Thread by @scburdet

Encouraging news, at least 3 or 4 students knew who the Fonz was today. There may be hope for this younger generation

https://twitter.com/scburdet/status/1431042457647648776

Today's trifecta: radon, @DrRubidium & gaslighting

Today featured cobalt, Alfred Werner and MacGyvering (the real MacGyver has a mullet. Accept no substitutes or reboots)

Day 6: Nihonium (with obligatory Nipponium story), Mario Molina & The Graduate

Day 7: Germanium, @CarolynBertozzi & I set the students on the right path on 'The Princess Bride' (that it's not good, but they could make GenX friends by pretending to like it)

Day 8: Ruthenium (nationalist element names discussed), Khorana & the Seventh Seal (Death playing chess)
Shared my story from grad school of being a tad suspicious of the little old man walking up & down the hall of our floor & being told he was a retired Nobelist

Day 9: Hafnium, @ChemScrapes & a disappointing discovery that students did not even know Jack Nicholson let alone Colonel Nathan Jessup messaging about VBT & electron configurations

Day 10: Samarium, Angela Merkel and the Underpants Gnomes from South Park

Day 11: Iron, Fritz Haber, Jaws "bigger boat"

The latter has nothing to do with the possible strain on our COVID isolation beds

Day 12: Chloride (IVM as a channel blocker), Richmond @SarpongGroup & Mr. Ed. There is a theme

Students had no idea who/what Mr. Ed. was😕
A horse is a horse of course of course
And no one can talk to a horse of course.
That is of course unless the horse
Is the famous Mister Ed!

Day 13: Rhodium, (honorary) Chemists of the Day @MCHammer & @HamillHimself & "going commando" as re-popularized by Friends.

The most hope I've felt in a long time as the broad consensus with GenZ was that Friends was, in fact, a terrible show

Day 14: Fermium, @ndbrning (@compoundchem featured daily) & "What we have here is....Failure to communicate". Cool Hand Luke didn't read the syllabus

Day 15: (Universitium Ofium) Californium Berkelium, Glenn Seaborg, "Shall we play a game?"

Begun the Transfermium War has...

Day 16: Who ended the Cold War? Seaborg et al naming element 101 mendelevium or Rocky Balboa?

Day 17: Selenium (mushrooms are an abomination), @TehshikYoon, bonus @GoogleDoodles Michiyo Tsujimura, Rosebud (offered w/o explanation)

Day 18 (past the halfway point!): Technetium, @Chem_Diva & Hogan's Heroes (bumbling Nazis are hilarious)

Day 19: Gadolinium, Linus Pauling & The Conversation.

We have an exam (online-but only collaboration with other students or service providers is banned) & students need to know that nothing happens without me knowing.

Day 20: Bismuth, @A_Aspuru_Guzik (in part a nod to #HispanicHeritageMonth) & The Gambler

Did you know there are *5* TV movies inspired by that song, and a 6th was in the works at one point?!?

Day 21: Boron (BNCT), @CWRUchemistry's Prof. Ignacio Ocasio AKA Doc Oc AKA GenChem instructor extraordinaire #HispanicHeritageMonth , the Q on Exam 1 most missed by the class & "I've made a huge mistake"

Day 22: Arsenic (as the first metallodrug), Omar Yaghi (possible Nobel preview?) & trying to go a more somber direction with the 2nd half of the quote to remind everyone to be mindful of people who might be struggling for any number of reasons

Day 23: Yttrium & Ytterbium (& Terbium & Erbium) from Ytterby, Sweden. More Nobel bait with Katalin Karikó & inspired by @heydebigale's poor decision "your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should"

Day 24: Xenon (making noble gas F-cmpds, Bartlett, sunlight & chemists missing digits), @Drennan_Lab (Xe as a protein X-ray tool tie-in) w/brief shout-out to NBA great @Prof_SJE, and "Yutes"

Day 25: Sb (& the ambiguity in where "antimony" comes from), @olbelina's journey from a freshman pre-med to sophomore/junior pre-MD/PhD to getting her PhD in chemistry #HispanicHeritageMonth, Different Strokes "whactchu talkin' 'bout, Willis?"

Day 26 (T-minus 9): Platinum (trillion $ coin), Jackie Barton, "you take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed & believe VBT or whatever bonding theory you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes"

Day 27 (T-minus 8, class @NobelPrize-eve): Nobelium (joliotium), @Livermore_Lab's element maker Dawn Shaughnessy & the greatest trick the devil ever pulled on famous scientists during Nobel Week

Day 28 (T-minus 7): New feature "New Nobelists of the Day, Rhenium, Nobelist in his own mind F. Albert Cotton, Seinfeld "Serenity Now!" (our mantra until the end of the term)

Day 29 (T-minus 6): New Nobelists of the Day, carbon for some reason, Enrico Fermi (& a premature award) & "I love it when a plan comes together" like a student periodic table project

Day 30 (T-minus 5): New Nobelists of the Day, Indium (why isn't this graphic blue?), Chemists of the Day. Both worked on Nobel Prize winning subjects, but one of these things is not like the other🤔 & who better to give a pep talk for our last week than General George S. Patton?

Day 31 (T-minus 4): New Nobelist, Meitnerium, Lisa Meitner (would you rather have a Nobel or an element) & a self-referential pop culture offering

Day 32 (T-minus 3😌): New Nobelists, Rutherfordium (at a former student's request), Rosalind Franklin (disappointed I didn't think of the Watson branding before I shared in class) & kicking some @$$ as the term runs out with Rowdy Roddy Piper🍬

Day 33 (T-minus 2!): New Nobelists*, Sodium & Potassium (electrolytes), James Ellis LuValle (400m Olympic bronze medalist '36), "it's a dog eat dog world and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear" #BostonMarathon #MarathonMonday #RunTo125

Day 34 (T-minus 1): Not sure if I'll have the energy to do day 35, so the theme today was...

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