's good. This partner of mine knows how to hide her true emotions, something I recognize because I do it all the time. "Yes?" Brittany says, tilting her head and smiling like a beauty queen. I wonder if that smile has ever gotten her out of a speeding ticket. "It's your turn. Introduce Alex to the class." I lean an elbow on the lab table, waiting for an introduction she has to either make up or fess up she knows less than crap about me. She glances at my comfortable position and I can tell from her deer-in-the-headlights look I've stumped her. "This is Alejandro Fuentes," she starts, her voice hitching the slightest bit. My temper flares at the mention of my given name, but I keep a cool facade as she continues with a made-up introduction. "When he wasn't hanging out on street corners and harassing innocent people this summer, he toured the inside of jails around the city, if you know what I mean. And he has a secret desire nobody would ever guess." The room suddenly becomes quiet. Even Peterson straightens to attention. Hell, even I'm listening like the words coming out of Brittany's lying, pink-frosted lips are gospel. "His secret desire," she continues, "is to go to college and become a chemistry teacher, like you, Mrs. Peterson." Yeah, right. I look over at my friend Isa, who seems amused that a white girl isn't afraid of giving me smack in front of the entire class. Brittany flashes me a triumphant smile, thinking she's won this round. Guess again, gringa. I sit up in my chair while the class remains silent. "This is Brittany Ellis," I say, all eyes now focused on me. "This summer she went to the mall, bought new clothes so she could expand her wardrobe, and spent her daddy's money on plastic surgery to enhance her, ahem, assets." It might not be what she wrote, but it's probably close enough to the truth. Unlike her introduction of me. Chuckles come from mis cuates in the back of the class, and Brittany is as stiff as a board beside me, as if my words hurt her precious ego. Brittany Ellis is used to people fawning all over her and she could use a little wake-up call. I'm actually doing her a favor. Little does she know I'm not finished with her intro. "Her secret desire," I add, getting the same reaction as she did during her introduction, "is to date a Mexicano before she graduates." As expected, my words are met by comments and low whistles from the back of the room. "Way to go, Fuentes," my friend Lucky barks out. "I'll date you, mamacita, " another says. I give a high five to another Latino Blood named Marcus sitting behind me just as I catch Isa shaking her head as if I did something wrong. What? I'm just having a little fun with a rich girl from the north side. Brittany's gaze shifts from Colin to me. I take one look at Colin and with my eyes tell him game on. Colin's face instantly turns bright red, resembling a chile pepper. I have definitely invaded his territory.

There's a rumor Barsky's Chemistry Club is cultivating some fierce bacteria in the lab," Frankie informed me a few minutes later, after I'd related Mademoiselle Winslow's ultimation, and my soon-to-be tutoring sessions with Alex. "I bet we could break in and get you a good dose of something. Put the kibosh on the tutoring. Could be a little pinkeye, could be leprosy..." He took a cheerful bite of his taco, which flaked everywhere. "Frankie!" Sadie scolded. "That's awful." She'd already finished her apple and Belgian endive. To me, "If it's this or fail French, well, you don't know; Alex might be just what you need." "Oh,yeah,he's a prince," Frankie muttered. "Abso-friggin-lutely guaranteed to man up and do the right thing." With that,he reached over and stole my french fries. He'd already eaten the baggie of almonds Sadie had decided had too much fat. Apparently, she and I were both obsessing with our appearance. She was having a hate-hate day with her upper arms. I was wondering if I was about to be at the tutorial mercy of the guy who'd looked right through me, or the guy who looked at me like I'd never been scarred at all.

Now atop these gleaming countertops sat one microscope and two used Bunsen burners, one courtesy of Cambridge—the university had given it to Calvin as a memento of his time there—and the other from a high school chem lab that was shedding equipment due to a lack of student interest. Just above the new double sinks were two carefully hand-lettered signs. waste only read one. h2o source read the other. Last but not least was the fume hood. “This will be your responsibility,” she told Six-Thirty. “I’ll need you to pull on the chain when my hands are full. You’ll also need to learn how to press this big button.

I know,” Madeline said, swiping her hand under her nose, “but that’s why I’m sad, Mom. Because you belong in a lab. But instead you make dinner on TV and…and…and it’s because of me.” “No,” Elizabeth said gently. “Not true. Every parent has to earn a living. It’s part of being an adult.” “But you’re not in a lab specifically because of me—” “Again, not true—” “Yes, it is. Wakely’s typist told me.” Elizabeth’s mouth dropped open. “Jesus Christ,” Wakely said, covering his face with his hands. “What?” Elizabeth said. “Who is this typist of yours?” “I think you might know her,” Wakely said. “Listen to me, Mad,” Elizabeth said. “Very closely. I’m still a chemist. A chemist on television.” “No,” Mad said sadly. “You’re not.

