The Science of Life

I had a thought earlier this week. I have my final paper in my Hazardous Materials class due tomorrow, which is we are supposed to pick one of five prepared questionnaires to answer in full essay form. In order to save some time in writing this weeks blog, I figured I would put a public version of it on here for this week. For next week, I will do something similar for my Hazardous Materials Final Exam. (It's an online class, and I will have the final exam submitted prior to posting next weeks blog, so there will be no moral quandaries with me posting my final exam on this blog.) I would like everyone who reads this blog to perform this personal assignment. If you wish to post your copy of it in the comments or not is up to your discretion, as is sharing it with anyone in your realm of existence. But I do ask that you do it so that you may think more intimately about your at-home materials and your use of them. As with the lab note-book I spent the past two weeks writing ab...

Last Week, I mentioned I would do a blog on the importance of keeping a good lab notebook this week. So this is me fulfilling that statement. Think of this as a weird part two to last weeks blog; kind of like “Let's Kill Hitler” to “A Good Man Goes to War”. The lab notebook has it's sticky little fingers in every single aspect of your modern, western life. The buildings which surround you and in which you live and frequent. The clothing which you wear. The food you eat. The computer you are reading this on. The internet networks that allow you to access this website. Thumb drives. The military. Medical science. The PA systems of poetry readings and stage performances such as plays. Batteries. Vehicles. Weapons. Drugs, legal as well as illegal. Television. Every aspect of your life, no matter how minor and minute or how big and grand it is, it depends on the lab notebook. Here, I will provide a few examples. The first is for those of you who are hip with...

Let me begin this blog as a whole with an awful truth about the scientist in general and the chemist in particular. This is a flaw that I disdain, but have to admit is present if I am going to stay honest to myself and to you, my readers. This flaw is that of not going full out on meticulous detail when publishing findings to a scientific journal. Now this may mean not going in full detail in a lab notebook causing the experiment to be irreproducible, or this may mean presenting visuals that represent “impossible science”, or this may mean getting to a certain conclusion through shady means, among other things. All of these things happen in all fields of science, and especially in chemistry. And when these flaws are apparent, the scientists involved in not going full out on detail on a report get called out by the scientific community, in the same way when a murder is committed, the murderer is called out by the community (s)he murdered in. And like murderers, those scientists w...

Hello, my name is K. "Alan" Eister (though you've probably gathered that by now). I have an AS in Chemistry from the College of Southern Nevada. I am also a Las Vegas slam poet of close to 8 years. I have never been on the national slam team, but I have come close. Here, I will attempt to combine the two and Help people see the beauty of chemistry. As far as I know (though, I cannot be too sure about this), there is no one that is taking on putting chemistry in the public eye. The most popular theme in putting science in the public eye is doing so through astronomy, which I understand. Astronomy is seen as the most beautiful (and most poetic) science. It is also the science that can be most easily done at home; the materials obtained for amateur astronomy very easily obtained, while the materials for amateur chemistry and biology are not. Chemistry is also beautiful. I will take aspects of the reality around you to help show this. I will start off very general, and will...

Starting this blog with a poem seems appropriate, since I am a poet.  The second post will be my introduction post. :) These Magic Little Things Who am I? This is what she wants to know. Because I have shielded myself from her that thoroughly that well. So I look at her, deep in her eyes, and I tell her this: “When you were first told about these strange little things called atoms, you can't quite comprehend their existence. Something that small, with so much empty space. And when they come together, magical things can happen. And that you are made of these magical things. Everything that makes you... you. Made of these magical little things. “Well, ever since I was a small boy, before anyone ever told me of these strange little atoms and the magical things they do, I could feel them inside of me. Tiny little molecules in my veins, reacting at the lungs with other molecules, flowing through my veins until they get to the muscles and orga...