Pray for Mojo
February 3rd, 2008 by excimerI was thumbing through my copy of the notorious Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments [1] (by which I mean I have a pdf of it, so not really thumbing… but… whatever) when I got to the organic chemistry section and found this:
The bananas are hydrogens. What?
…And to think, when the Russians beat us in the space race, people were surprised.
[1] You can download the book in pdf form here. If you have children, let them do some real chemistry… but make sure you have a fire extinguisher and maybe an oxygen tank and you should probably know CPR just in case. Oh, and make sure they wear goggles. Seriously.
That book can be so dangerous in the hands of kids.
Anything is potentially dangerous in the hands of kids. Any idea how many toys get recalled each year?
Better to get hurt as a kid than now. Kids heal fast.
This was supposed to be taken seriously? For what age? I mean if it’s under 13-14, it’s fine and even creative and definitely has nothing to do with space
I wonder if benzene tastes like bananas.
Hmmmmm.
I saw the taste of benzene described as a ‘burning’ taste. So maybe it tastes like bananas on fire.
…and where does it look like the monkeys are going to put the bananas? Yikes!!! No bananas served by monkeys for me, thank you.
Monkeys passing around bananas, I love it.
Sumio Iijima’s rat illustration is very cute
it is a common semiconducting rat that you find in many diagrams – a rat diode
If you count the tail separately from the anus, it’s a rat Op Amp.
Are the bananas hydrogens? I would have thought that they are the double bonds and the monkeys can pass them “aromaticity-ly”
I think I need holidays! I can actually see a benzene ring with the six monkeys….
I’d say the bananas are hydrogens, because each monkey grabs the next one with either one or two hands, like double-bonds. We were told about this picture in school, saying that Kekulé had this monkey-dream, just before he discovered the benzene-formula.
nice blog btw
I was told he dreamed about a snake that bites its tails and that is how he came up with the ring, I hadn’t heard about the monkeys before (Kekulé must have been into zoology …
)
The bananas are not equally separated, maybe that it why I thought that they weren’t the hydrogens, or maybe I am just going nuts…
If it wasn’t zoology, he must have taken some strong hallucinogens
That’s a great book.
I love the way it presumes a world where you can grab a can of carbon tet at the hardware store, and you would not get your ears sued off for even suggesting keeping a bottle of ammonia handy to sniff in case you sniffed too much chlorine.
And that monkeys sodomizing one another with bananas would help explain aromaticity. At least they got that right.
Wait…sodomy? Where? (Are you sure that’s not wishful thinking?)
Like you don’t know that monkey sodomy is central to materials chemistry. You forget, I know who you work for.
In the picture, it’s merely implied. But they are just being coy.
Oh, is that why we have the flail and wizard hat in the lab? Kinky.
you people frighten me.
me too – please will you let me into one of your parties?
Just sign the standard release form and you’re in. And watch for grinning monkeys with bananas. And/or anyone who synthesizes aromatic compounds.
I have one question about a whip and whip-cream: is their use specified on your standard release form? Often these two go hand-in-hand so to speak.
…but I do make aromatic compounds… I don’t… know… um.. what?
No, the flail is for management. The wizard hat is for students, particularly those in desperate need of publishable results for graduation, or for lab members who have Gandalf/Dumbledore fetishes. Unfortunately, the hat doesn’t work when writing up said results – but your advisor keeps the relic for that in his office.
I put on my robe and wizard’s hat?
The monkeys that have both feet of the other monker in the hands represent the double bonds.
The monkey ring was a parody published in the parody journal ‘Berichte der Durstigen Chemischen Gesellschaft’. The original picture can be found as reprint in an article in angwandte by Stephan Kekule von Stradonitz (the son of).
Z. Angew. Chem. 1927, 40, 25, 736 (doi : 10.1002/ange.19270402505 ).
No bananas in that picture however.
(You can read there that the monkeys are the Macacus cynocephalus.)
[...] I found this wonderful interpretation of a benzene ring from Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments on Carboin-based Curiosities: [...]