The Memory Business Steven Sasson is a tall man with a lantern jaw. In 1973, he was a freshly minted graduate of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His degree in electrical engineering led to a job with Kodak’s Apparatus Division research lab, where, a few months into his employment, Sasson’s supervisor, Gareth Lloyd, approached him with a “small” request. Fairchild Semiconductor had just invented the first “charge-coupled device” (or CCD)—an easy way to move an electronic charge around a transistor—and Kodak needed to know if these devices could be used for imaging.4 Could they ever. By 1975, working with a small team of talented technicians, Sasson used CCDs to create the world’s first digital still camera and digital recording device. Looking, as Fast Company once explained, “like a ’70s Polaroid crossed with a Speak-and-Spell,”5 the camera was the size of a toaster, weighed in at 8.5 pounds, had a resolution of 0.01 megapixel, and took up to thirty black-and-white digital images—a number chosen because it fell between twenty-four and thirty-six and was thus in alignment with the exposures available in Kodak’s roll film. It also stored shots on the only permanent storage device available back then—a cassette tape. Still, it was an astounding achievement and an incredible learning experience. Portrait of Steven Sasson with first digital camera, 2009 Source: Harvey Wang, From Darkroom to Daylight “When you demonstrate such a system,” Sasson later said, “that is, taking pictures without film and showing them on an electronic screen without printing them on paper, inside a company like Kodak in 1976, you have to get ready for a lot of questions. I thought people would ask me questions about the technology: How’d you do this? How’d you make that work? I didn’t get any of that. They asked me when it was going to be ready for prime time? When is it going to be realistic to use this? Why would anybody want to look at their pictures on an electronic screen?”6 In 1996, twenty years after this meeting took place, Kodak had 140,000 employees and a $28 billion market cap. They were effectively a category monopoly. In the United States, they controlled 90 percent of the film market and 85 percent of the camera market.7 But they had forgotten their business model. Kodak had started out in the chemistry and paper goods business, for sure, but they came to dominance by being in the convenience business. Even that doesn’t go far enough. There is still the question of what exactly Kodak was making more convenient. Was it just photography? Not even close. Photography was simply the medium of expression—but what was being expressed? The “Kodak Moment,” of course—our desire to document our lives, to capture the fleeting, to record the ephemeral. Kodak was in the business of recording memories. And what made recording memories more convenient than a digital camera? But that wasn’t how the Kodak Corporation of the late twentieth century saw it. They thought that the digital camera would undercut their chemical business and photographic paper business, essentially forcing the company into competing against itself. So they buried the technology. Nor did the executives understand how a low-resolution 0.01 megapixel image camera could hop on an exponential growth curve and eventually provide high-resolution images. So they ignored it. Instead of using their weighty position to corner the market, they were instead cornered by the market.

The person who discovered the answer was a retiring, self-funded scientist named Peter Mitchell who in the early 1960s inherited a fortune from the Wimpey house-building company and used it to set up a research center in a stately home in Cornwall. Mitchell was something of an eccentric. He wore shoulder-length hair and an earring at a time when that was especially unusual among serious scientists. He was also famously forgetful. At his daughter’s wedding, he approached another guest and confessed that she looked familiar, though he couldn’t quite place her. “I was your first wife,” she answered. Mitchell’s ideas were universally dismissed, not altogether surprisingly. As one chronicler has noted, “At the time that Mitchell proposed his hypothesis there was not a shred of evidence in support of it.” But he was eventually vindicated and in 1978 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry—an extraordinary accomplishment for someone who worked from a home lab. The

