For #WorldEngineeringDay and with #InternationalWomensDay coming up, here’s a thread of five female engineers #WomenInSTEM 🧵 🪡

(By the way, #TransWomenAreWomen) Edith Clarke was the first woman to be awarded an electrical engineering degree from MIT, and the first woman to be professionally employed as an electrical engineer in the US. She worked on the hydroelectric systems that, to this day, provide hydropower at the West Hoover Dam.

Another thread of easily confused words, you say?

Oh all right then! 🧵

((un)fortunately there’s plenty of material, because English is a pain in the neck*)

(*when did it become bum/backside/arse? Surely a pain in the neck is worse…?) allude: indirectly call attention to something (“she alluded to the events of last Friday”)

elude: escape from something (“they eluded their pursuer”)

Similar-sounding but with two different meanings. Remember to ALLude means to cALL attention.

Right, let’s do some more easily-confused words!

Plus hints to (hopefully!) help you remember which is which…

🧵 Pour: to make liquid flow

Pore: a small opening
OR, gaze intently (she pored over the map)

Imagine the U in poUr is a cup. You wouldn’t want to spill anything on your important documents!

(There’s also “poor” but that doesn’t seem to cause so much trouble)

I am a proofreader. Would you like a list of words which are very nearly, not not quite, the same?

Of course you would 😆
All right… 🧵 Forgo: opt out/abstain

Forego: go before

(Remember FOREgo means beFORE)

It's time for my final (sniff 😥) episode of @TheCrashCourse #OrganicChemistry

What has salami got to do with organic chemistry? Find out in...

Diazonium Salts & Nucleophilic Aromatic Substitution!
(1/6) Review the difference between the easily confused nitric acid and nitrous acid...
(2/6)

I’ve been asked to make a post about my twisty-turny career for #YoungScientistNetworking, because not all PhDs end up in academia. So, here goes… 🧵
1/8 I finished my chemistry PhD in 2000, at Nottingham University (home of @periodicvideos!). I briefly contemplated working for Bio-Rad, because I’d done a lot of infrared spec, but instead I joined UoN’s web design team (it was a pretty new thing, then)
2/8

I like that fact that this article reads as incredibly biased against the pub, but even with the slantiest ever slant, literally all they’ve got is, “yeah well the bar manager has some words in their Twitter name. It’s locked now but they did. Honest.”

edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/politics/… “Ok I *did* shout at the manager, but they said a thing I didn’t like”

“The stickers & leaflets in the toilets were Nothing To Do With Us.”

“We kept our thoughts to ourselves. Except the ones on our t-shirts.”

“We’re victims of a Very Unlikely series of coincidences, guv!”

Pinched from jesseosheamd (MD Jesse O’Shea) on Instagram. More in thread 🧵 … #COVID19 #VaccinesWork #Vaccines
(1/4) Top: a 47-year-old man without known comorbidities who received one Pfizer vaccine and developed COVID-19 2 weeks after. While he had a runny nose, mild body aches, and mild cough, his chest X ray is relatively normal.

(2/4)

One of my favourite science "facts" is that, by diameter, you can fit the other planets into the gap between the Earth and the Moon.

An argument recently broke out on Facebook about the truth of this, which led me to Check The Numbers.

Ready?
(1/6) The Moon isn't always the same distance from the Earth. Its nearest point is called the perigee, furthest is the apogee.

The distance between the Earth and the Moon is 356,500 km at the perigee, and 406,700 km at the apogee.

The time-averaged distance is 385,000 km.
(2/6)

Oh come ON

https://twitter.com/UKMeteorNetwork/status/1366163122847940610

So, I've reached (atomic no.) 46, which is cool cos it's palladium, Pd - named after the asteroid Pallas, after Pallas, slain by the Greek goddess of wisdom, handicraft & warfare (there's a combo, eh?), Athena.

Shall we have a little palladium thread? Since you insist...
(1/16) It's a great catalyst & is used in catalytic converters, in cars, which help convert unburned HCs, CO, and NOx-es into carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water. And yes, CO₂ isn't great for the environment, BUT it's not so bad on the ground level. You win some, you lose some.

