“In reading reaction’s drawn evidence,
Consider notational relevance:
What seems like a muddle
Of differences subtle
Resolves through an arrow analysis!”
I am back to campus for a new semester, and so it is helpful to also return to this writing routine. The second half of NaPoWriMo 2023 began with a set of Twitter poems highlighting “chemical notation week” in the hashtags, a theme that seems like a bit of a hard sell as I revisit these in early 2024! I’ll plan on one post per poem, through the next several weeks; however, if the writing starts getting extremely dense, I might combine and summarize a few.
“In reading reaction’s drawn evidence, /
Consider notational relevance…”
The goal of this series of poems was to highlight how seemingly small differences in reaction arrow notation can play major roles in chemistry settings: how a “reaction’s drawn evidence” (its interpretation by another chemist) relies heavily on its specific “notational relevance” (the precise usage of the correct notation for the process of interest).
This is a point that often can be frustratingly unexpected for chemistry learners: where what appears to be a small error results in what seems like a disproportionate effect on a graded assessment. My goal was that this set of limericks would be an accessible and fun way to deliberately introduce and emphasize these important differences in notation.
“What seems like a muddle /
Of differences subtle /
Resolves through an arrow analysis!”
The last three lines address what the themes of the next few poems and posts will be: first, that chemical reactions can communicate information that seems confusingly dense; second, that careful attention to these subtleties can resolve the confusion. In particular, the many types of reaction arrows will be explored over the next several poems.
The last line relies on a pun between “error analysis,” which is a common theme of many lab reports, as the propagation of error throughout an experiment is quantified, and “arrow analysis”: the close examination of reaction arrows that these poems will involve.
Chemphasis 