In 1950, a thirty-year-old scientist named Rosalind Franklin arrived at King’s College London to study the shape of DNA. She and a graduate student named Raymond Gosling created crystals of DNA, which they bombarded with X-rays. The beams bounced off the crystals and struck photographic film, creating telltale lines, spots, and curves. Other scientists had tried to take pictures of DNA, but no one had created pictures as good as Franklin had. Looking at the pictures, she suspected that DNA was a spiral-shaped molecule—a helix. But Franklin was relentlessly methodical, refusing to indulge in flights of fancy before the hard work of collecting data was done. She kept taking pictures. Two other scientists, Francis Crick and James Watson, did not want to wait. Up in Cambridge, they were toying with metal rods and clamps, searching for plausible arrangements of DNA. Based on hasty notes Watson had written during a talk by Franklin, he and Crick put together a new model. Franklin and her colleagues from King’s paid a visit to Cambridge to inspect it, and she bluntly told Crick and Watson they had gotten the chemistry all wrong. Franklin went on working on her X-ray photographs and growing increasingly unhappy with King’s. The assistant lab chief, Maurice Wilkins, was under the impression that Franklin was hired to work directly for him. She would have none of it, bruising Wilkins’s ego and leaving him to grumble to Crick about “our dark lady.” Eventually a truce was struck, with Wilkins and Franklin working separately on DNA. But Wilkins was still Franklin’s boss, which meant that he got copies of her photographs. In January 1953, he showed one particularly telling image to Watson. Now Watson could immediately see in those images how DNA was shaped. He and Crick also got hold of a summary of Franklin’s unpublished research she wrote up for the Medical Research Council, which guided them further to their solution. Neither bothered to consult Franklin about using her hard-earned pictures. The Cambridge and King’s teams then negotiated a plan to publish a set of papers in Nature on April 25, 1953. Crick and Watson unveiled their model in a paper that grabbed most of the attention. Franklin and Gosling published their X-ray data in another paper, which seemed to readers to be a “me-too” effort. Franklin died of cancer five years later, while Crick, Watson, and Wilkins went on to share the Nobel prize in 1962. In his 1968 book, The Double Helix, Watson would cruelly caricature Franklin as a belligerent, badly dressed woman who couldn’t appreciate what was in her pictures. That bitter fallout is a shame, because these scientists had together discovered something of exceptional beauty. They had found a molecular structure that could make heredity possible.

The lab tech closed his eyes. “Listen,” he said, slowly reopening them as if to dramatize her stupidity. “I’ve been here a lot longer than you and I know things. You know what Calvin Evans is famous for, don’t you? Besides chemistry?” “Yes. Having an excess of equipment.” “No,” he said. “He’s famous for holding a grudge. A grudge!” “Really?” she said taking interest. — Elizabeth Zott held grudges too. Except her grudges were mainly reserved for a patriarchal society founded on the idea that women were less. Less capable. Less intelligent. Less inventive. A society that believed men went to work and did important things—discovered planets, developed products, created laws—and women stayed at home and raised children. She didn’t want children—she knew this about herself—but she also knew that plenty of other women did want children and a career. And what was wrong with that? Nothing. It was exactly what men got. She’d recently read about some country where both parents worked and took part in raising the children. Where was that, again? Sweden? She couldn’t remember. But the upshot was, it functioned very well. Productivity was higher; families were stronger. She saw herself living in such a society. A place that didn’t always automatically mistake her for a secretary, a place where, when she presented her findings in a meeting, she didn’t have to brace herself for the men who would invariably talk over her, or worse, take credit for her work. Elizabeth shook her head. When it came to equality, 1952 was a real disappointment.

(p.112-114) This past, the Negro's past, of rope, fire torture, castration, infanticide, rape; death and humiliation; fear by day and night, fear as deep as the marrow of the bone; doubt that he was worthy of life, since everyone around him denied it; sorrow for this women, for his kinfolk, for his children, who needed his protection, and whom he could not protect; rage, hatred, and murder, hatred for white men so deep that it often turned against him and his own, and made all love, all trust, all joy impossible - this past, this endless struggle to achieve and reveal and confirm a human identity, human authority, yet contains, for all its horror, something very beautiful. I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering - enough is certainly as good as a feast - but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are. That man who is forced each day to snatch manhood, his identity, out of the fire of human cruelty that rages to destroy it knows, if he survives his effort, and even if he does not survive it, something about himself and human life that no school on earth - and indeed, no church - can teach. He achieves his own authority, and that is unshakable. This is because, in order to save his life, he is forced to look beneath appearances, to take nothing for granted, to hear the meaning behind the words. If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring; whatever it brings must be borne. And at this level of experience one's bitterness begins to be palatable, and hatred becomes too heavy a sack to carry. The apprehension of life here so briefly and inadequately sketched has been the experience of generations of Negroes, and it helps to explain how they have endured and how they have been able to produce children of kindergarten age who can walk through mobs to get to school. It demands great force and great cunning continually to assault the mighty and indifferent fortress of white supremacy, as Negroes in this country have done so long. It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and even greater miracle of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate. The Negro boys and girls who are facing mobs today come out of a long line of improbable aristocrats - the only genuine aristocrats this country has produced. I say "this country" because their frame of reference was totally American. They were hewing out of the mountain of white supremacy the stone of their individuality. I have great respect for that unsung army of black men and women who trudged down back lanes and entered back doors, saying "Yes, sir" and "No, Ma'am" in order to acquire a new roof for the schoolhouse, new books, a new chemistry lab, more beds for the dormitories, more dormitories. They did not like saying "Yes, sir" and "No Ma'am", but the country was in no hurry to educate Negroes, these black men and women knew that the job had to be done, and they put their pride in their pockets in order to do it. It is very hard to believe that they were in anyway inferior to the white men and women who opened those back doors. It is very hard to believe that those men and women, raising their children, eating their greens, crying their curses, weeping their tears, singing their songs, making their love, as the sun rose, as the sun set, were in any way inferior to the white men and women who crept over to share these splendors after the sun went down. ... I am proud of these people not because of their color but because of their intelligence and their spiritual force and their beauty. The country should be proud of them, too, but, alas, not many people in this country even know of their existence.

