Here is the unofficial annotated edition of the 2024 VCAA periodic table.
It’s not necessary to annotate the entire 2024 data book because it’s comprehensive enough already. This is the periodic table I’ll be using with my Pre-VCE students. Feel free to share this with your colleagues and students just like the 2019 and 2021 editions I made.
This annotated periodic table is neither created by nor endorsed by VCAA.
Download PDF
VCE results are out! Some schools shine spectacularly in one or two VCE subjects compared to all their other VCE subjects. For Mentone Girls’, it’s Psychology. For Eltham, it’s VisComm and Literature. For Fintona, it’s Accounting and Economics. Is your school on the list?
The percentages show the proportion of reported VCE study scores ≥40 (2022 data) that were from each particular subject. Consider giving those teachers a pay rise… 
VCE results are out! As usual, the VCAA has released the list of students who opted to have their name featured in the list of high achievers.
I downloaded the dataset and counted how many study scores ≥40 each Victorian school had in each subject. For each school, I them summed the number of 40+ study scores in English (including Literature and English Language but not EAL), and the number of 40+ study scores in the three Maths subjects.
The results are interesting: some schools, like Wellington Secondary College or Ringwood Secondary College, achieve much stronger results in Maths than in English. Some schools, like Loreto Toorak and Ivanhoe Girls’ Grammar are much stronger in English than Maths. Only a few schools were equally strong at both English and Maths.
Only Victorian schools with at least 5 reported ≥40 study scores in each of Maths and English were reported (130 schools).
Some Chapters in VCE Chemistry Units 1 and 2 are more useful than others when for Units 3 and 4. Organic chemistry and redox dominate the Units 3 and 4 course while ionic bonding and metallic bonding barely feature at all.
I made this chart so students know which chapters of Heinemann Chemistry 1 are essential (and usually assumed) knowledge for students commencing Heinemann Chemistry 2.
Please note that this chart is only relevant for students studying VCE Chemistry Units 1 and 2 in 2022 who will progress to VCE Chemistry Units 3 and 4 in 2023.
Here it is… the Kennedy College VCE Chemistry Trial Written Examination for 2022.
This trial examination is designed to test the key mistakes that students make year after year in the real examination based on my experience as a teacher.
Warning: every question in this trial examination is difficult.
Download the Kennedy College Trial Written Exam
The Great Prediction Competition 2022 launches today. Make accurate predictions about weather, the economy and public health for Science Week 2022.
Predictions must be made before 9am on Monday August 1st 2022.
Winners will be announced at the end of Science Week 2022 (Sunday August 21st 2022).
The VCE/VET Statistics dashboard I created last year has now been updated with the latest 2021 VCE/VET result data.
Click here to access the VCE/VET Statistics Dashboard.
Try this VCAA Chemistry Question 9 collection. Question 9 is usually about experimental design.
All these questions are original past VCAA Chemistry Question 9 (experimental design questions) from the current study design. Relevant pages from VCAA’s examination reports are linked below.
Note that the first question in this collection is question 8 because the 2018 NHT paper only had 9 questions in total instead of the usual 10. The next question isn’t exactly related to experimental design, but rather to an experimental cell design. It’s the closest question in the 2019 NHT paper to a question on experimental design.
All the best for the upcoming Chemistry exam!
Question 9 Collection Question 9 Collection Solutions
Some multiple choice questions (approximately 2 out of every 30) are “tricky” – that is, they contain a distractor that students choose more frequently than the correct answer.
This collection of 10 multiple choice questions is entirely comprised of questions where students did worse than guessing (in other words, <25% of students chose the correct answer). One of these questions was so tricky that only 8% got it right.
Try these questions then scan the QR code at the end for the solutions.
Download Most Difficult MCQ that VCAA Ever Asked (2021 edition)
My Kennedy College students worked tirelessly to climb to the top of the small schools (≤50 students) leaderboard for the Education Perfect Science Championships 2021. The competition is open to schools of any size in Australia and New Zealand. We came first out fo 248 small schools who participated.
I’m very proud of their achievement.
While this competition was online, there will probably be more opportunities to compete with other schools face-to-face in 2022 (depending on covid restrictions!)
Well done!
The pandemic turned VCE Chemistry upside-down. Stoichiometry, traditionally a difficult topic, was the best-answered of all. Chromatography, traditionally an easy topic, was the most difficult for the class of 2020.
Most noticeable is the increase in “difficult” topics highlighted red in the chart above. (For a comparison with the 2013 & 2014 VCE Chemistry written examinations, click here.)
Unbelievably, the Victorian state average score in the 2020 VCE Chemistry written examination was a FAIL at just 47.9%.
Disruptions to learning caused by the pandemic could help explain why the VCAA is considering making the VCE Chemistry curriculum substantially easier from 2023 onwards. If the educational effects of the 2020 pandemic really do linger for most of this decade then making the curriculum easier fails to tackle the root of the problem, which is the loss of quality study-hours. I believe the only correct remedy is to provide current students with extra training and support to make up for the pandemic… not to drop the bar so low that our students cannot compete on the world stage.
I made a free VCE/VET Statistics Dashboard.
Find insights into your favourite subjects here. Data was scraped from VCAA and VTAC using open-source Python. #Python #dataviz
The Boys vs Girls tab and the Dropout Statistics pages are most interesting.
Why are girls 5.5x more than boys likely to drop out of VCE LOTE Arabic?
Show me the dashboard
Original code is here:
https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1XFS4Kq5nsYPs5YQIPZrP3q3ehKDrnDgv?usp=sharing
If you’re new to Python, go to the menu bar and click Runtime > Run all.
Then wait for around 20 minutes while this script scrapes data from the VCAA and generates an interactive scatterplot for you. When it’s done, there will be some interesting data files available for download from the file explorer on the left of the screen.
You’ll notice some interesting findings in the scatterplot, including the fact that boys outperform girls in biology, and girls outperform girls in physics! Girls outperform boys in 15 of the 20 most popular VCE subjects with the only exceptions being Chemistry, Biology (only slightly) and all three mathematics subjects.
Feel free to modify this code and repost it. There are some other interesting insights you could glean from the dataset. Enjoy!
This chart shows the percentage of students with a top 100 Asian surname among high-achieving VCE students (≥2 study scores ≥40) by subject with EAL students excluded from the analysis.
The proportion of high-achievers with Asian surnames was highest in the following subjects: Specialist Maths, Maths Methods, Physics, Chemistry, Accounting and English Language. Conversely, the least Asian subjects among high-achievers were Drama, Sociology and Theatre Studies.
All spelling variations of the top 100 Asian surnames listed on Wikipedia were included in the analysis, for example Li as well as Lee.
In this analysis, I defined “high-achieving students” as those who achieve at least 2 study scores ≥40. I then compared this with enrolment data to see how their subject choices differed from that of all students (from VCAA statistics).
Choosing these subjects doesn’t guarantee you a high grade. But it does provide some interesting insight into the patterns of high-achieving students, who are more likely to have chosen Specialist Maths, Latin, Chemistry, Global Politics, Physics and Literature.
The data book contains a wealth of information that’s hidden in plain sight. If you know how to read the data book properly, you can:
With schools closed due to COVID-19, it can be difficult to stay on track with your VCE studies.
That’s why I’m hosting my first VCE Chemistry study group for Year 11 students on Zoom this Saturday. We’ll work through a selected set of practice questions for VCE Chemistry Unit 1 until we finish them all, which should take around 55 minutes.
By signing up using the link below, you’ll receive a set of questions you need to complete in advance. This will form Part A of our stimulus material. Part B will be revealed during the Study Group on Saturday.
I’m James Kennedy, a VCE Chemistry teacher with 9 years’ experience, and plenty of experience teaching online. (You may have also seen one of my YouTube channels, books or appearances at chemistry conferences before.)
Many students are already using my Annotated VCE Chemistry data book.
Screenshots from real classes are shown below.
Join for just $9.95 by clicking the button below.
VCE Chemistry Unit 1 Study Group – 9th May 2020 at 11:00am
$109.00
COVID-19 is having an immense impact on stress and anxiety levels: Mentions of the virus were up 605% in Sanvello last week, and we’re seeing nearly a third more user sign-ups this quarter than last.
There are over 3 million users of Sanvello, the #1 app for stress and anxiety, but there are so many more that could use our help right now. So, we’re cutting our subscription fees down to zero.
Premium access to Sanvello is now completely free to everyone, effectively immediately for the duration of the crisis.
This means all of our clinically validated techniques, coping tools, and peer support are available to everyone to help people find calm, gain insight and feel more socially connected from the comfort and safety of their own home.
Writing is hard. That’s why I enlisted the help of GPT-2, the world-famous writing robot, to write this travel guide to our beautiful planet.
To create this masterpiece, I first asked GPT-2 to list its favourite places on Earth. It listed 20 locations (and numbered them from 1 to 21 because it omitted number 13), most of which were real places. I then fed the list of places back into the writing machine one by one to generate each of the chapters.
Interestingly, it invented a few fictional places including one called “El Gringo del Diablo” (which is every bit as diabolical as the name suggests) and you can read about it in chapter 2. GPT-2 went off topic several times (something I’m still working on) and included recipes, interviews, news articles and stories in this travel guide as well.
This book is a sequel to Humanity, which GPT-2 wrote earlier the same week and is also available on Amazon.com.
Writing is hard. That’s why I enlisted GPT-2, the world-famous AI-powered writing robot, to write me a book overnight while I slept. After being trained by reading millions of real English-language articles on the internet spanning a wide range of genres, I left the machine running overnight to write me a book.
I didn’t ask it to write a self-help book. It decided that by itself. (In fact, in the test run, it wrote a very detailed news report about a bombing in Afghanistan… entirely fictional, of course.)
