science -the neverending quest for knowledge-

 

Ie-Aster’s note: At the recent meet, I got to use many of buncho’s science props! Chise lent me Mei’s outfit for the day, and also lent me a flash unit so I was able to try one out in these photos. Thank you both!

 

Also: PSA! Mei carries out experiments without a fume hood and goggles because we don’t have them in 1/3 scale. In real life, do not do this.

 

 

Makomo is the resident scientist among my girls, but as she’s somewhat disassembled right now, Mei is standing in the quest to further human dollfie knowledge…

 

 

Mei carefully pipettes a reagent into her Florence flask.

Afterwards, she will start the timer on her phone so she heats it for exactly the right duration. It’s important to control the amount of heat (thermal energy) which goes into the reaction, because with too much energy, products other than your desired product may form. Thus, she keeps the flame at a constant heat and carefully times the reaction.

 

Some minutes later…

The timer has just beeped, and the product in the flask is looking good! You can’t tell for sure just by looking, though, so Mei aliquots some of the product into a test tube for further analysis.

 

Among other analytic methods, Mei will send the sample to the crystallography lab, which will grow a crystal of the sample and, using X-ray scanning, determine its molecular structure. That’s one method scientists use to get the nice ball-and-stick models of molecules you’ve probably seen in chemistry classes!

 

(psst, Mei…Don’t forget to turn off the burner, though!)

 

 

While waiting for the results, Mei looks at a previous day’s experiment under the microscope. It’s important to plan out your time usage in the lab for maximum efficiency, which means you often have to switch back and forth between different experiments while waiting on steps that take a long time.

 

 

At last! The crystallography lab has brought back a molecular structure for Mei!

 

But she is not impressed.

 

In fact, she suspects the crystallography lab is scamming her.

 

“This molecule isn’t even possible!

 

Okay, let’s review the color coding for molecular models. Blue is usually nitrogen, red is usually oxygen, and while carbon is usually black, the number and geometry of bonds at these grey atoms and the fact that I’m being told that this is an organic [i.e., contains carbon & hydrogen] molecule indicates that these grey atoms do in fact depict carbon.

 

We see that carbon forms what appears to be four bonds at each atom. This is all well and good. But when we move to nitrogen and oxygen…each N and O atom forms only one bond! This shouldn’t be happening! N should form three, and O should form two…so either these atoms are actually double or triple bonded to the carbons, which would give us seven-bonded or nine-bonded carbons, which…just…no… or these atoms are all carrying negative charges, which would make the molecule incredibly unstable since like charges repulse and all the atoms would be repelling one another and tear the bonds apart, very explosively.

And honestly, even if the N and O are each bonded to hydrogen atoms that just aren’t depicted here, these N and O atoms each have such strong affinity for the bond electrons for the C-N and C-O bonds that having them all together like this would still rip the molecule apart. Look, I looked up the molecule, assuming that there are hydrogens there. This thing doesn’t exist. It’s too unstable to exist.

…I don’t know why we had to contract out our crystallography to an outside lab. This—this is just ridiculous.”

 

 

The crystallography lab representatives, shuffling their feet, have pointed out to Mei that a paper published in a totally legitimate, no really, scientific journal, has a similar structure! They present the model thereof to Mei.

 

Mei: “…First off. This is clearly an inorganic molecule—it doesn’t contain any carbon. My molecule is supposed to be an organic compound [contains C and H]. And this…

 

Okay. The purple atoms are probably iodine, the green ones are fluorine or chlorine—reasonable so far, since all these atoms form only one bond. But cyan—those are noble gases!”

 

Mei turns to her students for a quick explanation of why this is surprising.

 

“Noble gases like neon, helium, krypton, and xenon are called “noble” because they’re “too haughty” to bond with other atoms. There are some noble gas compounds, and those are, actually, often xenon bound to fluoride.

 

But iodine and chlorine ions, though they have similar properties to fluoride, aren’t reactive enough to form this kind of bond!

 

And notice that all these cyan-colored noble gas atoms are also bound to each other?

 

Scientists have found a few cases—a few!—where there are two xenon atoms bound to one another. But even for just two atoms, that bond is incredibly weak! So it’s vanishingly improbable to have four noble gas atoms bound to each other—even if the compound could be formed, it would fall apart at once because so little disturbance would be required to break the bond.”

 

Mei turns back to the crystallography lab reps.

 

“To have found a compound with not only iodine bound to a noble gas, but four noble gas atoms in a chain—I mean, completely aside from the fact that chemically this molecule has nothing in common with mine, where on earth did you even find a scientific journal that would publish something like this?”

 

Mei decides to write up her critique of this paper and send it to a chemical journal for publication.

 

 

“I hope this will stop people from being misled by this—this pseudoscience!”

 

omake:

It seems the intern has left something in the desk...

 

Author’s note 2: I tried to make the discussion as comprehensible to people without a chemistry background as I could, because there’s no point in just spewing jargon in a photo story—I hope it was possible for people to follow Mei’s rant

 

Even if not, I hope you enjoyed the photos!

*banging fists on table and chanting* SCI-ENCE-MEI! SCI-ENCE-MEI! SCI-ENCE-MEI!