No way you're calling Ben. We already have a plan. Were going to his house, and I'm going to ring the doorbell with some fake lab work for Chemistry, and then Taylor is going to set off his car alarm while I year through his room looking for evidence." "Wow. Great plan, Kate. Just out of curiosity, what exactly are you planning on doing when he comes back to his room to find you knee-deep in his secret Brotherhood bullshit?" Liam spat his words at me like nails. "Oh, I'm sorry. Do you have a better idea? Ooh, I know. Maybe you could call you're brother and have him light his garage on fire or something.

My secret love, Billy Colbert, had to make up the same test. Afterward, we left the chemistry lab together. 'Well, it was long,' Billy said, 'but it wasn't hard.' 'I thought it was long *and* hard,' I replied. 'Oh, cut it out, Rachel,' Billy remonstrated. 'If there's one thing I can't stand, it's brains who pretend they suffer just as much as the rest of us.' 'I'm not a brain in chemistry,' I protested. 'If I get good grades in science or math, it's because I work. You're the brain in chemistry. I hate that word, brain, anyway. Everyone has a brain, and they're all about the same size, even a moron's.

She could not be silent even if the men of science, many of them smug experts in white lab coats who promised “better living through chemistry,” dismissed her warnings as feminine hysteria.

This time he sighed heavily before shaking his head. But he did shake his head. Kind of. “No, some kid in the neighborhood told me and Russell that the chemistry lab of Seattle Community College had just switched over to Mac from PC, and we really, really wanted a Mac.

Because you’re high on heroin, you kick and scream at the ER staff trying to help you. So these nice people strap you down and inject you with a drug called naloxone, and you are instantly not high. Through the magic of chemistry, naloxone immediately reverses the action of heroin or any other opiate drug such as morphine or oxycodone. In lab animals, administration of naloxone blocks the binding of wheat exorphins to the morphine receptor of brain cells. Yes, opiate-blocking naloxone prevents the binding of wheat-derived exorphins to the brain. The very same drug that turns off the heroin in a drug-abusing addict also blocks the effects of wheat exorphins.

Our soul is given the innate and strong ability to differentiate right from wrong actions. We have likeness for and the wish to see fairness, justice, honesty, truthfulness and cooperation in the universe where species survive on survival instincts. These values reflect in our art, prose and poetry. If the feelings, emotions, aesthetics, values and morality are merely a chemical mixture, then our labs shall be producing Shakespeare, Rumi, Iqbal and Picasso just through chemistry experiments without any human intervention, instruction and programming.

[My advisor asks] for results, and if I do not have any, asking if I am unwell. I'm fine, I say. Your lab mate is working steadily, he says. She comes in on weekends and holidays. Have you been doing the same? Not really. Not Christmas or Thanksgiving Or the time I was bedridden with the flu.

Then I go back to lab and try again. Think small, I tell myself, think doable, think of something that might impress no one but will still let you graduate and find a job.

I am very bothered when I think of the bad things I have done in my life. Not least that time in the chemistry lab when I held a pair of scissors by the blades and played the handles in the naked lilac flame of the Bunsen burner; then called your name, and handed them over. O the unrivalled stench of branded skin as you slipped your thumb and middle finger in, then couldn’t shake off the two burning rings. Marked, the doctor said, for eternity. Don’t believe me, please, if I say that was just my butterfingered way, at thirteen, of asking you if you would marry me." — I Am Very Bothered

biotechnology is the provision of useful products and services from biological processes. It does not necessarily involve scientists in white lab coats hovering over petri dishes. In fact, biotechnology goes back thousands of years. It probably began the first time someone used yeast to convert sugars and starches to alcohol. Yeast is a little living machine that takes in food and produces excrement. But don’t pooh-pooh that excrement. Many humans like it. It’s called alcohol. Molds are also neat little machines that produce a variety of by-products. When the ancient Egyptians applied moldy bread to wounds as a poultice, they were exploiting biotechnology. The mold probably churned out penicillin — which, of course, the ancients did not recognize as such — and it helped heal the wound.

