6 Comments
"Call my broker -- I want in on that Facebook IPO"
Manhattan Wiccans prepare to launch a fundraising invasion of Union Square. (DNAinfo)
A different sort of witch hunt in a different hipster park: someone is actually ticketed for smoking! (Gothamist)
Prodigious birth! A ten-year-old makes a groundbreaking scientific discovery with her toy molecule kit. Guess we know who that girl will be in Gen Chem eight years from now… (Grist List)
Adorable, undeniably American, and yet oddly graphic: profiles of our obese pets. (CNN)
Sushi + France = chicken caesar maki roll? That can’t be right…a new Franco-Japanese import opens on the East Side. (NYT)
Witches’ Sabbath via Wikimedia Commons.
Loading …
6 Comments
@Anonymous This girl essentially was playing with advanced building blocks. Even a homeless man in New York City could have imagined such a molecule. It remains to be seen if this molecule can actually be constructed in a lab efficiently. Even then, the real accomplishment will belong to professor Zoellner and whoever synthesized the molecule, not clara. Being third author in this “publication” amounts to a nice pat on the head.
Nice to see this girl has an interest in chemistry, but it’s very painful experience for me when the media exaggerates the accomplishments of a 5th grader to compare with the achievements of real scientists, who are slaving away day and night in their labs. I suggest people question what they see and read before jumping to the first available conclusion.
@Anonymous I wish Bwog would actually take the time to look into the news they report. Poor journalism is simply repeating what others have said.
The “groundbreaking discovery” by a ten-year old isn’t remotely groundbreaking whatsoever. In fact, the girl was merely given a molecular model set and told to “go to town.” She constructed something with the same carelessness one has when playing with blocks, subsequently asking her teacher if she made a real molecule. The teacher didn’t know and asked an old college buddy of his. Nor did he know. So they published a “paper” asking if anyone else knew. The “paper” isn’t a paper in the classical sense either – it is a letter to the journal. For those of you not well versed in academic publications, that means this “paper” didn’t go through peer review, it didn’t go through any rigorous testing of methods of results (for those of you that haven’t caught on, this girl had neither). This “paper” has no plausible synthesis planned out. This “paper” is simply an inquiry to a larger audience.
There are an infinite amount of plausible molecules. Celebrating the creation of one because it was created by a ten-year old is just foolish.
This girl does not understand chemistry. This girl doesn’t understand the angular strain that would result from having a tertiary nitrogen bonded to a triol. This is a fine example of a curious cultural phenomenon in America, in which we are willing to reward mediocrity, magnifying and celebrating often useless, minor, or otherwise foolish accomplishments. To call this a discovery – to somehow suggest that this girl’s playing with plastic is comparable to the DISCOVERY OF, I DON’T KNOW, THE STRUCTURE OF DNA – is an insult to the tireless work scientists do every single day of their lives.
And if this girl really did like chemistry enough and decided to go to Columbia, she would probably place into intensive general chemistry or freshmen organic, certainly not general chemistry…
Bwog, get your head together.
@huh someone woke up on the wrong side of the Butler desk.
@let alone ring strain. and extreme steric hindrance.
@Anonymous the molecule is not cyclic, ergo no ring strain. There are also no steric issues in the molecule . Did you bother to look at it? The problem with the molecule is entirely torsional.
@Anonymous re: prodigious birth
“and I was like, yeah, I could sell this to the military for money..”
LEGENDARY. Girl knows where it’s at. I’ll see you at Pfizer little lady..