Chemicals and Biology: A Love Story

I knew this was coming. After all the shoveling I did during the "Large Snow Event" a week ago, the baggage lugging for our Florida trip, and the help I gave moving Kate's parents into their new house, I knew a back-tastrophy was potentially lurking around the corner. And I was fine until around 2:30 yesterday when an innocent hands-over-the-head stretch snapped something, causing the usual muscular ripple effect, locking up everything in my neck and upper back.

So, like many love stories, this one starts with heartbreak, or at least backache. Thankfully we understand so much about our biology we've been able to develop a huge battery of chemicals tailored toward specific restorative purposes, chemicals we're all come to depend on and...love.

My particular sweethearts right now are Prednisone, a steroidal anti-spasmodic and anti-inflammatory, Flexeril, and muscle-relaxant, and Vicodine, a Hydrocodone and Tylenol based pain-reliever. These three made sweet love to my biological processes yesterday and made it at least possible for me to sleep last night. Today I'm still bound up pretty bad, but the spasming has stopped for the most part. I'm about to take my next dose of Prednisone, followed by a Vicodine/Flexeril cocktail.

Oh, my little chemical menders, how I love thee. Let me count the ways...1 *swallow* - 2 *swallow* - 3 *swallow*....

Being Overly Prepared is a Good Thing

Being overly prepared for something is better than not being prepared enough. I've learned this lesson first-hand when I figured out that all the studying I've been doing for the past week and a half has been real overkill. I was given notes from a friend that went through the subjects like: Social Studies, Economics, Biology, Chemistry, Math, English, Politics, Geology, Writing, and a few more. It comes to find out that the Praxis I I am taking tomorrow morning only consists of writing, reading, and math. And my guess is that all those other subject matters are on the Praxis II, which I also have to take eventually, so really I didn't waste my time, I'm now just ahead of the game. Well, now I'm going to do something relaxing, since I didn't let myself relax like I could have while on vacation. Oh well, I should have read the fine print.

What a Beautifully Complex World We Live in

It never ceases to amaze me just how complex our physical world is. As I learn about the chemistry of soap making, I'm reminded of that again. The basic elements of the physical universe are simple. Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, etc. Basic atomic building blocks that make up everything we can see (and everything we can't.) Combine them in different ways, in differing amounts and you get vastly different chemicals with a nearly infinite range of properties. Two chemicals with nearly identical molecular makeups, with just one subtle shift, can behave vastly differently.

And what I find more beautiful and encouraging than the processes themselves is the fact that we humans, puny little denizens of a forgotten rock, orbiting one sun out a billion billion suns, understands them. We've managed, really only in the last 250 years or so, to work out the most hidden of physical processes. At least on a macro-level, our understanding of how the universe works is fairly complete. It's tested, verifiable and re-creatable. It's an amazing accomplishment, and its effects on modern life are readily apparent.

Take soap making for example. Soap was likely happened upon by accident thousands of years ago during temple sacrifices to one god or another. As rain washed the fats and ashes from the burnt offerings into rivers, the water, fats and alkaline from the ash (the constituent elements of soap making) reacted to create a soap film on the river which then washed down to where people were cleaning clothes. People noticed that when they cleaned clothes using water tainted with this film, clothes cleaned up better. Eventually they put two and two together and began making soap intentionally.

But it was hit or miss, and batches of soap could fail for a number of reasons. There was no way to know how strong the alkaline (lye) solution was for each batch. Nor could anyone tell reliably if there was any other chemicals entering the reaction that shouldn't be there. Thermometers for monitoring temperature are a modern invention. So most of the factors that dictate the quality of soap were totally unmeasurable. Soap, as a result, was often harsh and irritating, and sometimes dangerous.

Today we have such a deep understanding of the process that not a single chemical property goes unnoticed. We know the saturation levels of different fats. Their molecular weights, and how that affects the alkaline reaction. We can precisely measure the amount of the alkaline sodium hydroxide that goes into our lye solution. We know exactly, on a molecular level how much alkaline is necessary to fully saponify (convert fats to soap) a certain weight and density of fats and oils. There so much more I won't go into. It's exciting stuff, though, trust me.

How I didn't end up a chemistry major is beyond me. I think I just realized how important and interesting it is too late in life.