Liz Gorman, a fiery redhead, had been one of the founding members of the Raven Brigade. During their first “mission”—a failed attempt to burn down a university chemistry lab—the police had picked up a code name on the scanner: CD. It was later revealed that the male members of the Brigade called her CD, short for Carpenter’s Dream, because she was “flat as a board and easy to screw.” Sixties radicals, for all their so-called progressive thoughts, were some of the world’s biggest sexists. Now the implants made sense. Everyone Myron had interviewed remembered one thing about “Carla”—her cup size. Liz Gorman had been famous for her flat chest—what better disguise than oversized breast implants? “The feds and cops are cooperating on this one,” Higgins said. “They’re trying to keep this quiet for a while.

The other thing I remember from the chemistry lab is stuff about pressure. Pressure turns coal into diamonds. Pressure does things.

I seriously don’t give a crap how I get the pants; just that I get ‘em before my next class. A wet crotch is not the way to show Brittany I’m a stud. I wait at the tree while other kids throw away their lunches and head back inside. Before I know it, music starts playing through the loudspeakers and Paco is nowhere in sight. Great. Now I have five minutes to get to Peterson’s class. Gritting my teeth, I walk to chemistry with my books strategically placed in front of my crotch, with two minutes to spare. I slide onto the stool and push it as close to the lab table as possible, hiding the stain. Brittany walks into the room, her sunshine hair falling down the front of her chest, ending in perfect little curls that bounce when she walks. Instead of that perfection turning me on, it makes me want to mess it all up. I wink at her when she glances at me. She huffs and pulls her stool as far away from me as possible. Remembering Mrs. Peterson’s zero-tolerance rule, I pull my bandana off and place it in my lap directly over the stain. Then I turn to the pom-pom chick sitting next to me. “You’re gonna have to talk to me at some point.” “So your girlfriend can have a reason to beat me up? No thanks, Alex. I’d rather keep my face the way it is.” “I don’t have a girlfriend. You want to interview for the position?” I scan her from top to bottom, focusing on the parts she relies on so heavily. She curls her pink-frosted top lip and sneers at me. “Not on your life.” “Mujer, you wouldn’t know what to do with all this testosterone if you had it in your hands.” That’s it, Alex. Tease her into wanting you. She’ll take the bait. She turns away from me. “You’re disgusting.” “What if I said we’d make a great couple?” “I’d say you were an idiot.

Alex whispers, “There’s a thin line between love and hate. Maybe you’re confusing your emotions.” I scoot away from him. “I wouldn’t bet on it.” “I would.” Alex’s gaze turns toward the door to the classroom. Through the window, his friend is waving to him. They’re probably going to ditch class. Alex grabs his books and stands. Mrs. Peterson turns around. “Alex, sit down.” “I got to piss.” The teacher’s eyebrows furrow and her hand goes to her hip. “Watch your language. And the last time I checked, you don’t need your books in order to go to the restroom. Put them back on the lab table.” Alex’s lips are tight, but he places the books back on the table. “I told you no gang-related items in my class,” Mrs. Peterson says, staring at the bandanna he’s holding in front of him. She holds out her hand. “Hand it over.” He glances at the door, then faces Mrs. Peterson. “What if I refuse?” “Alex, don’t test me. Zero tolerance. You want a suspension?” She wiggles her fingers, signaling to hand the bandana over immediately or else. Scowling, he slowly places the bandana in her hand. Mrs. Peterson sucks in her breath when she snatches the bandanna from his fingers. I screech, “Ohmygod!” at the sight of the big stain on his crotch. The students, one by one, start laughing. Colin laughs the loudest. “Don’t sweat it, Fuentes. My great-grandma has the same problem. Nothing a diaper won’t fix.” Now that hits home because at the mention of adult diapers, I immediately think of my sister. Making fun of adults who can’t help themselves isn’t funny because Shelley is one of those people. Alex sports a big, cocky grin and says to Colin, “Your girlfriend couldn’t keep her hands out of my pants. She was showin’ me a whole new definition of hand warmers, compa.” This time he’s gone too far. I stand up, my stool scraping the floor. “You wish,” I say. Alex is about to say something to me when Mrs. Peterson yells, “Alex!” She clears her throat. “Go to the nurse and…fix yourself. Take your books, because afterward you’ll be seeing Dr. Aguirre. I’ll meet you in his office with your friends Colin and Brittany.” Alex swipes his books off the table and exits the classroom while I ease back onto my stool. While Mrs. Peterson is trying to calm the rest of the class, I think about my short-lived success in avoiding Carmen Sanchez. If she thinks I’m a threat to her relationship with Alex, the rumors that are sure to spread today could prove deadly.

