1.
“Test tubes and beakers and
Flasks volumetric;
Pipettes and burets and
Stir bars magnetic.
Mortars and pestles and
Stands with their rings–
These are a few of my favorite things.”
2.
“It’s not the chair (the most stable),
But other conformer, you’ll denote;
Write down, write down,
Write down, write down
The cyclohexane form: boat.”
3.
“Greenish-blue shade of patina
On copper’s once-brown surface,
Caused by air’s action:
Outward consistence
Will change its color,
A redox instance…”
The Twitter posts from 19 April 2021, 20 April 2021, and 21 April 2021 were all of a similar theme: using lyrics from a famous musical number to illustrate a chemistry-related concept. Since the meaning of each is relatively one-note (ha), I’ll address them all briefly in a single post.
“Test tubes and beakers and
Flasks volumetric;
Pipettes and burets and
Stir bars magnetic.
Mortars and pestles and
Stands with their rings–
These are a few of my favorite things.”
The first poem takes after the rhyme scheme and itemized format of “My Favorite Things,” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music. It lists common pieces of lab equipment.
“It’s not the chair (the most stable),
But other conformer, you’ll denote;
Write down, write down,
Write down, write down
The cyclohexane form: boat.”
The second echoes the format of “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat,” from Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls. Many molecules exist as multiple conformers: they can twist and bend in three-dimensional space, and these different shapes differ in terms of their energies (and thus stabilities). This poem highlights two of the many conformers available to the molecule cyclohexane: the chair and the boat, depending on how the cyclic molecule appears to bend. Of these two, the boat is the less stable conformer. (This particular verse has a long set-up for a brief punchline!)
“Greenish-blue shade of patina
On copper’s once-brown surface,
Caused by air’s action:
Outward consistence
Will change its color,
A redox instance…”
The last mimics “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina,” from Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Evita. It describes a redox reaction available to copper, which exists in its elemental form as an orangish-brown metal, but can be oxidized to what’s called a patina, adopting a greenish-blue color (as seen via the Statue of Liberty). The “outward consistence” of a copper sample will thus look different after the “redox instance,” which is caused by “air’s action,” given the oxygen within.
Chemphasis 