(2/16)

It's #WorldCancerDay so, let's talk about some of the utter nonsense that's promoted as cancer cure #quackery. Spoiler: none of them cure any kind of cancer. They might give you other health conditions to deal with, though.
(thread: 1/8) MMS (sodium chlorite solution) & CD (chlorine dioxide). MMS is sold as "water purification drops" & it does do that. It's also touted as a cure for literally everything, inc. cancer. It doesn't cure anything. It does cause gastrointestinal distress.
(2/8)

chronicleflask.com/2016/08/27/mms…

“We need you to teach key workers’ children.”

“OK.”

“And set work for, & follow up, all children who’re supposed to be working remotely.”

“Right...”

“And 3-5 hours remote learning.”

“What’re YOU doing during this?”

“Given an extra £10k office costs to work from home. Why?”

https://twitter.com/bbcpolitics/status/1346811243710083072

“Mm hm. And what about the children at home who don’t have laptops or internet access, whom you promised you’d help?”

“We-ell. Money’s tight, you know...”

“Tell me again about those PPE contracts?”

“The £1.5 billion that went to Tory donors? What of them?”

I miss Terry Pratchett 😥

1) This is so funny

And 2) It’s based in fact. Because of course it is. Because everything was. What, did you think he made it up?

Many people have said lots of witty & moving things about #Discworld #TerryPratchett and the awful The Watch today.

I shall just add this.

They people behind this were told.
[1/4] If this is a ‘mistake’, it is the equivalent of being warned not to climb Ben Nevis in flip flops and a pair of shorts whilst looking at the horizon and saying “oh, they’re just clouds, clouds can’t hurt anyone!”
[2/4]

Reminded of this today (thanks @Anatol!) AND it has a story!

My Nan queued up for a signing with #TerryPratchett @terryandrob to give me this book as a gift...

1/6 ... and there were people there dressed as Granny Weatherwax & ... I can’t remember who else she said. Might’ve been Cheery? Or Angua? I have a feeling it was someone from the Watch. Anyway,

2/6

Hey #ChemTwitter gotta mystery for you. A friend painted my nails with a UV-cured gel. It was pink when it went on. Over the next 48 hours, it’s increasingly turned yellow (lighting is different in pics but I think you can see...) 1/2 ... what could possibly have caused this? I haven’t handled anything (that I can of) that might cause discolouration or pigment breakdown. Friend has painted her own nails same colour since, no change yet. It’s apparently me! 🤷🏼‍♀️
2/2

As a chemist, shall I tell you what annoys me in this #Watch picture? The graffiti. Not because there's 20th century spray-paint in—what ought to be—a pre-industrial setting, but because #TerryPratchett was fascinated by science & engineering & you KNOW that if he'd WANTED
1/4 spray paint he'd have carefully researched how spray cans work, how the pigments were developed, how solvents ensure a fine, even mist. He'd have looked up the original inventors (Francis Davis Millet & Edward Seymour, for the record) & read about how & why they
2/4

This seems like a good time to have a little thread on the #Discworld #TerryPratchett philosophy of not treating people as things...
1/10 If you google this quote, you'll find it referenced to Carpe Jugulum, first published in 1998, in which Granny Weatherwax says:

'sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’
2/10

I have just found this: “The New SI Metric and Imperial Tables” booklet (no pub. date but I reckon early 1970s based on the decimal currency stuff) and it’s awesome! (Thread) The morse alphabet! Because you really never know when you might need that.

Here's a fabulous bit of #chemistry I've just learned about:

French physician Séverin Icard devised a test to confirm death: write "I am really dead" on a piece of paper using lead(II) acetate (Pb(CH₃COO)₂). It's soluble & invisible when dry...

THREAD 1/5 The paper is then placed over the nose & mouth of the "corpse". One of the gases produced during decomposition is sulfur dioxide (SO₂), which reacts with lead(II) acetate to form lead sulfide (PbS) which is black. So the writing becomes visible...
2/5