With no road connection and no cell phone coverage, surrounded by a fjord on one side and mountains on the other, near the edge of Folgefonna, lies Eikemo. And that’s where I’ve been the last few days, together with my dad who grew up there, and my granddad who moved there when he fell in love as young. In this middle of nowhere, there still lives five people who works at the very small and certainly not competitive farms. They have mainly survived by selling goat milk, but recently they have also started with tourism and have their own website. I was very pleased to discover that there appears to be growing activity at this beautiful place where some of my roots are.
Despite it’s boring name, Novec 1230 (C-6 fluoroketone) is a really fascinating chemical. It’s liquid at room temperature and looks and acts very much like water. But it’s not wet! It’s also generally very little reactive, so you can sink your LCD in it while keeping it powered on! You can also sink books in it, and it appears that the liquid doesn’t get adsorbed or make any damage. I don’t know why it doesn’t wet, maybe because of very high surface tension? Anyway, that makes it perfect for putting out fires without damaging the interiour like water does. And unlike other halogenated fire suppression agents, like halon, it doesn’t deplete ozone! Finally it appears to be non-toxic and easy to handle. Hm.. Could someone send me a sample? :D
It’s not uncommon to see “!?”, “???” or even “!?!?”. While not formally allowed, it’s still an easy way to express a question in surprise. But, hey, there is a better solution! Back in 1962 the typographist Martin Speckter got the brilliant(?) idea to superimpose an exclamation point on a question mark – and by that invented the interrobang! What‽ I’m already addicted to the interrobang :) If you don’t see it, it’s probably because the character unfortunately isn’t included in all fonts (why could that be?).
The last two weeks I’ve been walking with Audun, and discovered more of what walking really is. We walked as long as we felt comfortable with every day (which took some days with sore feet to sort out). With a backpack and while trying to keep our feet in condition for the next days walk, we averaged to 26 km – a distance that should take you around 15 minutes in a car – or one hour on a bicycle. Compared to many other animals, by nature, we humans move extremely slow. Still, we can walk fascinating distances if we just take our time.
There are many pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela. We met people who had walked all the way from northern France, from Holland and from Germany. Via Podiensis (GR65) is a route that starts in Le Puy-en-Velay in southern France. The different routes converge in the Pyrenees and join a single path that crosses northern Spain. We didn’t get so far this year, however. We got halfway to the Pyrenees, 360 km.
Why do one go on a pilgrimage? I can just say that I’m glad I went – and I’m sure I will continue another year. It’s a beautiful and slow way of traveling. We brought as little as we could, excluding even a map or a guidebook. We just followed the markings, and every day it was a surprise what the trail would bring, and where we would end up. Every day we bought the food we needed for that same day, walked, and found a place to sleep and talk to other pilgrims. What we didn’t bring, we didn’t miss.
I received Harris and Bertoluccis textbook on Symmetry and Spectroscopy today and I felt slightly hit by the dedication: «I dedicate this book to the student who is willing to take it to bed with him at night, along with a pencil and occasionally a calculator, and who falls asleep with a smile on his face». Of course I was reading that in bed… I also think I felt asleep with a smile on my face. But a calculator in bed..? That sounds like an idea from an engineer :) Truly, math can be rather fun, but «chemistry without numbers is poetry» (Andrew Shaws). And I would rather read poetry than do calculations in bed.
Colorful chemistry is great, but luminescent chemistry is even better. This week we synthesized two luminescent compounds: Alq3 with q = 8-quinolinolate and Eu(tta)3(phen) with tta=theonyltrifluoracetone, phen = 1,10-phenantroline.
We tested the compounds under UV-light, where Alq3 emitted green light and Eu(tta)3(phen) red, due to fluorescence. The compounds would produce the same light in an electric field (electroluminescence), which is the basic principle behind OLED-displays, but unfortunately this requires a more complex setup.