A college student who wants to file a complaint of sexual assault within the campus disciplinary system informs a university employee such as an assistant dean for student life, or perhaps the Title IX coordinator. That person eventually forwards the complaint to a university disciplinary panel that may be composed of, for example, an associate dean with a master's degree in English literature, a professor of chemistry, and a senior majoring in anthropology. Unlike criminal prosecutors, members of the disciplinary panels do not have access to subpoena powers or to crime labs. They often have no experience in fact-finding, arbitration, conflict resolution, or any other relevant skill set. There is, to put it mildly, little reason to expect such panels to have the experience, expertise, and resources necessary to adjudicate a contested claim of sexual assault. Making matters worse, most campus tribunals ban attorneys for the parties (even in an advisory capacity), rules of procedure and evidence are typically ad hoc, and no one can consult precedents because records of previous disputes are sealed due to privacy considerations. Campus "courts" therefore have an inherently kangoorish nature. Even trained police officers and prosecutors too often mishandle sexual assault cases, so it's not surprising that the amateurs running the show at universities tend to have a poor record. And indeed, some victims' advocacy groups, such as the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), oppose having the government further encourage the campus judicial system to primarily handle campus sexual assault claims, because that means not treating rape as a serious crime. A logical solution, if federal intervention is indeed necessary, would be for OCR [US Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights] to mandate that universities encourage students who complain of sexual assault to report the assault immediately to the police, and that universities develop procedures to cooperate with police investigations. Concerns about victims' well-being when prosecutors decline to pursue a case could also be adjudicated in a real court, as a student could seek a civil protective order against her alleged assailant. OCR could have mandated or encouraged universities to cooperate with those civil proceedings, which in some cases might warrant excluding an alleged assailant from campus.

People will tell you that you have to know math to be a scientist, or physics or chemistry. They’re wrong. That’s like saying you have to know how to knit to be a housewife, or that you have to know Latin to study the Bible. Sure, it helps, but there will be time for that. What comes first is a question, and you’re already there. It’s not nearly as involved as people make it out to be.

New York Times article from March 8, 1953, titled “Looking Back Two Billion Years.” “Obviously,” Edmond said, “this experiment raised some eyebrows. The implications could have been earth-shattering, especially for the religious world. If life magically appeared inside this test tube, we would know conclusively that the laws of chemistry alone are indeed enough to create life. We would no longer require a supernatural being to reach down from heaven and bestow upon us the spark of Creation. We would understand that life simply happens…as an inevitable by-product of the laws of nature. More importantly, we would have to conclude that because life spontaneously appeared here on earth, it almost certainly did the same thing elsewhere in the cosmos, meaning: man is not unique; man is not at the center of God’s universe; and man is not alone in the universe.” Edmond exhaled. “However, as many of you may know, the Miller-Urey experiment failed. It produced a few amino acids, but nothing even closely resembling life. The chemists tried repeatedly, using different combinations of ingredients, different heat patterns, but nothing worked. It seemed that life—as the faithful had long believed—required divine intervention. Miller and Urey eventually abandoned their experiments. The religious community breathed a sigh of relief, and the scientific community went back to the drawing board.” He paused, an amused glimmer in his eyes. “That is, until 2007…when there was an unexpected development.” Edmond now told the tale of how the forgotten Miller-Urey testing vials had been rediscovered in a closet at the University of California in San Diego after Miller’s death. Miller’s students had reanalyzed the samples using far more sensitive contemporary techniques—including liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry—and the results had been startling. Apparently, the original Miller-Urey experiment had produced many more amino acids and complex compounds than Miller had been able to measure at the time. The new analysis of the vials even identified several important nucleobases—the building blocks of RNA, and perhaps eventually…DNA. “It was an astounding science story,” Edmond concluded, “relegitimizing the notion that perhaps life does simply happen…without divine intervention. It seemed the Miller-Urey experiment had indeed been working, but just needed more time to gestate. Let’s remember one key point: life evolved over billions of years, and these test tubes had been sitting in a closet for just over fifty. If the timeline of this experiment were measured in miles, it was as if our perspective were limited to only the very first inch…” He let that thought hang in the air. “Needless to say,” Edmond went on, “there was a sudden resurgence in interest surrounding the idea of creating life in a lab.” I remember that, Langdon thought. The Harvard biology faculty had thrown

What I like about Gattaca is that it is not what you think when you think of sci-fi. There are very few special effects. There is a man in lab doing work day in and day out. He waits for the centrifuge to be done. He pipettes something into vials. The movie is set in the far future and yet nothing about the science is flashy. The movie is timeless in this way.

