Chemical Bonds Photo

[Xei]

After spending years being told by my teacher not to try and look at diagrams of chemical bonds as actual things but more just simplifications and symbols, this article is something of a shocker. It's amazing actually. Here is roughly how we would draw the molecule in the article: We tend to miss them out but we could also show the bonds to the hydrogen atoms around the outside of the molecule. Here's the article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8225491.stm

[Specialis Sapientia]

Wow, nice photo

[DrunkenArse]

I'm not a chemistry person but I find that in math at least, lower level (i.e. not Phds) teachers don't know what the fuck they're talking about. That's just a general rule of with exceptions of course but, in the states at least, it's fearfully accurate.

[Xei]

Chemists are just the surface, if you've ever heard a biologist try to talk maths... Once we had to work out the respiratory quotient (I can't believe I still remember all this rubbish) of some organism or other, and we ended up having to divide 0 by 0... my teacher asked the class and there were some mumbles of '0' which she took to be correct... naturally I took issue with this flagrant mathematical rape and she just got annoyed and ignored me... Gah biologists.

[slash112]

wow thats amazing. and lol xei

[SnakeCharmer]

Your teacher might have been talking about the double bonds in the aromatic ring. They don't correspond to the physical reality. In reality the double bond (or electrons involved in it) is delocalized or spread over the entire ring, making it something between the single and double bond (as far as energy goes). About your biology comment: I'm a bio(chem) person trying to cross into the mathematical realm. While I'm not an expert in mathematics, I don't consider myself mathematically illiterate. Bad teachers are just bad teachers, no generalization should be made about the entire field just because of them. Some of my statistics and math. modelling teachers would occasionally say things that make no sense biologically or evolutionary. However, I do agree that people should get better basic education in mathematics if they are to be involved in any field of science... or if they are to educate generations of future scientists.

[DrunkenArse]

and we ended up having to divide 0 by 0... That's never a good sign I once had a math teacher claim that you could multiply the first n primes and then subtract one or add one to the product to get another prime. Always. I thing the first counter example is doing it up to seven but it might be 11 or 13. Gah biologists. Don't be too harsh. The ones that are good at math (the evolutionary biologists) do some interesting stuff. And they did give us natural selection. I have to agree with dennett that that is the greatest idea that anybody ever had.

[Xei]

I once had a math teacher claim that you could multiply the first n primes and then subtract one or add one to the product to get another prime. Always. I thing the first counter example is doing it up to seven but it might be 11 or 13. I remember it being surprisingly large... I always think that proof's slightly over-complex. I don't see why you don't just take a random set of primes conjectured to be exhaustive. Your teacher might have been talking about the double bonds in the aromatic ring. They don't correspond to the physical reality. In reality the double bond (or electrons involved in it) is delocalized or spread over the entire ring, making it something between the single and double bond (as far as energy goes). Oh yeah, we learnt all about that. It's just that there's not really any physical 'bond' there, it's just a fuzzy cloud of electrons, you get it into your head that it's more a conceptual idealisation than anything else. About your biology comment: I'm a bio(chem) person trying to cross into the mathematical realm. While I'm not an expert in mathematics, I don't consider myself mathematically illiterate. Bad teachers are just bad teachers, no generalization should be made about the entire field just because of them. Some of my statistics and math. modelling teachers would occasionally say things that make no sense biologically or evolutionary. However, I do agree that people should get better basic education in mathematics if they are to be involved in any field of science... or if they are to educate generations of future scientists. Yeah well, I mean, they're not all bad... my DoS at Cambridge is a mathematical biologist, and I want to do mathematical neuroscience after my BA in maths, so...

[The Cusp]

The actual image it's self is like looking at one of those optical illusions. It keeps changing and shifting as you look at it. It's like the uncertainty principle at work.

[WakataDreamer]

Woah, he's right. cooooool