 

(Wouldn't it be great if 'Our Generation' made sets with fume hoods? I don't think they'd be all that hard to make, but I'm kind of lazy )

 

You've done good by Makomo, Mei-- I think she'd be very proud of you! Unfortunately, outsourcing during processing and experimentation often means communication breakdown and errors(and even sometimes 'missing samples'-- put in quotes because a lot of what we send actually reaches our sister lab but sits on the loading dock for 3 hours). I'm glad you put them in their place, though! Sometimes you have to prove that you really know your stuff in order to get people to do their jobs.

 

[Your explanation was very clear, Ie-Aster! This was a very helpful review of some stuff I learned in high school years ago.]

ahhhhh, these turned out so good! ~♪

*banging fists on table and chanting* SCI-ENCE-MEI! SCI-ENCE-MEI! SCI-ENCE-MEI!

 

If I ever achieve the fabled rank of Principal Investigator of my own laboratory, I want to have Science Mei be the official lab mascot.

 

(Wouldn't it be great if 'Our Generation' made sets with fume hoods? I don't think they'd be all that hard to make, but I'm kind of lazy )

 

I would love that!

 

You've done good by Makomo, Mei-- I think she'd be very proud of you! Unfortunately, outsourcing during processing and experimentation often means communication breakdown and errors(and even sometimes 'missing samples'-- put in quotes because a lot of what we send actually reaches our sister lab but sits on the loading dock for 3 hours). I'm glad you put them in their place, though! Sometimes you have to prove that you really know your stuff in order to get people to do their jobs.

 

Mei is secretly very glad to hear that Makomo would be proud of her ^__^ She kind of wishes Makomo could be an older sister figure to her, but feels like she's unable to get close enough and have that kind of relationship.

 

Oh man, three hours on the loading dock, though? I hope there's at least adequate refrigeration, especially if those are biological samples!

 

[Your explanation was very clear, Ie-Aster! This was a very helpful review of some stuff I learned in high school years ago.]

 

I'm very glad it was clear!

 

ahhhhh, these turned out so good! ~♪

Thank you so much! And thank you for loaning me the flash and for the idea of the secret console in the desk

I always love the photos you take. Mei always looks so cutely serious. (and the photos themselves are just really nice. What kind of camera do you use?)

I just hate it when one of the girls is so much smarter than I am! *sigh* It happens to me with mine all the time but I didn't realize it is apparently spreading to other families as well. At this rate they may soon take over the world!

 

Great story and I love the Science props but I'm especially impressed by the photos with the mail box and small mailing envelope. The posing in those is so realistic that I expected to see the mail truck coming by to empty the mail box in the next photo!

 

Agatha saw Mei's plight, and conducted her own independent replication study. She concludes that, while the motivations of the lab are unverifiable, the results are unmistakable: the crystallography lab done goofed.

 

She is offering to send "fusion-powered acid-spewing death wasps" to the offending lab, should Mei choose.

 

I, however, beg Mei to refuse Agatha's offer; my furniture just can't take another acid spill.

Jargon us some more, Mei!

Blind us with your science!

So cute

I'm sorry for the extremely late reply to everyone--I had an unexpected crisis arise with my housing situation last week >__<

 

But I'm super happy that so many people seemed to enjoy Science Mei! To see your comments cheered me up a great deal despite all the apartment fiascos.

 

I always love the photos you take. Mei always looks so cutely serious. (and the photos themselves are just really nice. What kind of camera do you use?)

Thank you so much! I love Mei's expression for that very reason.

My camera is pretty old--it's a Canon Rebel T1i--but much of the quality of the image comes from the lenses and the lighting. In this case I was borrowing an external flash unit, which fired at the white ceiling, creating a soft, bright, diffuse lighting. The lens is a Helios 44-3, from the Soviet Union. I usually use vintage lenses because I am a shameless hipster, and they create an effect where the image has natural vignetting and is a bit softer at the edges (this last can be a bit annoying depending on the composition one wants). The lens coatings also affect the colors, but I edit the RAW files' color balances so I'm not certain how much of an effect that has on the final image.

 

Great story and I love the Science props but I'm especially impressed by the photos with the mail box and small mailing envelope. The posing in those is so realistic that I expected to see the mail truck coming by to empty the mail box in the next photo!

 

Thanks! I'm very happy to hear that since I've been working on improving my Dollfie-posing skills.

 

Agatha saw Mei's plight, and conducted her own independent replication study. She concludes that, while the motivations of the lab are unverifiable, the results are unmistakable: the crystallography lab done goofed.

 

She is offering to send "fusion-powered acid-spewing death wasps" to the offending lab, should Mei choose.

 

I, however, beg Mei to refuse Agatha's offer; my furniture just can't take another acid spill.

 

CORROBORATING EVIDENCE FROM AN INDEPENDENT LABORATORY Mei sends her profound thanks to Agatha!

Mei is very tempted by the offer of death wasps. This is probably because, unlike Makomo, she hasn't had to go through the obligatory semester of ethics training required in biosciences PhD programs*.

 

*the graduate students in the lab where I work tell me this is a thing. I think in actuality, though, it's more like "don't falsify data" rather than "just say no to bioweapons development".

 

Jargon us some more, Mei!

Blind us with your science!

 

...You just reminded me that I once planned to do a doll homage to that song.

This is a thing that I should do.

 

(for those who don't know--it's this song)

 

So cute

Thank you!