For years Bell Labs had been operating small satellite facilities at far-flung locations around New Jersey—near the shore in the towns of Holmdel and Deal, for instance, and in the forested hills near the North Jersey town of Whippany. Long-wave and shortwave radio researchers at those outposts needed distance from the interference of New York City (and from one another) to do proper research and measurements. Murray Hill was put in a similar context: A move to the suburbs would allow the physics, chemistry, and acoustics staff to conduct research in a location unaffected by the dirt, noise, vibrations, and general disturbances of New York City.

Why are you asking me?" Viv said. "Ask your lovely girlfriend." Tim's lips cinched into a happy little knot. Viv looked at him looking at Davida and thought how it was like watching some lab experiment. Bubbles of mercury running into each other's arms. Iron filings performing their mating dance for the magnet. Cesium exploding at the lightest touch of H2O. Exactly what the laws of chemistry demanded. It was as science-y as that. He'd found his person.

Baker, after all, was not a physicist but a chemist—someone who perceived that progress, the means of moving science and technology forward, was really the struggle to understand the composition of materials and fashion new and better ones whenever possible. Materials, he would later say, represented “the grand alliance of engineering and science.”22 To Baker, chemistry was the discipline that made a global communications network feasible.

exit. But that gave Carlson time to regain his bluster. “Again, what do you want? You can’t just come busting into my office.” “This is me being nice and giving you a chance to talk here,” Karen said. “Do you want me to drag you down to the police station in handcuffs instead?” Carlson’s mouth moved, but nothing came out. Maybe he was starting to realize that playing the bully wasn’t going to do the trick. “Do you know Sergei Turgenev?” I asked. “Of course, he’s one of my visiting scientists. A good man, chemistry PhD from Moscow State University.” “How is he in the lab?” I asked. “Seem to know his stuff?” Carlson fidgeted in his chair. “Well, he’s only been here a few months.

In August 2018 a drug I’d never heard of was discovered, having killed a person who overdosed near Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The drug was called isotonitazene—an opioid first synthesized in the 1950s that hits the same brain receptors as fentanyl. Iso—as it’s now known on the streets—then was found in dozens of corpses in Chicago and Milwaukee, and from there it spread to Michigan, Indiana, Tennessee, killing at least 230 people in all. Researchers believe it may be marketed by Chinese chemical labs as a replacement for fentanyl, which the Chinese government banned in 2019. In April 2020 isotonitazene seemed to fade, only to be replaced by another synthetic opioid, brorphine. Brorphine showed up in the corpses of 130 people in many of the same states. At least seventeen new synthetic drugs were identified in 2020 alone. The day I turned in my manuscript, another opioid was found on the rise, metonitazene. “It’s almost as though they’re market testing,” said Barry Logan, chief forensic scientist at NMS Labs, which does bodily fluid tests for coroners nationwide. Underground chemists seemed to be searching the chemistry literature for drugs that might be molecularly modified to be more potent. Then, like Paul Janssen did when he invented fentanyl, “they’re experimenting,” Logan said. “They’re changing the molecule’s [structure], which changes how rapidly it’s taken up into the brain. Then they put it out there on the market.

Nutritional supplements may give you false or inaccurate results on medical laboratory tests.

With the web uncovered, the intricacies of the belowground alliance still remained a mystery to me, until I started my doctoral research in 1992. Paper birches, with their lush leaves and gossamer bark, seemed to be feeding the soil and helping their coniferous neighbors. But how? In pulling back the forest floor using microscopic and genetic tools, I discovered that the vast belowground mycelial network was a bustling community of mycorrhizal fungal species. These fungi are mutualistic. They connect the trees with the soil in a market exchange of carbon and nutrients and link the roots of paper birches and Douglas firs in a busy, cooperative Internet. When the interwoven birches and firs were spiked with stable and radioactive isotopes, I could see, using mass spectrometers and scintillation counters, carbon being transmitted back and forth between the trees, like neurotransmitters firing in our own neural networks. The trees were communicating through the web! I was staggered to discover that Douglas firs were receiving more photosynthetic carbon from paper birches than they were transmitting, especially when the firs were in the shade of their leafy neighbors. This helped explain the synergy of the pair’s relationship. The birches, it turns out, were spurring the growth of the firs, like carers in human social networks. Looking further, we discovered that the exchange between the two tree species was dynamic: each took different turns as “mother,” depending on the season. And so, they forged their duality into a oneness, making a forest. This discovery was published by Nature in 1997 and called the “wood wide web.” The research has continued unabated ever since, undertaken by students, postdoctoral researchers, and other scientists, with a myriad of discoveries about belowground communication among trees. We have used new scientific tools, as they are invented, along with our curiosity and dreams, to peer into the dark world of the soil and illuminate the social network of trees. The wood wide web has been mapped, traced, monitored, and coaxed to reveal the beautiful structures and finely adapted languages of the forest network. We have learned that mother trees recognize and talk with their kin, shaping future generations. In addition, injured trees pass their legacies on to their neighbors, affecting gene regulation, defense chemistry, and resilience in the forest community. These discoveries have transformed our understanding of trees from competitive crusaders of the self to members of a connected, relating, communicating system. Ours is not the only lab making these discoveries—there is a burst of careful scientific research occurring worldwide that is uncovering all manner of ways that trees communicate with each other above and below ground.

