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Going on a Date

7 Apr 2023

In 1960 Willard Frank Libby was awarded the Nobel Prize for his method of using carbon-14 to find the age of objects ranging from ancient bows and arrows to trees buried in glacial ice. Since then,...

Put a Cork In It

3 Mar 2023

I’ve never been one for cork sniffing. I always thought it was kind of a snobby thing to do, but I never really investigated the practice since I’ve never really cared much for wine. Then one day,...

An End to “Gilder’s Palsy”

24 Feb 2023

Physicians today are unlikely to encounter “Gilder’s palsy.” But prior to the 19th century this ailment had to be considered when a patient presented with tremors, irritability, increased...

Shivers, Goosebumps, and a Good Dose of Lizzo

6 Jan 2023

I looked out the airplane window and then at my 20-month-old, who had no idea that after enjoying the warmth of Florida for two weeks, we were about to enter the frozen tundra of Montreal. “Get...

Bubbling In the New Year

28 Dec 2022

A fascinating story is told by the guide on a tour of perhaps the most famous champagne house in the world. Moet et Chandon in Reims is the producer of Dom Perignon, the king of bubblies. The...

Ice Science is Slippery

21 Dec 2022

Let’s start at the very beginning. As pure water is cooled to 0oC, it begins to form ice. This simply means that the H2O molecules which were randomly scurrying about in the liquid state now assume...

The Potential for Caffeine-Free Coffee via Crispr/CAS9 or Crossbreeding

2 Dec 2022

Our current methods for decaffeinating coffee are far from ideal. There are a few different methods, all with their own nuanced details, but they all shake out to using some kind of solvent to...

The Two Types of Erasable Ink and Why One Is Much Cooler Than the Other

4 Nov 2022

Introduced in 1979, the Papermate Erasermate offered something that, up until then, had been science fiction: an erasable pen. While correction fluids and tape were a well-established solution to...

There Is More to Acetone Than Removing Nail Polish

2 Nov 2022

Say acetone, and what comes to a chemist’s mind? Washing laboratory glassware is a good bet. Actually, the prime use of acetone is to produce polymethyl methacrylate, better known as Plexiglas....

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