The machine occasionally got stuck. Sometimes, it would get caught in endless loops and write the same thing over and over again until I intervened. On more than one occasion, it would write “Yours sincerely,” or simply “THE END” and refuse to write any more. These trials were discarded until a coherent book emerged.
To create this masterpiece, I allowed GPT-2 to write whatever it wanted (with creativity set to “high”) without any input prompt. Fortunately, it wrote a numbered list… so I fed each of those list items successively back into GPT-2 (with “moderate” creativity this time) to create each of the chapters.
What emerged is this book, titled Humanity, which is a subjective reflection of human nature as we like to portray ourselves on the internet. It’s dark at times, uplifting at others, and there’s even a realistic (but fake) interview with Donald J. Trump.
Before we blame GPT-2 for writing things we find disagreeable, please remember that humans, collectively, taught GPT-2 literally everything it knows.
Examination reports are very useful but most students don’t read them. I’ve scoured the examination reports from 2017, 2018 and 2019 and analysed how many marks were awarded for each topic of the VCE Chemistry course, and recorded what percentage of students got these right. As usual, this revealed that VCAA asks more questions on topics that students frequently get wrong.
Tip for students: focus more of your attention on the red topics in the chart above.
Chapter numbers refer to those used in the Heinemann Chemistry 2 textbook.
Students obsess over significant figures and mole calculations… but these are only worth 1 and 16 marks, respectively in the final written examination. Over two-thirds of the marks in the VCE Chemistry written examination are awarded for written responses where calculations are not necessary.
Tip for students: focus on perfecting your written responses such as explanations of bonding, chromatography, protein structures, and, most importantly, critiquing experimental designs.
Plotting a graph of ΔATAR/study score vs ATAR gives an interesting curve: students whose ATARs are around 50 have the most to gain from an additional study score point. Above about 90, the incremental ATAR gain from a single extra study point is probably below the margin of error given the way in which ATARs are calculated.
Tip for students: check the entry requirements for your course and make sure you meet those first. If your requires, for example, a particular score in the UMAT or in English, make sure you get that score. If your course requires a particular ATAR, make sure you get that, too. Remember that these scores are just entry requirements for undergraduate courses; not indicators of self-worth.
This book is a collection of lies we taught to our Year 12 Chemistry students in their graduation year.
The lies include well-meaning simplifications of the truth, mistakes in the textbook, and, in a few extreme cases, blatant falsehoods.
This book isn’t a criticism of the VCE Chemistry course at all. In fact, I wrote this book to demonstrate the overwhelming complexity of Chemistry and the consequential need to make appropriate omissions and generalisations during our teaching as we tailor our lessons to the appropriate year level of students.
Rules taught as true usually work 90% of the time in this subject. Chemistry has rules, exceptions, exceptions to exceptions and so on. You’ll peel pack these layers of rules and exceptions like an onion until you reach the core, where you’ll find physics and specialist maths.
Click here to download We Lied to You (2019 edition).
NOTE: This entire post was written by GPT-2, an artificial intelligence writing robot. The opinions in this post are not necessarily my own.
I asked GPT-2 to write about 26 topical issues, each beginning with a different letter of the alphabet. The bold text was the initial prompt that I fed into the robot… and the rest was written by the robot itself.
Autism is on the rise because we’re not paying attention to all the signs of a potentially deadly brain disease. We’re not using our senses of sight and hearing as they are intended. We’re not teaching children about what causes autism and what we can do to prevent it. We’re not talking to our families about the needs of other people. We’re not helping kids learn how to protect themselves when they’re in trouble.
Brexit must be resolved by the British people, not by Brussels. The UK must stay in the EU, and the EU must remain a union of free, democratic nations. If we leave we must have the courage to make our own choice. No government can change the will of the people of this country and therefore the will of the people must prevail in the referendum. I am very pleased that, as a result of the discussions I have had this morning with a group of people, some of whom I will mention to you later, there is agreement that a vote on whether to leave the European Union must be held on 23 June. The people of this country will have the final say and if they vote to leave then the government must be prepared to negotiate a new relationship
Cryptocurrencies should not be regulated. They are, in my opinion, a fad that will eventually be seen as a scam,” he said. “The regulators should leave us alone.”
He further added: “A lot of people are putting their money in cryptocurrencies, but I do not see any value.”
In the future, he sees blockchain technology becoming more widespread, as it becomes more accessible to the general public.
“I believe in the future you will see a lot of people using blockchain. It’s a new technology, and people are now starting to understand its implications,” he concluded.
The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain start-ups.
Dyslexia can be mitigated by vernacular-based learning, as it is by English or other foreign languages, but this is not as effective as language training, which can significantly improve the cognitive processing of dyslexic children. Moreover, many dyslexic children in developing countries remain illiterate.
It is also important to consider the individual circumstances of a child. While an overachieving, hard-working individual with a good education and the support of a supportive family is unlikely to become dyslexic, a low-achieving individual is almost certain to become one. The same is true of a single parent with few skills, a single parent with low socioeconomic status, a child with a disability, a young person who is socially isolated, a student who does not get adequate attention, or an alcoholic.
Earth Day must evolve into a celebration of our nation’s history and legacy of environmental progress,” the official website for the event states.
The group also plans to focus on what’s wrong with modern-day industrialism, which includes the “carbon footprint” and the “energy-sucking” nature of “industrial agriculture.” The group plans to highlight the fact that many products and services — such as food — are created in “unabated” industrial operations.
But the day also will include a little bit of light relief: “Plants and animals will be the center of attention — from birds to fish to bees — and will be presented as examples of the incredible and enduring benefits of our food system and environment.”
Financial literacy should be mandatory for all school children. In order to achieve this goal, the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) has proposed a national curriculum with the focus on history and social sciences. This is expected to be approved in the second half of 2016. However, according to research by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, the government’s initiative is not being well implemented.
According to the survey, almost 90% of the respondents in the age group of 25 to 64 years and 77% of those 65 and over felt that knowledge about history and social sciences in schools is not enough to be considered the minimum standard.
According to the ICHR, an estimated one in five adults do not have a basic understanding of the social and economic conditions prevailing in the past, and this is likely to worsen with time, which is why the government’s education policy should be implemented.
Greta Thunberg’s most recent climate speech focussed on iced water storage – “I know the people of California have no option but to move to ice.” – while in August, in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the climate activist and author described the situation as “an international emergency.”
“There are so many other ways to put people in harm’s way,” Thunberg said in that speech. “How about putting people in harm’s way by moving them into frozen deserts and turning them into deserts in their own home? That’s not an international emergency, it’s just a tragedy.”
As reported by the LA Times in August, Thunberg’s book is based upon the experiences of a California water-scarce community. The Los Angeles Times writes:
“Thunberg is using the book as a way to make people understand just how badly water is running short in California’s driest state and how desperate the situation is for the people trying to survive”.
Hong Kong’s civil unrest continued to escalate on Wednesday, with an estimated 80,000-100,000 people gathering in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park and surrounding areas to demand that Beijing allow direct elections to decide the city’s leadership in 2017.
In the afternoon, a protester was shot dead by police near Mong Kok, in the heart of Hong Kong’s business district, as hundreds of thousands of people gathered to call for universal suffrage and the government’s resignation.
The death of Lau Ping, 25, was the fifth in a series of police shootings since Monday, with at least four people wounded.
It was unclear who had fired the shot but a police spokesman said that the man was believed to have suffered “non-life threatening” injuries. The police officer involved was taken to hospital.
Meanwhile, hundreds of pro-democracy protesters marched to the government headquarters in Hong Kong’s Central district to call for Hong Kong’s leader, CY Leung, to step down.
The International Space Station should be iced and filled with air before it is launched into space to avoid the potential problem of a leak in the station’s cooling system during launch. This problem was experienced with a previous space station mission in 1996.
In order to avoid any problems, engineers are testing the possibility of using liquid oxygen and hydrogen, both highly flammable.
They are also testing the possibility of using ammonia, which is safer.
“In the final stages, as the station’s size is growing to a record of six tonnes, its internal volume will be reduced, meaning that the need for liquid oxygen will decrease and that for hydrogen the need will increase,” a senior engineer told Russian news agencies.
In the past the crew of the Mir space station, which has been orbiting the Earth since 1990, used a supply of water for cooling.
Japanese subway trains have a habit of not letting women on at all on their carriages, but rather using one of two doors. This can happen at any train station in Tokyo, even on the underground and on the Yamanote Line and Hikari Line.
On the subway, women have to show their passport, credit card, or phone number to be let on. They are even given a badge with a red cross and white triangle on it that they have to show to the conductor.
However, a group of women recently got the chance to ride on the trains during a special event. They were let on on at a number of subway stations all around Tokyo.
The group of women used this chance to ask the conductor if they could go to the restroom or get a cup of coffee, because they needed to change their clothes or get a cup of water. They were then given an automatic train fare.
The Ku Klux Klan must be completely dismantled and its members prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Klansmen have been photographed at the rallies by reporters and photographed by the news media, but they have also been seen at protests and gatherings by themselves. At Saturday’s protests, police said Klan members were seen making Nazi salutes.
The Klansmen have also shown up at protests organized by the Oath Keepers, a group of former U.S. military and law enforcement officials. At a rally in New Orleans, the group stood outside a Louisiana Statehouse surrounded by a police cordon.
Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes has appeared at several of the rallies and said he was there because he believes in the right to bear arms and is not racist. The rallies come as the Ku Klux Klan’s white supremacist reputation has been fading for a long time.
Leadership comes from a place of love, not hate. It is from a place of acceptance, not condemnation.”
