Tag: chemistry

Illumine anew, auld lang syne-ing…
The candles and lights realigning;
A beam’s lifelong essence
(Far past phosphorescence):
A window through winter still shining.

This is a rare winter-break post, given a theme that has generally been on my mind as we (here in the Northern Hemisphere) progress toward our longest nights this weekend.  It is a new poem, and it’s not one that would fit neatly into a NaPoWriMo routine, but it does align with some of the concepts discussed here.  I’ll use more space than my typical 280 words in expanding it, as it uses more poetic license than is typical.       

“Illumine anew, auld lang syne-ing…  /
The candles and lights realigning.“

As we approach the holiday season and the start of a new calendar year, it’s inevitable to dwell in memory at times… to be “auld lang syne-ing,” to adapt a familiar phrase. 

My family celebrates Christmas, with many traditions centered around candles, lights, and music.  Moreover, having grown up in a parsonage, I remember well how these seasonal traditions fell into the precisely defined details of the liturgical calendar, during my childhood.  The third Sunday of Advent was marked on the Advent wreath by a pink candle, rather than purple, designating it as Gaudete Sunday.  Christmas Eve briefly brought a beautiful luminaria display: spanning the sidewalks approaching the church, promptly removed by the end of the evening.  Our tree and home decorations came down on New Year’s Day, as Epiphany loomed and would mark the start of a stretch of Ordinary Time (not to mention the concurrent return of school-day routines and peak punctuality). 

Reflecting on these traditions (in other words, “realigning” these sources of illumination) gave rise to a tangential memory, but a welcome one, this week.    

“A beam’s lifelong essence /
(Far past phosphorescence)…“

Different chemical processes involving light can happen on different timescales.  When a molecule absorbs light, it is energetically excited and can take many pathways due to this extra energy.  Two of these pathways involve radiative decay: the excited molecule returns to its ground state by emitting light.  

Two possibilities for this path are called fluorescence and phosphorescence.  Of the two, phosphorescence has a much longer timescale (typically on the order of thousandths of seconds); it occurs much more slowly than fluorescence (typically on the order of millionths of seconds), due to the specific electronic behavior involved. Photochemical lifetime is a term that quantifies how long a molecule exists in the excited state: essentially, how long its glow can be observed.  Both processes described above are quite fleeting, in terms of an everyday frame of reference, but phosphorescence has a lifetime that is thousands of times longer than that of fluorescence. 

The light-related memory that came to mind this week was from years past, so the lifetime in question was far, far longer (to a comical extent) than even that of the relatively slow process of phosphorescence. 

“A window through winter still shining.“

By the time I reached middle and high school, we lived in a relatively rural area, and so my bus ride on winter mornings was particularly dark.  I remember mentioning once to Mom how much it helped break up the monotony of the ride (and thus alleviate my worry about the upcoming school day), starting back into the January routine, to still see occasional Christmas lights still scattered along the route. 

Our own outdoor lights were relatively simple, lining a window facing the busiest road through town, which happened to be a fixture of the bus route.  I noticed in every subsequent winter after that conversation that the lights stayed up well into the New Year: long, long past the formal start of Ordinary Time.       

Years have gone by since Mom’s passing; many more, since the bus rides.  However, the metaphorical lifetime of that window in winter persists: hundreds of millions of seconds, now; still counting; still shining.   

“Picture-book classic:
Consider the terrapin,
Facing the day 
With defense first miscued;
Learning to balance 
A shell-set employment
With needed steps…
As a wise turtle would do.”

The 12 April 2024 Twitter poem highlighted Turtle Tale, a memorable storybook written by Frank Asch.  This was the last of three story-summarizing poems written during National Library Week 2024.  (In terms of the post title here, the rhyme with “hurtle forward” was both humorous and intriguingly contradictory.)  

“Picture-book classic: /
Consider the terrapin…”

Unlike the novels celebrated earlier here, Turtle Tale is a picture book, highlighting simple images of a “terrapin” learning to navigate the world.  (Author Frank Asch also composed and illustrated many other classics during his career.)  

“Facing the day /
With defense first miscued; /
Learning to balance /
A shell-set employment /
With needed steps…”

In this story, the eponymous Turtle learns when best to use his shell, facing the various hazards of the day.  

Initially, a falling apple strikes him on the head, so he decides to always hide in his shell.  However, he then realizes he cannot eat or drink (his “defense [is] first miscued”), so he fully reverses his resolve.  The storyline continues through a few more “all or nothing” moments, until Turtle strategically deploys his “shell-set employment” at a key moment: hiding from a hungry fox, then re-emerging to face the day, once the danger is past.  

Achieving the balance between stationary, defensive stance and “needed steps” brings Turtle’s story to a satisfying close.  

“As a wise turtle would do.”

Turtle’s refrain as he strives for this happy medium is: “That’s what a wise turtle would do.”  He first applies this characterization to the two extremes (always using the shell; never using the shell) before realizing the wisdom of moderation, at which point the line– now deployed more aptly– closes the book. 

During my childhood, this was one of my and my siblings’ favorite stories, and the status of “wise turtle” became a shorthand for achieving a sensible response to an everyday challenge.  It has been fun to revisit the book, years later, in this setting.  

