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The Azolla Event: when is a fern not a fern?

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Betelgeuse, Gamow, and a Big Red Horse

There has been a lot of talk recently of Betelgeuse possibly going supernova this century or not...

Climate Change, the Walrus and the Carpenter

I have recently watched two videos on climate change by Sabine Hossenfelder.  The first one...

A Very Large Hadron Collider?

Frontpage image: Illustration of spherical explosion (kilonova) of two neutron stars (AT2017gfo/GW170817)...

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Robert H OlleyRSS Feed of this column.

Until recently, I worked in the Polymer Physics Group of the Physics Department at the University of Reading.

I would describe myself as a Polymer Morphologist. I am not an astronaut,

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Oh, The Sweet Stink (?) Of The Sea

Oh, The Sweet Stink (?) Of The Sea

Jul 31 2010 | comment(s)

Skegness is SO bracing


A Memory Of Croydon Airport

A Memory Of Croydon Airport

Jul 26 2010 | comment(s)

Recently Elizabeth Cunningham Perkins brought us a Weedy Rumination on the Creeping Bellflower, Campanula rapunculoides. I will now tell you about a wildflower growing in my own garden, which is full of memories.
Among My Souvenirs (chem.)

Among My Souvenirs (chem.)

Jul 19 2010 | comment(s)

I expect most of you have heard this song, with its sad words.  It’s full of letters sad and blue, a photograph or two, roses, tokens ….

Not for me!  But as I am clearing out our chemical store, with materials being sent off for disposal prior to the closure of the Reading University Physics Department, some of those bottles do hold memories for me.

There, in an outside brick shed, far enough away to store large quantities of flammable chemicals, sits a jar of sodium nitrite.  But the use to which it was put was somewhat unorthodox. 
A Tale Of Three Drugs

A Tale Of Three Drugs

Jul 17 2010 | comment(s)

In February 1999, the giant German pharmaceutical company Bayer celebrated the centenary of the launch of ASPIRIN, the world’s most successful legal drug. One thing they did NOT celebrate is the launch of HEROIN one year earlier.

Both drugs are synthesized by adding acetyl groups to already existing natural compounds. Aspirin is produced by adding one group to salicylic acid, found in willow bark which had long been used as a traditional remedy for pains and fever, while heroin is produced by adding two acetyl groups to morphine, the active constituent of opium.  Here are the two formulae with the acetyl groups marked with pink rectanguloids.

View from the South

View from the South

Jul 16 2010 | comment(s)

On the 12th July 2010, I was watching Rich Hall's 'The Dirty South'.  The programme trailer says:
Rich Hall sets his keen eye and acerbic wit on his homeland once again as he sifts truth from fiction in Hollywood's version of the southern states of the USA. Using specially shot interviews and featuring archive footage from classic movies such as Gone With The Wind, A Streetcar Named Desire and Deliverance, Rich discovers a South that is about so much more than just rednecks, racism and hillbillies.
Life-Saving Stink?

Life-Saving Stink?

Jun 19 2010 | comment(s)

Chemistry labs just don’t smell like they used to.  When I were a lad, chemistry lessons involved a procedure called Qualitative Inorganic Analysis.  This involved bubbling hydrogen sulfide H2S, produced in a Kipp’s apparatus, through solutions to precipitate various metals group by group.