We’re going to be watching what happens in this country very closely, and the question is, will we live up to that standard and will we show that the country really is great again?
I’m going to bring our country together, and we’re going to make America great again, I will tell you that.
Mentos and Diet Coke for $2.20 (up from $1.49 last year), $2.50 (up from $1.19) and $2.75 (up from $1.34).
In a statement about the price hike, Starbucks said it is “making the changes to align with the rising cost of the typical Canadian household and to align with the changing consumer habits.”
The move comes as the coffee giant struggles to make up ground in Canada. It has been trying to cut its costs to stay competitive against rivals like McDonald’s, Tim Hortons and Dunkin’ Donuts, while maintaining its high-quality product standards.
Last month, Starbucks announced it would close 11 stores, including six in Toronto, after it announced plans to lay off 730 employees in an effort to cut costs.
The chain is also facing pressure from investors over its decision to acquire Blue Bottle Coffee, a San Francisco-based chain, for $1.25 billion.
Net neutrality should protect freedom of expression, as the First Amendment protects the right to speak, write, and publish in the public domain,” he said. “And it also ensures that the Internet remains an open network for innovation, competition, and free expression.”
But Wheeler said the FCC is also going to make a big push on the issue. “This proceeding is not a matter of right and wrong, but a matter of good policy,” he said.
“This proceeding is not a matter of right and wrong, but a matter of good policy.”
The FCC is taking up the net neutrality rules in part because Internet providers have been getting so big that they were able to gain too much power to shape how people use the web, and because the agency had no way of enforcing net neutrality rules without them. The new FCC chair is going to try to get the law passed through a combination of the Title II reclassification and a “fast lane” regulation.
Over-stressing about climate change should be considered a mental health issue that needs to be tackled. The problem here is that this can only be done with the help of scientists who understand the issue and are willing to work alongside us. This will have to include a broad spectrum of scientists, including those involved in the development of new technologies, including nanotechnology, which is the area of focus of Dr. Richard Happer, who was a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics. Dr. Happer is a professor at Princeton University. He is also the President Emeritus of the National Academy of Sciences.
The problem here is that we are not addressing the root of the problem. The problem is that we are focusing on one aspect of our planet’s atmosphere, instead of the bigger picture.
As I wrote on Facebook:
“A number of years ago I attended a conference, where a leading climate scientist talked about the possibility that man-made carbon emissions could cause an ice age (an age of prolonged darkness), according to a new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.”
A global warming theory holds that when the Earth’s surface warms up, water vapor in the atmosphere condenses into ice, which can then flow away from the poles to raise global temperatures. This ice, in turn, warms the water that is already on Earth.
“We know the ice sheet on Greenland is losing ice mass, but the reason why we haven’t observed changes in the Greenland ice sheet in the past is a question of how much ice mass is actually being lost,” said the study’s first author, Michael Mann, an atmospheric scientist at Pennsylvania State University in State College.
“The more we know about what the ice sheet is actually losing, the more confident we can be that we don’t have a problem here.”
Pentagon officials made a statement on Wednesday that the United States is looking at “options to improve communication with the Ukrainian government to prevent this loss of life and ensure that it does not happen again.” U.S. Army Capt. Gregory Hicks added that the U.S. is “troubled by the loss of life in Ukraine and condemns all violence. But we will not be distracted from our focus on protecting our own citizens and our allies.” Hicks also said the U.S. is “deeply concerned by reports that some have sought to exploit this tragedy for propaganda purposes. Such activity undermines confidence in the work of the Ukrainian government and its people and undermines efforts to engage constructively with the Russian government to de-escalate tensions in the region.” It’s unclear at the moment whether the Russians are making the same accusations, but the fact that the Russian Foreign Ministry statement was posted just after the Ukrainian government statement on the incident is very telling.
Queen Elizabeth II has made a ground-breaking statement about the importance of gender diversity at the highest levels of the armed forces. Her statement came in the form of a tweet and was quickly tweeted by a female servicewoman. Her tweet said “Women make amazing soldiers. It is time we had more”.
The Queen also retweeted a comment from female soldier who said that “there should be more of you and less of them”, the BBC reports.
She has not yet commented on the tweet, but she has now been congratulated on her message by fellow royals and MPs.
The Royal Family were also quick to comment. The Queen’s husband the Duke of Edinburgh tweeted “thank you for the message”. Prince Philip said: “We all need to welcome diversity.”
The Royal Household was also quick to praise female servicemen and servicewomen.
The Royal Navy tweeted: “We welcome the fact that a female Royal Navy ship officer has been appointed to her first command.”
Raccoons living in trees are generally quite cautious of people and they have a strong instinct to avoid them. However, some people have the ability to read a raccoon’s mind and predict where they are going to go next . To the raccoon, people look the same as a tree. If you are in a location that you are comfortable with, you are safer from a raccoon than in a location that you are afraid of. Don’t believe me? Consider this story from a woman who lives in the mountains of Wisconsin. A raccoon got up one evening and decided to leave the area where she was staying. She made an unsuccessful search of the trees surrounding her home and eventually found the raccoon near her car. The raccoon tried to get into the car, but the woman grabbed a pair of scissors and held it to the raccoon’s face. The raccoon left with no problem and the woman went back to her car.
Sesquiterpenes in essential oils is used for skin-conditioning. Its action, similar to that of aspirin, is to lessen the pain of inflammation. Many plants have been found to have antiseptic properties. This plant, Salvia divinorum, is often used in traditional medicines to treat gout and rheumatism. It is also used to treat asthma and arthritis.
Salvia lavandulifolia is known to stimulate the immune system and is commonly used in traditional medicine to prevent colds and influenza. It also possesses analgesic, anti-inflammatory, and diuretic properties. Salvia officinalis is also an effective anti-inflammatory. Aromatic plants, such as Salvia officinalis, contain many components that have a therapeutic effect, including aldehydes, aromatic acids, and terpenes. This plant also has many beneficial properties, especially in treating respiratory conditions, such as allergies.
Transgender people in the military should not face the same discrimination as gay men and lesbians. However, transgender people have been discriminated against throughout U.S. history, from the 19th century onward, with transgender people often excluded from the right to vote, held in inferior military service, denied the use of women’s bathrooms, and denied access to health care and housing. The Equal Pay Act of 1963, which banned pay discrimination based on gender, did not specifically include transgender individuals, who were still subject to exclusion from all forms of civilian employment.
Transgender people in the military need the same protections and opportunities as everyone else, as outlined in the 2014 policy and in Defense Department Instruction 1320.18. The Department of Defense has determined that transgender people are able to meet the physical, mental, and moral standards of military service. However, given the unique characteristics of transgender individuals and the limited information about their medical and surgical needs, the Department is not in a position to provide additional medical treatment to people undergoing gender realignment.
The United Nations sustainable development goals were not created in a vacuum and they must be based on a genuine international consensus.
The United Nations has worked hard to make the Sustainable Development Goals the first major global development agenda since World War II, but its efforts have come under attack from those who believe that only market economies and free market policies should be used to achieve the goal.
This is a serious error. A sustainable development goal needs to be built on the basis of a genuine international consensus.
As the UN secretary-general and the Sustainable Development Goals Commission have stated, “it is up to all of us, including governments, civil society and civil society organisations, to work for a new vision and the implementation of a new development goal” (Sustainable Development Goals Commission, 2012).
Vacuum energy in the universe could, in principle, provide the necessary power to run an entire starship,” said study lead author Professor Zoltan Istvan. “However, the most important thing is not so much the power source as it is the vacuum itself. We have calculated how to create a vacuum environment so strong that even the most powerful lasers and fusion reactors would fail.”
Istvan and his colleagues believe that their new idea could open up a new world for exploration.
“When we look back into the distant past, it is obvious that the universe is much older than we had imagined,” said co-author David Grinspoon. “This discovery has opened up an entirely new frontier of possibility. The power of the vacuum is not simply a physical force, it is an expression of the universe’s nature. By understanding the force of the vacuum, we are able to see into the deepest depths of time and space, where we can observe the birth of the birth of the universe from the time of the Big Bang.
Water shortages in the Middle East and North Africa and a prolonged winter are expected to be the most serious threats to the region’s food supply. These events have led to shortages of basic foods such as wheat, sugar and dates, but the UN Food and Agriculture Organization expects the worst to hit in October, when winter crops are at their peak.
The UN believes that food shortages will worsen with climate change, which has resulted in rising temperatures in many parts of the Middle East and North Africa.
Crop yields in Egypt are currently estimated at 9.4 bushels per acre, while production in Saudi Arabia is estimated at 9.7 bushels per acre, according to the World Food Programme. The latter country is particularly at risk from a drought this year as a result of El Niño, which is predicted to affect the whole of the Middle East and North Africa, with severe impacts on farmers.
Xenophobic people tend to be anti-immigrant, and I think it is because they see their own cultures as somehow inferior, which is an important element in how these kinds of arguments start. The anti-immigration argument was pretty much the first argument to pop out of the American Right at the end of the nineteenth century. It is a very interesting and important issue, but it is not an argument that any rational person should take seriously. It is a sort of racism, and a sort of xenophobia, and a sort of misogyny. I think it has much more to do with anti-Semitism and anti-immigration and anti-Muslim sentiment than it does with racism in the broad sense. I’ve been very much struck by the way that some people in the West have made a lot of noise about the fact that this kind of thing is really a sort of expression of racism and xenophobia, and it is the most anti-White argument that is being made.
Yesterday’s news came as no surprise to local experts. “We had no idea that this would occur. It was a surprise that this could happen so quickly,” said Richard Loughlin, chief of emergency services at South Central Florida Hospital.
Loughlin said there were no reports of the incident until this morning. “This has a direct impact on our staff. The staff is upset, they are distraught, there are a lot of questions,” he said.