“The week underway: celebrating
Books, libraries, tomes; elevating 
The frigates poetic.  
Next few posts’ aesthetic:
Some classics, verse-commemorating.”

The 10 April 2024 Twitter limerick began a new set of themed posts, as the week of the total solar eclipse was also National Library Week 2024!  This first poem simply introduced the week-in-progress, while each of the next three posts summarized a specific story.  

“The week underway: celebrating /
Books, libraries, tomes…”

The first two lines of the limerick shifted focus to National Library Week and noted that it was already underway.  The motto for this year’s event was “Ready, Set, Library.”  

“[E]levating / The frigates poetic…”

The third line referenced Emily Dickinson’s much more memorable celebration of the “books, libraries, tomes” alluded to previously: “There is no Frigate like a Book / To take us Lands away.”  (I am sure I am one of many who encountered that particular term for the first time in her poem, reinforcing her verse’s overall theme.)  

This in turn reminded me of one of the previous spring’s posts, which had highlighted a comparable quote by Anna Quindlen: “Books are the plan, and the train, and the road.  They are the destination, and the journey.  They are home.”  

“Next few posts’ aesthetic: /
Some classics, verse-commemorating.”

“Pro-book” is not a particularly surprising or novel (ha) stance to take, but I will always welcome the opportunity to deliberately revisit some favorite stories in this space, and the subsequent three Twitter poems were fun to write.  I similarly look forward to writing in more detail about them here, this month.  

The last two lines set up the goals for the rest of the week, in which the poems would aim to “verse-commemorate” some of my favorite classic books from years past.  

In the midst of autumn hectic,
I am pondering eclectic
(With most lines acatalectic)
For October-posting goal. 
In the meetings by the dozens
Re: the calendar discussions,
Hear the essay repercussions 
Where extent exerts control:
Whence the structure, on the whole? 

This is a non-Twitter poem for which the general theme has been running through my mind since the late summer.  It uses the structure of a stanza of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” which the author contextualizes from start to finish in his absorbing essay entitled “The Philosophy of Composition.”  

For my part, this homage comments on some of the discussions I’ve heard in academic meetings in the past few months.  Since the poem didn’t have the Twitter constraint of 280 characters, I’ll give myself some more flexibility, with a 560-word limit, starting here.   

In the midst of autumn hectic, /
I am pondering eclectic /
(With most lines acatalectic.) /
For October-posting goal….

This essay will “ponder… [the] eclectic” more than typical chem-specific posts here do. The “lines acatalectic” seem particularly suited for this specific “October-posting goal”: few poems have as distinctive a syllabic rhyme scheme as Poe’s “The Raven.”  It is a fun challenge to match the structure.  

In the meetings by the dozens /
Re: the calendar discussions, /
Hear the essay repercussions /
Where extent exerts control…

Several of this semester’s committee meetings (but not, in all prosaic fairness, anywhere near dozens of them!) have involved discussions about future years’ academic calendars.

What I found initially counter-intuitive, but quickly convincing, is that the first step must be the choice regarding the actual calendar adjustment, before the substance of what that adjustment entails can be thoroughly discussed.  This is because many long-term, high-stakes campus plans— class modules, athletic teams’ schedules— hinge on what the calendar looks like in the first place.  The timescale for changing the calendar (years in advance) is longer than the timescale for using it (months or weeks in advance).  

When the pertinent conversations began, they thus suggested “essay repercussions,” as I was reminded of “The Philosophy of Composition,” in which Edgar Allan Poe recounts his writing process for “The Raven.”  His essay highlights some similarly unexpected points.  

For instance, rather than the metric feet used, or the scene depicted, or the voice of the narrator– all of which are quite famous– the fundamental requirement that Poe discusses is simply the poem’s length: “The initial consideration was that of extent.”  He comments that the poem should be read all at once to achieve maximum effect: “If two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere, and everything like totality is at once destroyed.”  Soon after follow similarly broad discussions of effect (“beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem”) and tone (“one of sadness”).  

It is only after those three big-picture choices that Poe addresses what I would’ve initially thought to be more vivid inspirations: the raven itself, the bird’s “Nevermore” refrain, and the story of the narrator and Lenore.  And likewise, it is only after THAT discussion that Poe notes that he “may as well say a few words of the versification.”  The logistics of the intricate rhymes, employing trochaic feet in a primarily (but not entirely) “octametre acatalectic” scheme, are presented almost as an afterthought. 

When I first encountered this essay, I was surprised to learn that the dramatic saga of the “midnight dreary” finds its primary origin in a line-count requirement.  

Whence the structure, on the whole? 

In terms of this post, I’ll keep my focus on the comparison between poem and calendar.  It is interesting to see how “extent exerts control” in both literary work and academic planning, as the defining first principle.  The overall shapes of both works under consideration (“the structure[s], on the whole”) rely on eminently practical starting points.  

More broadly, it is fascinating to revisit such a generously retrosynthetic analysis of a poem.  Doing so evokes some chemistry themes generally: the creative process versus the final work, the varied ways in which “micro” elements combine to yield “macro” effects, and other themes I’ve enjoyed exploring in this space.  I expect I will return to Poe’s essay in the future.