It was something I’d been waiting on permission for at work when I could have been doing more in my home lab. Why was I always standing aside instead of going after the thing that I wanted? I didn’t need Jerry to tell me it was okay before moving forward with experimenting in a field that fascinated me.

It happened in science lab on the very first day of their junior year. The chemistry teacher had handed her a beaker of some mysterious liquid and told her to carry it to her lab table. She had almost reached her seat when Jerome Hollis caught her eye and smiled. She blushed and tripped over her own feet. He plucked the beaker from her hands as she fell, then helped her stand up. “Thanks,” she said breathlessly. “For what?” He handed the flask back and her heart gave a little flip. He had straight black hair, hazel eyes, and black-framed glasses. He looked cute, in a nerdy-but-hip kind of way. She tried to collect herself. “For saving me from a horrible, disfiguring scar, of course,” she said. “After all, if I had been splashed with this, um—” She gingerly held the flask aloft. “Saline solution,” he said. “Otherwise known as salt water. You would have been fine.” “Oh.” She put the flask down and looked away. “Although,” he added thoughtfully, “if you had dropped the beaker, the gravitational force and speed of descent would have meant that it would have, in all probability, shattered.” Kate glanced back at him. “The force could have sent a shard of glass into my eye, blinding me,” she suggested. “Or cut a vein, causing a massive loss of blood. When you take all the disastrous possibilities into account—” “You should be given a medal for heroism,” Kate finished. “I can’t believe they’re not pinning it on my shirt right now.” He smiled, and she was lost.

This is about Gormey, I assume. Nadine Gormey? Have you hired her yet?... What in the blazes is wrong with you, man!... In the entire time I spent slumming at the Harvard chemistry labs," Ian continued, "Nadine Gormey was, without doubt, the only certifiable genius I ever encountered. Only a complete moron would be so stupid as to not hire her the second she walked into his office. Are you a complete moron?... And get down on your knees right now and beg - BEG! - Nadine Gormey to take over that rattrap of an operation you're running! Beg her and just perhaps she'll deign to bring the light of reason and scientific rigor to that pit of mediocrity you call a lab. Good day, sir!

We obviously have physical chemistry. Well, like, ‘Oops, we accidentally blew up the school science lab’ chemistry.

With a loud screeching noise, Aaron dragged his lab stool over to Scarlet’s table and sat down beside her. He leaned into her, his shoulder brushing hers. “I had a great Christmas. Want to know why?” he asked. Not really. He answered himself. “Because I got a new car.” Scarlet managed not to roll her eyes as she turned from her chemistry book and gave Aaron a forced smile. “From Santa?” “What kind of car?” Kristy scooted her stool closer to Scarlet and leaned in as well. “A sexy one?” Kristy was on the left side of Scarlet, clogging her nose with the scent of flowery perfume. And Aaron was on Scarlet’s right, brushing her shoulder with his over-sized bicep. She was in a Kristy and Aaron sandwich. Kill me now. Aaron flashed Kristy a smile that was probably supposed to look charming. It came across as smug. “A Challenger.” His breath drifted across Scarlet’s cheek, smelling like chocolate. In an attempt to be closer to Aaron, Kristy scooted even closer to Scarlet. “Ooh, that is sexy.” Kristy gave Aaron a flirty smile and leaned even further, her chest pressing up against Scarlet’s arm. The sandwich was becoming a Panini. A flower-and-chocolate Panini

At the Lab School children planted gardens and grew crops not to become farmers but to learn about food, chemistry, and geography. These students, who came from fairly affluent families in Hyde Park, acquired considerable knowledge, but they were creatively and actively involved in their education and less dependent on textbooks and traditional instruction. Children could read a textbook to learn how to boil an egg, but experimenting on their own drew upon their interests and strengthened their powers of observation. Efficiency was sacrificed, but active engagement in learning, as in democracy, required time and patience.

you were having an extraterrestrial in your bottle in your chemistry lab, and you wanted to make it comfortable so you can observe it,

Let’s say supper at six, then,” Elizabeth said, not wanting her to go. “The home lab. Everyone—you, Wilson, Mad, Six-Thirty, me, Harriet, Walter. You’ll need to meet Wakely and Mason at some point, too. The whole family.