The hospital is offering counseling to staff.
Loughlin also said that the hospital has taken steps to ensure that such a tragedy never happens again, and that a plan has been put into place to provide for the staff involved in the incident.
According to local media reports, the accident occurred at the hospital in Orlando, Florida, where the two children were being treated for a severe allergic reaction to an over-the-counter product.
The children were being treated by the emergency services.
Zoos are ethically and scientifically responsible when they release animals into the wild. But we can’t allow a situation where a zoo is killing an animal in the wild and we can’t find out about it because the animals are too expensive or they have an endangered gene in them.
We can’t let animals in the zoo be killed to satisfy the financial demands of a corporation or to fulfill a political agenda. These are both wrong.
We need to be aware that there are people in power.
There are people in power who have no interest in the well being of the world’s animals. We know this because they are the ones who have said it so many times.
That’s why I think it is so important that people in power speak out for the animals.
For example, the government of New Zealand is now paying a corporation millions of dollars every year to kill endangered animals to satisfy their demands.
The essay below was written by GPT-2, an AI writing bot. I typed the first sentence in blue… and the machine wrote the entire rest of the essay.
Chemophobia is defined as the irrational fear of compounds perceived as synthetic. Some people feel like they are being sprayed with an unknown chemical, and their eyes, nose, and skin are inflamed, burning, and itchy. This fear of unknown chemicals has led to several incidents where people have reported being exposed to chemicals they thought were harmless.
The fear of synthetic chemicals is not new, but it has recently increased in popularity. The concern about synthetic chemicals has been exacerbated by a rise in sales of synthetic fragrances, cosmetics, and personal care products. This is partly because companies can now make chemicals that do not have to be tested for safety before they are marketed.
The term ‘synthetic’ is often used as a blanket term for any chemical with an unknown origin. The American Chemical Society, a scientific and professional organization based in the US, defines synthetic as an “electronic or chemical compound that is produced artificially” and is “comparable to a natural molecule” but with the added ability to be made more stable, more potent, and more easily manufactured. These synthetic chemicals, which include plastics, fragrances, pharmaceuticals, and other everyday items, are the latest and the greatest in the war against nature and the destruction of the environment, and we are witnessing their impact in the lives of our most vulnerable citizens.
In order to be considered as synthetic, the chemical must meet one of two criteria. First, the chemical must have been produced artificially. A drug that is made by genetically engineered organisms is a synthetic chemical. Another example is a chemical used to make certain pharmaceuticals, including the antibiotics used in humans.
A third definition of synthetic is that the chemical is synthetically produced. This means that the chemical is not naturally occurring or derived from a naturally occurring source.
The Food and Drug Administration is responsible for approving or withholding approval of substances for use in food. This includes both foods and drug products. The FDA will consider many factors in determining whether a substance is a drug or food. These include, but are not limited to: the presence of the substance in the food or drug product, the strength, purity, potency, and composition of the substance; and whether it is necessary for the safety and efficacy of the food or drug product.
A drug must have been approved by the FDA. It is also important to note that if a substance is being used to treat a particular disease or condition, the FDA has the authority to regulate the use of that medication to protect the health and safety of those taking it.
If a drug or food is used in the treatment of cancer or to increase fertility, the FDA may require that the substance be registered for those purposes.
Synthetic chemicals are considered safe by the EPA. Natural chemicals are considered safe to drink. This is a good thing, in my opinion, but there are no tests to prove it. We have no way to know that they are safe to use, and we have no way to know that they aren’t.
When you read the labels on all of the chemicals found in pesticides, you’ll be left with a feeling that you’re eating poison.
In the book ‘Walking Through Toxic Walls,’ author and toxicologist Michael Dourson describes the effects of pesticide residues on humans. He writes that:
“Even low concentrations of pesticide residues are toxic and can cause chronic effects such as infertility, cancer, and reproductive dysfunction. We are all exposed to the same chemical cocktails in our everyday lives, and if any of them cause harm, we need to know about it. We need to be sure we are eating safe foods, using safe cleaners, or using safe household chemicals.”
For some people, organic is not sufficient. They want to be sure their food is healthy, and they want to make sure they are using clean, safe products. Some organic products are organic in name only, and they do not guarantee the quality of the product. The USDA Organic seal is an imperfect means of ensuring product quality, but many people still want to use organic because it means they are doing what’s right for the Earth.
Organic foods are not necessarily healthier. This is why we believe in “Food for Thought.” If you think about your food choices and where you are spending your money, you are spending too much on foods that are processed or chemical laden. And we all know that junk food is just not good for us. So how do you choose to buy organic food?
Our website has a list of organic produce stores, and many of them offer a large variety of organic products. You can click on the logo of any of these stores to learn more about what they offer. The links to the stores are listed in the green bar below, in the “Organic Products” section. You can also check out our list of recommended organic food places and blogs to help you find organic foods closer to home.
(Written by GPT-2, an AI writing machine.)
My fourth edition of Fighting Chemophobia is now available on Amazon.com.
This edition is paperback and black-and-white throughout… hence the low price.
Chemophobia is an irrational fear of chemicals. It includes the fear of aluminium in vaccines, methylparaben preservative in cosmetics and formaldehyde residue in shampoo. Since the early 1990s, advances in toxicology have allowed scientists to detect traces of adulterant substances in everyday products – even down to parts per billion concentrations. Toxicological research has shown most of these substances are in such low doses that they pose zero threat to our health.
Nonetheless, we get scared. We overreact to harmless, negligible sources of contamination and buy “natural”, “organic” and “chemical-free” alternative products at elevated prices because we’re psychologically pre-disposed to think they’re safer. Consumers are victims of aggressive marketing and misleading labelling from “natural” and “organic” companies, who exploit our psychological quirks to expand their market share.
The supposed onslaught of toxic chemicals that special interest groups describe simply isn’t happening. Our products are safer than ever, yet people are becoming more scared. Consumers suffer from guilt, anxiety and mental stress of being coaxed into paying a hefty price premium for “natural” skincare products that are neither safer nor more effective than conventional ones.
This book explores the history of chemophobia and the recent events that amplified it; and describes how consumers, teachers, doctors, lawmakers and journalists can fight chemophobia by tackling the social issues that underpin it.
James Kennedy is the creator of the All-Natural Banana ingredients set of posters and the T-shirt store sporting the same designg. James is a British-born Chemistry teacher currently working in Australia. Since graduating from the University of Cambridge with a Masters degree in Natural Sciences, he has pursued a passion for science communication and science outreach by using festivals, lectures, posters and T-shirts to make chemistry more open and accessible for the public. He is a vocal pro-chemistry advocate and writes articles online and speaks occasionally in radio and podcast interviews. James’ first published book, Fighting Chemophobia, stemmed from a need for people to understand and cure chemophobia by seeing chemicals in a more rational light. He has been teaching for 8 years and researching chemophobia for 3 years. He lives with his wife and daughter in Melbourne, Australia.
I’ve had the pleasure of hosting the second season of Sincerely, Chemicals. It’s just me and a camera this time. Very simple.
Subscribe to the Sincerely, Chemicals YouTube channel to receive a new video each week.
Bisphenol A, or BPA, is used to line food cans and also to make strong plastic baby bottles. Eating large amounts of canned food – particularly canned soups or drinking hot liquids from baby bottles – can result in elevated amounts of BPA being detected in people’s urine. BPA acts as an estrogen mimic – albeit a very weak one – and some research has suggested a link between large doses of BPA and an increase of blood pressure. While this does sound worrying, remember that the dose is extremely important and that the molecules of BPA that do leech into food are too few to have any measurable effect.
The United States Food and Drug Administration (the FDA) conducted a four-year review of over 300 scientific studies and concluded that the traces of BPA that do migrate into canned food are so tiny that they have no effect on human health.
The decision to abandon the use of BPA in baby bottles was therefore based on public pressure not based on safety or on scientific evidence.
The science never suggested there was any safety concern with BPA.
Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more videos from Sincerely, Chemicals.
Each year, the VCAA subtly upgrades the VCE Chemistry data book. Each year, I print it and annotate it to show students the wealth of useful information hidden within it (most of which, is in plain sight).
This year, the VCAA has changed some “constants” and added some interesting functional groups to the spectroscopy tables. Smaller things are changed, too. All the protons in the 1H NMR table are now in bold; not just the ambiguous ones.
Free download: James Kennedy’s Annotated VCE Chemistry data book 2019 edition
Too big? Download the low resolution (4 Mb) version here
Start using this annotated version of the data book for your year 11 and year 12 chemistry homework exercises. While you can’t take this annotated version into the final examination (or into most SACs), seeing the annotations frequently throughout the two years will help you find things faster in the final examination.
Do you have feedback? Any comments? Do you require 1-to-1 chemistry tutoring? Email me at jameskennedymonash@gmail.com and I’ll get back to you personally.
I started a YouTube channel called Sincerely, Chemicals. It’s inspired by the workshops I’ve been running since 2017 so you can now review the content at home.
Video 2 is below. It’s called “Are Organic Products Safer?”… you already know the answer, but play the 2-minute video to find out why.
If you like these videos, please leave a comment, like and subscribe. That way, I might be encouraged to make more
P.S. I hope you like the cartoons!
The Naturalness Fallacy is my latest book in the chemophobia series. It’s a quick read that introduces the causes, effects and solutions to the chemophobia problem.
Download this free book as a PDF here.
After several hurdles, I’m happy to announce that Fighting Chemophobia is now available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle editions for international delivery. Amazon.com and three other independent online book vendors have signed up to stock Fighting Chemophobia.
Buy your copy by clicking the links below – or search Amazon.com or your Kindle device for Fighting Chemophobia to download the book.
