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It was just ten years ago
that I saw an announcement in Scientific American
about a guy named Shawn Carlson who had just launched
an organization called "Society for Amateur
Scientists". This brought to mind the fun
I'd had doing amateur chemistry way back in the
1930s. So I promptly fired off a letter to Shawn
to join SAS. In it I mentioned the activity in
that area back then and the proliferation of publications
devoted to it. Shawn replied that he'd been dimly
aware of that. As he put it, "Looked at from
a proper perspective, this material may be quite
informative and perhaps inspirational to today's
amateurs."
The idea lay fallow for some
years. An online chemistry forum, to which I occasionally
contribute, was set up and has been moderately
active over the years. However little chemistry
appeared in the handsomely printed SAS Bulletin
during the nineties. With the switch to on-line
publishing, editor Sheldon Greaves sent out a
call for columnists, and I rashly volunteered
to do one on chemistry, drawing on my experiences
as an amateur, and later professional, chemist.
The rationale behind Chemistry
Corner is to present tested experiments and demonstrations
that are fun and exciting to do accompanied by
a little painless education in the principles
involved. This is not cutting-edge research, nor
is it a course in elementary chemistry. For the
most part I have presented only material that
I personally did myself, albeit years ago. Now
that I've somehow gotten rather long in tooth,
I no longer am set up to do any lab work This
means if the column is to continue indefinitely
I'll need input from some of you amateur chemists
(pros are welcome too). From personal contacts
I know that some good work is being done out there.
So if you have any work you'd like to present,
please send it in for inclusion in a future column,
with proper acknowledgment of course. For that
matter an entire column under your by-line would
be most welcome. |
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Liesegang Rings
Raphael Eduard Liesegang (1869-1947) well fits
the description of an amateur scientist. Although
he never completed a university education, he
did independent research and published numerous
papers on a wide variety of scientific subjects.
Today he is best known for his investigations
of the curious phenomena bearing his name, Liesegang
rings. More
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Born 6 May 1916 in Rockland,
Maine, I was attracted to chemistry at a very
early age. I recall being fascinated by the
illustrations in the chemistry textbook of a
high school student who boarded with my family,
and by her description of what happened when
the instructor dropped the sodium in the sink.
This convinced me that chemistry would be an
exciting career. A bit later reading Arthur
Conan Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet"
(Holmes was somewhat of a chemist) led me to
my first research project. This consisted in
extracting the color from anything that was
colored (various shades of crepe paper were
excellent starting materials) and putting up
the decoctions in medicine bottles labeled with
impressive names taken from a poisons and antidotes
manual. Mailing off 25 cents to the Porter Chemical
Company got me back my first sure 'nuf chemistry
set, a small box containing powders bearing
awesome names, "Ferric Ammonium Sulphate",
"Sodium Ferrocyanide", and the like.
A succession of sets plus chemicals from local
pharmacies1 contributed to a growing home laboratory.
My formal education terminated on graduation
from High School in the depths of the Great
Depression. I was awarded a scholarship at the
University of Maine but a severe downturn in
family fortunes precluded my accepting it. Casting
about for ways to make some money in the dismal
economic climate I wrote an article based on
work I had done in my home lab and sent it off
to Hugo Gernsback's Everyday Science and Mechanics
magazine. Weeks passed with no check in the
mail or other response until one day I picked
up a copy at a newsstand and was surprised and
thrilled to find my opus in print. -->
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This brought me my fifteen minutes of local fame, but I never
succeeded in getting whatever their minuscule
word rate would have paid. It was not until years
later that I learned about old Hugo's "pay
upon lawsuit" policy. However I continued
to write for the various short-lived amateur chemistry
journals that emerged in the late thirties2.
After a period of sporadic employment
I eventually landed a real job as a lab technician
with a small, struggling company in the odd field
of extracting hydrocolloids (alginates) from brown
seaweeds (kelp). This was the start of what turned
out to be a 56-year career of research and development
in the field of seaweed polysaccharides. A high
point was on being granted a patent for a process
for enhancing the gelling properties of carrageenans
(polygalactans from red seaweeds). This turned
out to be commercially valuable and helped bring
that small company to the forefront in the industry,
a position it still maintains, though now a division
of a large conglomerate. Modifications of the
process are still in use throughout the seaweed
industry. For proprietary reasons researchers
in industry don't get to publish much, but I do
have a modest corpus, mostly in various Proceedings
and those overpriced review volumes that only
libraries can afford.
That's more than enough of blowing
my own horn. Of vastly more importance to me was
my marriage to a lovely lady, widowed with two
small children. Now in its forty-first year that's
still going strong.
Notes:
1: I once bought one ounce of mercury which the
pharmacist weighed out into a small vial and remarked
"One ounce in a one-dram bottle."
2: Amateur
Science, 1900-1950: A Historical Overview (With
Emphasis on Amateur Chemistry) , SAS E-Bulletin,
6-12-2002.
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