Signed copies are of this new third edition are of course still available via this website. Click the PayPal link below to order your signed copy.
I’ve been working on some exciting things in the last few months. Watch this space for teasers.
Update (August 2020) – sold out!
There exists a myth that organic fruits and vegetables are healthier because they’re free from harmful pesticides. Bruce Ames, one of the key founders of the field of toxicology back in the 1970s, wrote a landmark paper in 1990 called Dietary pesticides (99.99% all natural), in which, he showcased some of the many naturally-occurring pesticides we ingest every day.
Because plants can’t run away, they attack predators with chemical weapons instead. All plants produce natural pesticides called secondary metabolites that deter predators to varying extents. The production of these secondary metabolites is upregulated during predatory attack.
Some of the natural pesticides that plants produce are toxic. Some are carcinogenic. Some studies have even suggested that if synthetic pesticides are not sprayed onto the surface of the crops, as might be the case in some types of organic farming, plants increase their production of natural pesticides to compensate for the resulting increase in herbivory attack.
Proponents of organic food fail to realise that everything we touch, eat and breathe contains miniscule traces of toxins. Our bodies evolved in a pretty dirty environment and can cope with low levels of toxins being ingested. Some studies even suggest that ingesting these tiny amounts of harmful substances might not only be harmless but beneficial to our health.
Contrary to popular belief, natural foods (wild varieties) are not safer, more nutritious nor more delicious than conventionally-farmed foods. Organic farming is an unsustainable luxury that offers no benefit to consumers’ health.
For more information on organic food, check out my latest book, Fighting Chemophobia, which is available by clicking the link below.
It’s been a while since I posted. I’ve been working on some things that will be revealed in the next few months.
The second batch of Fighting Chemophobia books are finished! After a long search, we have finally found two great companies for printing and distribution in China. Dianzan design and printing company has laid the book out with great care and precision and turned Fighting Chemophobia into an excellent-quality product in both hardback and paperback editions. The 80 gsm Dowling paper feels great, and there are even some full-page colour images scattered throughout the book. Shunfeng Express is handling cheap, quick shipping and is currently achieving 2-day deliveries within China. They predict 7-day delivery times internationally.
This second batch is higher quality than the first. I’m sure you’ll love what these people have produced.
Working with a publisher could have saved me the search for an editor, a printer, a distributor, a marketer and a translator. Self-publishing has been more rewarding in this regard: not only have I selected the people I’ve worked with to bring this book to completion but I’ve probably learned more this way about the process of writing, editing, printing, binding, marketing and distributing a book than if a publisher had handled the entire process on my behalf.
You can buy your signed copy of the second batch of Fighting Chemophobia using the PayPal link below. Click subscribe on this page to receive future (approximately fortnightly) email updates.
Chemophobia is an irrational fear of chemicals. It includes the fear of sugar in food, formaldehyde in shampoo and aluminium in vaccines. Fitness bloggers, quack doctors and even small cosmetic companies take advantage of these quirks to sell fake-natural products at elevated prices. Almost always, the same people who spread a fear of ‘chemicals’ also have ‘chemical-free’ products for sale.
Some companies sell “natural”, “organic” and “chemical-free” products to combat the supposed onslaught of chemical pollution in conventional consumer products. Most of these alternative products are no less synthetic, and no safer, than conventional versions despite commanding much higher prices.
Chemophobia is spreading despite our world becoming a cleaner, safer place. People are becoming healthier, and product safety regulations are becoming stricter. The supposed onslaught of chemicals that these special interest groups describe simply isn’t happening.
Perpetrators of chemophobia create unnecessary guilt, stress and anxiety as consumers worry about making the right choices for their family. Consumers are the victims in this battle as pro-natural and anti-natural businesses spread fear about each other’s products.
This book analyses psychological quirks, evolved millennia ago, that prime us to fall victim to chemophobic ways of thinking such anorexia, a fear of vaccines, a fear of fluoridation or a dangerous fear of synthetic medicines. It explores how consumers, teachers, doctors, lawmakers and journalists can fight chemophobia by tackling the social issues that underpin it.
Order your signed copy of Fighting Chemophobia now
Unlike purple and pink pigments, which were rare and expensive enough to be reserved for royalty and high-ranking clergy, yellow pigments were abundant throughout ancient history. Yellow ochre, a powdery mixture of iron oxides, has been used in cave paintings around the world for up to 80,000 years and was still being used by artists in the early nineteenth century. Saffron and turmeric were also used as yellow dyes throughout ancient history. Vincent van Gogh was using mineral yellow pigments such as cadmium yellow and chrome yellow in his mid-nineteenth century paintings. By the mid-nineteenth century, people looking for yellow pigments already had plenty of options. Despite there being no pressure from consumers for a new yellow dye, chemists trying to replicate the fame and fortune that mauveine brought to William Perkin in 1856 were experimenting eagerly in pursuit of that goal.
In 1861, Mêne was reacting aniline with cold nitrous acid to produce a diazonium salt solution. He then added more aniline to the resulting salt solution and shook the flask vigorously and noticed a yellow precipitate formed at the bottom of the flask, which would later become known as ‘aniline yellow’ – the first ‘azo dye’. [1]
The reaction mixture must be kept cool (at around 5 °C) because different temperatures cause different products to form. If the same reactants are mixed warm, then smelly liquid phenol and inert nitrogen gas are formed, both of which are colourless, and neither of which are useful as pigments!
At the time, the ‘aniline yellow’ powder he discovered was considered useless because it didn’t dissolve in water. However, it did dissolve very well in oil. The dye eventually gained some niche uses as a microscopy stain (like fuchsine) but was never utilised by the garment or pigment industry.
After staying relatively unused for over a hundred years, aniline yellow left an unfortunate legacy for itself by becoming the culprit molecule in the Spanish ‘Toxic Oil scandal’ of 1981. A batch of Spanish rapeseed oil had been denatured (deliberately adulterated) with 2% aniline yellow so the company could report it as “machine oil” and take advantage of certain tax breaks. One local refinery obtained the denatured rapeseed oil and attempted to remove the aniline yellow dye so they could sell it on as “pure olive oil” on the market for profit. They sold the oil around much of north-western Spain in unlabelled 5-litre plastic containers.
The first casualty was an eight-year-old boy who died upon arrival at a hospital in Madrid on May 1st, 1981. The rest of his family then presented with an unusual set of symptoms: headache, fever, itchy scalp, lethargy and interstitial lung disease. The hospital diagnosed the family with “atypical pneumonia” and treated them all with antibiotics but they showed little improvement. [2]
Across Spain, 20,000 patients presented with similar symptoms within one month of the incident. Thinking that an unexplained pneumonia outbreak was unfolding, a children’s hospital in Madrid conducted a randomised, double-blind controlled clinical trial on the effectiveness of the antibiotic erythromycin, which is particularly effective on infections of the respiratory system. [3] Unfortunately, they found no difference in recovery or mortality rates between the treated group and the control group and decided to keep looking for potential treatments.
Attempting all avenues, the researchers conducted lifestyle surveys on many patients, which included (among many other things) questions about cooking oil. Sadly, even though the source of the problem was staring them in the face, the results of the oil usage survey questions came back “inconclusive”. [4]
A baby ultimately solved the puzzle. Prognosis for young children was generally worse than for adults after they contracted the strange set of symptoms. Oddly, babies under six months were unaffected even if the entire rest of the family had presented with the pneumonia-like symptoms. Their infants were completely symptom-free. When one baby did get sick, however, this prompted deep and urgent questioning of the parents involved to find out what they did differently from others. One unusual aspect of the baby’s upbringing was that the baby’s grandmother had been ‘supplementing’ baby’s formula powder with cooking oil that was sold in an unlabelled 5-litre plastic container. [5]
Spanish government agencies acted quickly. The Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs issued a recall of all oil sold in unlabelled plastic bottles within 40 days of the first casualty reporting with symptoms (the 8-year-old boy). Rates of patients presenting with symptoms of Toxic Oil Syndrome, as it would later be called, plummeted after the recall was announced on June 10th, 1981.
The aniline yellow had all been removed. The problem was a side-reaction, completely unknown to the scientists who were purifying the “machine oil”, that formed a new, harmful molecule that was large enough to escape their detection methods.
The molecule responsible for Toxic Oil Syndrome is called “OO PAP” in scientific literature. Visual inspection of OO PAP’s structure reveals that it’s quite simply an olive oil triglyceride molecule (triolein) with one of its three fatty acid tails replaced with a large aniline group. [6] When the rapeseed oil was adulterated with 2% aniline yellow to disguise it as “machine oil”, some of the aniline yellow molecules didn’t just blend in with the oil but reacted chemically with it to make OO PAP molecules. ITH, the company who sold the de-adulterated product as “pure olive oil”, was likely unaware of this chemical reaction, and therefore (we assume) also unaware of the poisonous OO PAP that had formed in the oil. While ITH successfully removed the aniline yellow, they failed to remove the OO PAP molecules, which escaped their filtration techniques. [3] Sadly, hundreds of people died and 20,000 more were made ill from OO PAP poisoning, and financial damage was estimated by El País newspaper to be 2 billion pesetas (around 16 million US dollars today). [7] Just like the scandal of the pink fuchsine socks, government and industry were forced to work together to respond quickly to a growing public crisis.
—
Every chemical – regardless of whether it’s found naturally or created synthetically – has the potential to be beneficial, harmful or harmless depending on the dosage and the way that it’s used. Aniline yellow, like all other chemicals, is incredibly useful when used correctly. It’s a fantastic microscopy stain but totally unsuitable for culinary use.
Today, people use aniline yellow to dye specimens for viewing under a light microscope. Aniline yellow’s dangers are stated clearly on its safety data sheets: handling it today requires training, permits, safety glasses, gloves and a lab coat to avoid all contact with skin and eyes. Now that chemistry has given us a better understanding of the aniline yellow, nobody dare use it to dye foodstuffs. [8]
References[1] http://www.chemguide.co.uk/organicprops/aniline/makediazo.html
[2] Paz, Manuel Posada de la. 2001. “Toxic Oil Syndrome: The Perspective after 20 Years.” Epidemiologic Reviews 231-247.
[3] Gelpí, Emilio. 2002. “The Spanish Toxic Oil Syndrome 20 Years after Its Onset: A Multidisciplinary Review of Scientific Knowledge.” Environmental Health Perspectives 457-464.
[4] Flores, Juan Casado. 1982. “Sindrome Toxico en Niños por Consumo de Aceites Vegetales: Modelo Clinico de la Enfermedad, en la Fase Aguda.” Pediatrika 22-26.
[5] Flores, Juan Casado. 1982. “Síndrome toxico por consumo de aceite adulterado. Una encuesta alimentaria esclarecedora.” Pediatrika 17-20.
[6] Paz, Posada de la. 1999. “Epidemiologic evidence for a new class of compounds associated with toxic oil syndrome.” Epidemiology 130-134.
[7] El País. 1981. “2.000 millones de pesetas costará al Insalud la asistencia a los enfermos a causa del aceite.” El País 15.
[8] Southern Biological. 2009. “Material Safety Data Sheet: Fuchsine.” Southern Biological. 08. Accessed 12 19, 2016. http://file.southernbiological.com/Assets/Products/Chemicals/Stains_and_Indicators-Powders/SIP4_6-Basic_Fuchsin/SIP4_6_MSDS_2009_Basic_Fuchsin.pdf.
The “deficit model” is a widely criticized theory that suggests that people who harbor attitudes of negativity or indifference towards science (in this case, chemistry) do so because they are uninformed about the topic (Chinese: 无知).
People’s misinformation might come from a lack of interest, a lack of exposure or an experience of poor science outreach in the past, where incorrect messages were delivered.
The “deficit model” stipulates that if people knew more about science, they’d naturally become more interested in it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always seem to work, and the ‘model’ is subjected to routine criticism.
Criticisms of the “deficit model”Critics of the “deficit model” tend to advocate solutions that involve dialogue (rather than monologue) with the public. Dialogue works better when the particular public audience in question has pre-existing views about the scientific topic being discussed (called ‘affected/partisan’ public groups).
There are four main types of ‘public’ audiences. The table below summarizes each of these types and how to engage with them, and is adapted from Canek Phillips report from 2013.
The pure public is a group of people who have no pre-existing ideas about the topic being discussed. The “deficit model” can engage these audiences as well.
The affected public can only be engaged if their pre-existing views are acknowledged and respected beforehand. Dialogue is an excellent way of doing this. Examples of dialogue-based approaches include science shops, public hearings, citizen judies, stakeholder consultations and focus groups.
The partisan public is sometimes led by charismatic leaders or lobby groups. Their views might have been shaped by influential figures (e.g. Mercola, Food Babe) and the pre-existing views (misconceptions) delivered in this way need to be debunked through respectful dialogue rather than monologue.
In short, before telling your audience something, find out whether they have any pre-existing ideas about that topic. If they don’t, then go ahead with a monologue delivery. If they do, then launch a two-way discussion with them, in which you listen and respect their views. Only then, will they respect your opinion as well. 
Another great example is aeroplane crashes. Airlines today have an excellent safety record and flying is usually the safest mode of transport (safer than making the same journey by road or rail). We overestimate the dangers of flying on an aeroplane because someone else is in control.
Conversely, because summer heat waves are a natural phenomenon, we’re prone to underestimating their danger: tens of thousands of people die from excessive summer heat each year in the United States alone.
Irrational: we worry about terrorist attacks more than summer heat wavesOur ‘perceived risk’ almost never matches the ‘actual risk’. In the bubble chart below, the area of the circles above the line represent how much we worry about each risk. The area of the circles below the line represents the actual size of the risk in terms of how many people are harmed each year. In many cases, there is a huge disparity between ‘perceived risk’ and ‘actual risk’.
Let’s evaluate two examples. First, smoking:
Conclusion: people are predisposed to underestimate the risks of smoking (9:1)
Second example: azodicarbonamide (dough improver) added to bread
Conclusion: people are predisposed to overestimate the risks of adding azodicarbonamide to bread (1:9)
This strange psychological quirk is one of the roots of chemophobia that I discuss much further in my upcoming book, Fighting Chemophobia (coming out late 2017).
Try it yourselves: use the table to find out whether we’re likely to over-fear or under-fear aeroplane crashes, climate change and parabens in cosmetics. You’ll find that we overestimate the risks of chemical ingredients in our food and products not because they necessarily pose any danger, but because we have this strangely irrational way of assessing risk in the world around us.
2013年底，我准备高中有机化学课的时候设计下面的全天然香蕉成份信息图形。
这几年，广告上写的三个关键词有「全天然」、「有机」、「无化学成份」。我想通过这张信息图形告诉大家一切都是化学成份做出来的。大自然生产的化学成份比科学家在实验室里能合成的成份复杂多了。为了简洁我写了几十个组成香蕉的重要成份——还有几千个天然有机化学成份没写上。
全天然香蕉里面有一些成份是有毒性的。但是，因为香蕉里面的剂量极少，所以它们对我们的人体是无害的。大自然对剂量的掌握是非常精准的，自然界中，所有的化学成分都有完美的剂量。这个信息图形的意义是告诉大家：
随心分享！
The wines your great-grandchildren might one day drink on Mars will soon be coming to a bottle near you. Ava Winery is a San Francisco-based startup creating wines molecule by molecule, without the need for grapes or fermentation. With complete control over the chemical profile of the product, Ava’s wines can be created safely, sustainably, and affordably, joining the food technology revolution in creating the foods of the future.
For Ava, foods in the future will be scanned and printed as easily as photographs today. These digital recreations will be more than mere projections; they will be true chemical copies of the originals, capturing the same nutritional profiles, flavors, and textures of their “natural” counterparts. Our canvas will be macronutrients like starches and proteins; our pixels will be flavor molecules. Future generations won’t distinguish “natural” from “synthetic” because both will simply be considered food.
Consider ethyl hexanoate, although scary-sounding it is the very chemical that gives pineapples their characteristic smell and also fruity wines a tropical note. From pineapples, or indeed other organisms, ethyl hexanoate can be extracted much more efficiently. By sourcing more efficient producers of each of hundreds of different components, wines can be recreated as their originals.
Future generations won’t distinguish “natural” from “synthetic” because both will simply be considered food.
In fact, by eliminating the variability of natural systems as well as potential environmental contamination, this digitized future of food can increase the safety, consistency, and nutritional profile of foods. Such food products can reduce overall land and resource use and be less susceptible to climate fluctuations. Indeed this future will see significant reductions in the costs of food production as the cost of the raw ingredients shifts to more efficient sources of each molecule.
So why wine?
We knew there would be a controversial love/hate relationship with our mission to build wine molecule by molecule. To the elite who value the high-end wine experience, our molecularly identical creation of the $10,000+ bottle of 1973 Chateau Montelena will be a mockery; but to the public, the $10,000 turned $20 bottle will be a sensation. To the purists who still believe organic is the only way to eat or drink healthily, our wine will get “some knickers in knots”; but to the nonconformists, our wine will be a contemporary luxury made by contemporary technology.
In short, wine is just the beginning. Soon, Ava hopes to build more food products molecule by molecule further blurring these lines between natural vs. synthetic while simultaneously making luxury items available for all. With our groundwork, the Star Trek future of food might be closer than we thought.
There’s an interesting psychological quirk that makes us yearn for a benevolent, caring Mother Nature that can cure our ailments without any side effects. Academics call it the “naturalness preference” or “biophilia”, and the Norwegians call it “friluftsliv” (literally: free-air-life).
Friluftsliv began in 18th century Scandanavia as part of a romantic “back-to-nature” movement for the upper classes. Urbanisation and industrialisation in the 19th century disconnected Norwegians from a natural landscape to which they’d been so interconnected for over five thousand years.
Norway’s sparse population, vast landscapes and midnight sun (in the summer months, at least) make it an excellent place for hunting and exploration. These ideal conditoins produced some of the greatest trekkers and hikers the world has ever seen. I’ll show you two heart-warming examples.
The first is Norway’s infamous explorer Fritjof Nansen, who (very nearly) reached the north pole in 1896 as part of a three-year expedition by ship, dog-sled and foot. When world war one broke out, Nansen put his trekking knowledge into practice by helping European civilians escape the perils of war and move to safer places. He facilitated several logistical operations in the early 20th century that saw the movements of millions of civilians across Europe. When famine broke out in Russia in 1921, he arranged the transportation of enough food to save 22 million people from starvation in Russia’s remotest regions. Deservedly, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for his efforts.
The second example is Norway’s Roald Amundsen, who was the first person to reach the south pole in 1911. Nansen lent his ship, Fram, to Amundsen for a north pole expedition in 1909. Before Amundsen set sail, however, he learned that two rival American explorers – each accompanied by groups of native Inuit men – had already reached the north pole and were disputing the title of “first discoverer” among themselves. When Amundsen finally did set sail, he took Nansen’s Fram vessel to Antarctica instead, where he and his team disembarked and trekked a successful round-trip to the south pole. While Amundsen admits he was inspired by Nansen’s successful polar expeditions, I’m sure that Norway’s vast landscapes, summer sun and long-standing tradition of “Allemansrätten” (the right to traverse other people’s private land) also contributed to Amundsen’s yearning for friluftsliv: the obsessive search for a truly untouched wilderness. (Amundsen 1927)
The world’s first tourist organisations were founded in Norway (1868), Sweden (1885) with the goal of helping Scandinavian elites in their search for true nature. When the Industrial Revolution brought many indoor, sedentary factory jobs to Scandinavia, workers craved the outdoors that their culture had been in harmony with for thousands of years. Elites in the late 19th century signed up to go on expeditions to escape encroaching urbanisation. Later, in 1892, a group of Swedish soldiers founded the non-profit organisation Friluftsfrämjandet, which provided outdoor recreational activities to the labouring classes with a particular emphasis on giving free skiing lessons to children. Thanks to Friluftsfrämjandet, and the working-time legislations that came into play in the early 20th century, the middle and lower classes were finally able to pursue their obsession with finding nature, or friluftsliv.
“…[W]e arrange activities to win great experiences, together. We hike, bike, walk, climb, paddle, ski and skate together. We train the best outdoor guides and instructors in Sweden. And we have fun together!” (Friluftsfrämjandet 2017)
Hans Gelter, Associate Professor at Luleå University of Technology, writes that even friluftsliv has become commodified in the age of consumerism. He claims that the high prices commanded for outdoor equipment and transportation to remote places act as a barrier between hikers and the nature they claim to be seeking. (Gelter 2000) In Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered (1985), Timothy Luke argues that outdoor pursuits are now more about testing fancy equipment than finding a deep connection with Mother Nature. Snowboarding is now more about testing the latest boards and wearing eye-catching outfits than it is about enjoying pristine mountain vistas. Golf is now as much about donning luxury clothing brands and using expensive golf clubs as it is about enjoying the outdoors. Even many shower gels and body washes now contain a drop of lemon essence or avocado oil – for which you pay an extra dollar – that adds nothing to the utility of the product. We do this because we crave nature in an industrialised world.
My book Fighting Chemophobia (coming at the end of 2017) is approaching 60,000 words in length. Copious reading and lively discussions with many colleagues and academics is helping to shape the stories in the book.
Follow me on twitter to stay up-to-date with the book’s progress.
In 2014, I soon followed up with podcasts, radio appearances, press interviews, a T-shirt Store and twelve more fruit ingredient labels. I’ve done six more customised fruit ingredients labels for private clients. The images have since appeared in textbooks, corporate promotional material, YouTube videos, T-shirts, mugs and aprons.
Momentum built in 2015. Parodies emerged online, and a copycat image appeared in one Chemistry textbook. I started writing about chemophobia and consulting with experts on how to address the issue. In short, it’s very, very complicated, and has deep evolutionary origins. I set a goal to understand chemophobia and provide a roadmap to tackle it effectively.
In 2016, my voluminous OneNote scribblings turned into a book. I have a first draft saved on OneDrive (thank you for keeping it safe, Microsoft) and I’ll be proofreading it on an long-haul intercontinental flight for you later today.
My next book, tentatively titled “Fighting Chemophobia”, will be published in late 2017.I promise that my book “Fighting Chemophobia” will contain the following:
This “Fighting Chemophobia” book is for:
To get your hands on a copy, subscribe to this blog for email updates. Just click ‘Follow’ somewhere on this page (its location depends on which device you’re using).
I promise that throughout 2017, you’ll receive teasers, snippets and discarded book fragments via this blog to get you excited.
Inspired by the formula booklets used by VCE Physics and VCE Maths Methods, here’s an 8-page Chemistry formula booklet you can use for your Year 11 and 12 Chemistry assignments. This custom-made booklet is a collection of reliable formulae that I have been using to answer VCE Chemistry questions while teaching and tutoring around Melbourne.
There are 76 formulae on 8 pages. At least 10 of these formulae aren’t in the three main chemistry textbooks. Orders are shipped in A4-sized booklet that resembles the VCAA Data Booklet.
Orders from schools, students and tutors are all welcome. Price includes free international delivery and a 10% voucher for the T-shirt store.
Order your copy now by clicking here.
Learn from the bestJames Kennedy achieved outstanding A-level results in 2006 in Maths, Chemistry, Physics and Biology. Those excellent grades (which equate to an ATAR of 99+) earned him a BA (Hons) degree and a Masters degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge.
Shortcut formulae were just one of the techniques James used to pass his A-level exams and get into Cambridge. Along with structured revision, revision guides, practice papers and study notes on wall-cards, James used shortcut formulae to save precious time in the examination hall. You can get your own copy of these original shortcut formulae – revised and updated for the 2017-2021 VCE Chemistry course – for just $55 including free international shipping. Click here to get your copy.
Here’s an preview of the inside
This post concludes the Periodic Table Smoothie experiment.
Recall that we’ve just finished adding one mole of nitrogen gas and created a bizarre boron polymer at the bottom of our vessel. The temperature was 350 °C and the pressure in our vessel was 891 kPa.
Today, we’re going to add 1.00 mole of oxygen gas, stand back and observe.
Nothing happens.This is disappointing news.
Many of the substances in our vessel react (more accurately, explode) in the presence of oxygen but the ignition temperature for all of those explosions to take place is at least 500 °C. The temperature of our vessel is set at just 350 °C. At this temperature, nothing would actually happen.
There’s not enough activation energy to break bonds in the reactant particles in order to get the reaction started. We call this activation energy (EA) in chemistry. If we were to add a source of excessive heat (e.g. a matchstick), the vessel would explode.
Should we heat up the vessel to 500 °C and blow up the experiment right here?If we did, the following reactions would happen:
Enough of these reactions – particularly the first three – are sufficiently exothermic to trigger a chain reaction – at least up to the reaction of oxygen with beryllium carbide. The vessel would bang, explode, and shatter. The helium would float away, dangerous lithium amide would fly out sideways, and polyborazine powder, whatever that is, would land on the floor.
Let’s not ignite our experiment – not yet.
Conclusion after adding 1.00 mole of oxygen gas Substance Amount in mol He(g) 1.000 Be(s) 0.514 LiH(s) 0.000 Li2C2(s) 0.272 B2H6(g) 0.000 Be2C(s) 0.175 H2(g) 0.007 BeC2(s) 0.136 CH4(g) 0.009 N2(g) 0.552 NH3(g) 0.154 LiNH2(s) 0.277 polyborazine 12.194 gramsPressure: 891 kPa (higher than before due to the addition of nitrogen gas)
Temperature: 350 °C (vessel is still being maintained at constant temperature)
Oxygen was relatively uneventful. Let’s add fluorine and see what happens.
Let’s add fluorine gas
The following three reactions would all occur as 1.00 mole of fluorine gas is added:
These two products are quite interesting:
When 1.00 mole of neon gas is added, the total pressure inside the vessel increases but no reaction occurs. The concentrations of all the other gases present are unaffected.
The EndThat concludes our Periodic Table Smoothie experiment. The most interesting conclusion was the discovery of polyborazine, the bizarre solid that collected at the bottom of the vessel.
Also of interest was how easily we created ammonia, one of the simplest of biological compounds, just by mixing elements together. Could the compounds necessary for life be so easy to create that their existence is an inevitable consequence of the Big Bang? Is life inevitable? If the Big Bang were to happen all over again, would life occur? And would it look any different?
These lies include well-meaning simplifications of the truth, mistakes in the textbook, and, in a few extreme cases, blatant falsehoods.
This book isn’t a criticism of the VCE Chemistry course at all. In fact, I just want to highlight the sheer complexity of Chemistry and the need to make sweeping generalisations at every level so it can be comprehensible to our students. This is a legitimate practice called constructivism in pedagogical circles. (Look that up.)
Many of these ‘lies’ taught at VCE level will be debunked by your first-year chemistry lecturers at university.
Here’s a preview of some of the lies mentioned in the book. Check out all 50 by clicking the download link at the bottom of the page.
The content you’re learning now is probably not as true as it seems. Chemistry is a set of models that explain the macro level sometimes at the expense of detail. The more you study Chemistry, the more precise these models become, and they’ll gradually enlighten you with a newfound clarity about the inner workings of our universe. It’s profound.
Rules taught as ‘true’ usually work 90% of the time in this subject. Chemistry has rules, exceptions, exceptions to exceptions, and exceptions to those – you’ll need to peel pack these layers of rules and exceptions like an onion until you reach the core, where you’ll find Physics and Specialist Maths.
Enjoy this book. I hope it emboldens you to question everything you’re told, and encourages you to read beyond the courses you’re taught in school.
This book is a collection of common mistakes in VCE Chemistry and how to avoid them.
It comes from years of marking student SACs and exam papers, and from reading Examination Reports from the VCAA as well.
It’s free of charge, very informative, and very concise.
Click here to download the FREE book.
Click to download REDOX RULES posters for VCE Chemistry
What’s redox? We never learned that!
Yes, you did. I use the term “redox” to refer to all of the following chapters in Heinemann Chemistry 2, which you will have learned at the end of Term 3 (September).
The VCAA has consistently used redox to discriminate which schools and students have the self-discipline required to keep studying at the end of the year. Studies show that redox is taught at a time when student motivation is at its minimum: energy levels are low, emotions are high, and graduation is just over the horizon. Many schools and students gloss over these topics because they’re running out of time, any many students think they’ve grasped the topic – when they’ve actually grasped misconceptions instead.
LIE #1: The polarities switch during recharge
Nope. The polarities never switch. It’s the labels of ‘anode’ and ‘cathode’ that switch because the electrons are flowing the other way through the external circuit. Polarity is permanent.
LIE #2: Hydrogen fuel cells don’t emit any greenhouse gases
Wrong. They emit H2O, which is a powerful greenhouse gas. If you don’t believe that the VCAA can be this pedantic, think again. Read their 2015 Examiners Report here.
LIE #3: Each mole of electrons forms 1 mol Ag, 2 mol Cu or 3 mol Al in a cell
Wrong again. If you look at the half-equations, you’ll see that each mole of electrons actually forms 1 mol Ag, 1⁄2 mol Cu or 1⁄3 mol Al. That’s why I teach “1, 1⁄2 and 1⁄3 moles” instead of the typical “1, 2, 3 moles” rule.
LIE #4: Temperature increases the rate of reaction in electroplating
Wrong! Remember that Faraday’s first law states that m ∝ Q. Because Q = I×t, only those two things – current and time – can affect the mass deposited at the cathode.
LIE #5: Electrons always leave the anode and go towards the cathode
Wrong again. Electrons go RACO: to see what that means, download the posters above. This question appears in recent versions of Chemistry Checkpoints. Give it a try.
LIE #6: The cathode is always positive
Ask your teacher.
LIE #7: Ions flow one way in the salt bridge
Nope. Anions always migrate to the anode; and cations always migrate to the cathode.
LIE #8: KOHES always works for balancing half-equations
KOHES only works for cells with acidic electrolytes. For cells with alkaline electrolytes, which sometimes appear in VCAA papers despite not being in the study design (see page 46 here), you’ll need to use KOHES(OH). Here’s KOHES(OH) explained:
LIE #9: I can balance an unbalanced redox equation by putting numbers in the equation
Don’t be fooled by this one! The ONLY way to balance an unbalanced redox equation successfully is to do the following:
That’s a lot of work but it’s the only way to do it successfully. If you try to ‘cheat’ by just writing numbers (molar coefficients) in front of the reactants and products, you’ll find that the charges don’t add up, and you’ll get zero marks for the question.
LIE #10: I can break up polyatomic ions to make balancing half-equations easier
Nope! You’re only allowed to separate aqueous species in a half equation or an ionic equation. Because the Mn and O are actually bonded together in a polyatomic ion, you’ll need to write this:
Instead of this:
If in doubt, keep it intact and it’ll cancel out by the end if it’s a spectator ion.
LIE #11: The two reactants that are closest together on the electrochemical series react
Not always true. Use SOC SRA instead, which is explained in the posters above. Still struggling? Ask your teacher or tutor for help.
LIE #12: Oxidants are all on the top of the electrochemical series
They’re actually on the left, and all the reductants can be found on the right side of each half equation in the electrochemical series. There is no top/bottom divide on the electrochemical series: only a left/right divide of oxidants/reductants.
Surround yourselves with truthful redox revision using these 17 free Redox posters. I’ve had these up around the whiteboard for a few weeks now – they’re a constant reminder to students that redox has many ideas that are always true.
One more tip: print and laminate an electrochemical series (available here) so you can annotate it during dozens of practice dozens without wasting paper. Good luck!
In 1808, a massive volcano erupted somewhere on Earth. So large was the eruption that it bellowed sulfate particles into the atmosphere that caused significant global cooling in the years that followed (Guevara-Murua 2014). Despite its gargantuan size, nobody to this day has been able to locate the volcano or find any direct eyewitness accounts of its eruption. The volcanic eruption of 1808 remains an unresolved scientific mystery to this day.
How do we know this mystery volcano ever erupted at all? The first piece of evidence is an increase in sulfuric acid concentration found in Greenland ice cores, which are a characteristic ‘chemical signature’ of sulfur-rich volcanic eruptions (Dai 1991). The only major spike in sulfuric acid concentration in Greenland ice that doesn’t align with a real volcanic eruption observed somewhere on Earth is the spike found around 1808, suggesting the existence of this mysterious volcano.
The second piece of evidence is called the ‘sulfur isotope anomaly’. Deposits of sulfur buried deep underground have a different isotopic composition compared with sulfur sources on the planet’s surface. In the same way that we can monitor the effects of fossil fuel combustion on atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, we can quantify the amount of sulfur emitted from volcanoes by measuring changes in the relative quantity of sulfur-33. A huge spike in Δ33S suggests an enormous volcanic eruption occurred – and that’s exactly what we see when we study samples from the year 1808.
The third piece of evidence comes from trees. Trees grow at different rates depending on the climate. In particular, trees grow faster when it’s warmer (but not too hot, of course, which inhibits their growth somewhat), and they grow more slowly when it’s cold. Counting tree rings can reveal not only the age of the tree, but measuring the thickness of each tree ring allows researchers to estimate the amount of growth the tree accomplished in a given year. By measuring different trees in the same region, researchers can gain insight into the past climate of that particular region. Analysis of tree rings has shown that bristlecone pine trees had drastically decreased growth rates in the summer of 1809, suggesting the climate cooled significantly around that time (Salzer 2007). Cooling might have been caused by a giant volcano.
While none of this evidence amounts to a direct observation that the mystery supervolcano ever erupted, we do have eyewitness accounts of volcanic ejecta from exactly the same time. All the evidence, taken together, definitely points to the fact that the supervolcano did in fact exist. Scientists, in fact, are certain.
The first eyewitness account was written a highly respected Colombian scientist called Francisco José de Caldas, who described “a transparent cloud that obstructs the sun’s brilliance” over Colombia for several months from December 1808 to February 1809. The second eyewitness was a physician named José Hipólito Unanue who wrote about seeing “sunset afterglows” over Peru in the same time period. Both these observations are characteristic of large volcanic eruptions.
The fact that atmospheric haze was observed in both Colombia and Peru, which are in the southern and northern hemispheres respectively, suggest that this volcano was located somewhere in the tropics. These observations imply that ash was cast 2,600 km in all directions but the effect on the climate was global. One researcher is quoted as saying the mystery volcano “blanketed the planet in ash”. (Cole-Dai n.d.)
Vulcanologists rate volcanic eruptions on a scale called VEI (volcanic explosivity index), which is similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes. It’s a logarithmic scale that approximates the volume of ash that’s ejected by a particular eruption. The logarithmic nature of the scale means that while a VEI-3 eruption is called “severe”, a VEI-4 event is called “cataclysmic”. In 2010, Eyjafjallajökull erupted in Iceland, resulting in ash cloud so large that it caused severe delays to air traffic across Europe, Greenland, Russia and eastern Canada. The Eyjafjallajökull eruption was a VEI-4 (“cataclysmic”) event.
When Mount Saint Helens erupted in 1908, killing 57 people and causing $1.1 billion of damage across Canada and the US, it was classified by vulcanologists as a VEI-5 (“paroxysmic”) event. Alarmingly, the mystery volcano in 1808 was at least 10 times more devastating than Mount Saint Helens in terms of the volume of ash ejected. The mystery volcano was a VEI-6 event, and it’s described by vulcanologists as “colossal”.
Volcanic ash acts “like a giant window shade, reflecting sunlight and lowering temperatures on the ground for years afterward” (Cole-Dai n.d.). Temperatures across Europe were measurably lower in the years that followed as the ash cloud obscured incoming rays from the sun. Trees grew more slowly (as evidenced by tree ring data), harvests were diminished and the climate cooled for several years afterwards.
This cooling came at a very inconvenient time. Temperatures were already lower than usual in the northern hemisphere due to the Little Ice Age. In a further devastating blow, a second, much larger volcano erupted on April 10, 1815. It was located on Mount Tambora in Indonesia and had an intensity of VEI-7 or “super-colossal” (this is just one level away from VEI-8, which is named rather horrifyingly, “apocalyptic”). Mount Tambora’s eruption was so ‘super-colossal’ that 90% of the islanders on Tambora were killed by lava flowing down from the sky. Downpours of hot ash killed trees and fish for miles around, covering them with inches of grey dust. Hot ejecta was propelled eighteen miles into the air above the volcano producing a ‘boom’ that could be heard a thousand miles away. People across Indonesia mistook the volcanic ‘boom’ for a ship’s rescue signal or a bomb detonation. Some army officials across Indonesia’s vast archipelago even dispatched troops to defend their islands after mistaking the ongoing volcanic roar for the sound of an invading army.
The sulfur dioxide released from the super-colossal Mount Tambora explosion reacted with gases in the stratosphere to produce 100 million tons of sulfuric acid, H2SO4. The sulfuric acid condensed and remained suspended in an ‘aerosol cloud’ (basically a cloud) that was accelerated by stratospheric jet streams (basically very strong winds) until the entire globe was smeared with a thin layer of H2SO4. This is a rare event, and only happens following truly colossal volcanic eruptions. Interestingly, H2SO4 reflects incoming rays from the sun, and temperatures, which were already low as a result of the mystery supervolcano in 1808, were lowered yet again. The year 1815 was, as some writers put it, “the year without a summer”. Temperatures that year were about three degrees lower than usual across Europe, which is incredible considering that both volcanoes erupted near the equator.
If the Mount Tambora volcano was a little smaller, the sulfuric acid would have formed in the atmosphere instead, and would have rained back down to the surface as acid rain. But at stratospheric altitudes, far above the clouds, the sulfuric acid haze stayed there for years acting as a kind of sunscreen for our planet.
How does this relate to chemophobia? The combination of the Little Ice Age, the 1808 mystery eruption and the super-colossal eruption of 1815 had cooled the climate to such an extent that the weather in Lake Geneva was terrible in the summer of 1815. Who was there at the time? Mary Shelley, of course, who was staying indoors drinking because the weather was too bad to go boating. Cold, bored and disappointed at the lack of a ‘summer’ holiday, Shelley and her companions set about writing ghost stories instead. Among them was Frankenstein, which featured the original, quintessential stereotype of a mad scientist. The cliché lives on to this day.
Thanks, volcano.