Alq3 emits green light when radiated with UV-light. This is a typical main group luminescent compound, where the luminescence comes from π-π*-transitions in the conjugated system (the other common transition is n-π*. As the transitions take place in molecular orbitals, there is a large gap between the many vibrational states and the emission peak is broad. Also, it’s only slightly shifted from the absorption peak.
Eu(tta)3(phen) emits red light when radiated with UV-light. Eu is a rare-earth metal and the luminescence come from f-f-transitions on the metal. This gives very sharp emission-peaks (because the transitions take place in atomic orbitals), which is good. Also, the absorption peak is shifted a large difference from the absorption peak. This ensures the compound is really white when no stimuli is added, while Alq3 is slightly yellowish.
A fun fact is that an Europium (Eu) compound is used in the Euro banknotes for anti-counterfeiting.
Maria is at a debt conference in Equador this week and tipped me about this very interesting case.
Ecuador is burdened with over 15 billion dollars of external debt. The Ecuadorian state-owned oil company Petroecuador have just discovered the largest untapped oil field in Equador (ITT), estimated to contain ~ one billion barrels of oil equivalent. With todays oil price, that is worth ~ 70 billion USD. Of course, there are also lots of costs linked with oil production (Petrobar estimates 5 billion USD), but still tapping the field would make a huge difference for the Equadorian economy!
Unluckily the oil field is located in the Equadorian rainforest, part of the Amazon-belt. But the Equadorian government have come up with an original solution: they will leave the oil field untapped if the international community offers to compensate the country with half of the forecasted lost revenues! President Correa estimates the compensation at around .35 billion USD per year.
“Ecuador doesn’t ask for charity,” said Correa, “but does ask that the international community share in the sacrifice and compensates us with at least half of what our country would receive, in recognition of the environmental benefits that would be generated by keeping this oil underground.”.
I’m quite tired about the use of culture and ethnicity as dividing factors between human groups. There are no such thing as «clash of civilizations» or «axes of evil». And it’s way too simple to use culture as an explanation for cruel acts. We are all human beings, and even though we get very different initial conditions for our lives, we are not that different when it all comes together. Avaaz has made a brillliant video and a petition for real middle east talks. Watch the video and sign the petition:
The universe is approximately 13.7 billion years, the earth 4.6 billion years, there are around 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, at least 10^22 stars in the universe. Attraction forces between uncharged matter is weak. Well, not always. There are 6.4 billion humans on the earth. I’m deeply in love with one of them. A stunningly unique, beautiful one. أحبك is Arabic for “I love you”. We’re thinking about taking an intro-course together in this beautiful language at Al-Quds this summer :)
In these DRM-times, it’s good to see music stores without DRM. Bleep just received the UK Digital Award for «Best Music Store». They offer high quality mp3 downloads and full-length free previews. The downer is the navigation. Unless you know exactly what you want, it’s quite difficult to browse around. No, you don’t get the mainstream-kinda music here! But there’s a lot of good stuff. And the pricing is like iTunes. Ok, enough advertising for today..
Dan Michael O. Heggø
It's 2007. I'm living on a strange, vulnerable planet called Earth. I'm studying chemistry at the University of Bergen, Norway, maybe getting a chance to understand it better..
The last two weeks I’ve been walking with Audun, and discovered more of what walking really is. We walked as long as we felt comfortable with every day (which took some days with sore feet to sort out). With a backpack and while trying to keep our feet in condition for the next days walk, we averaged to 26 km – a distance that should take you around 15 minutes in a car – or one hour on a bicycle. Compared to many other animals, by nature, we humans move extremely slow. Still, we can walk fascinating distances if we just take our time.
Why do one go on a pilgrimage? I can just say that I’m glad I went – and I’m sure I will continue another year. It’s a beautiful and slow way of traveling. We brought as little as we could, excluding even a map or a guidebook. We just followed the markings, and every day it was a surprise what the trail would bring, and where we would end up. Every day we bought the food we needed for that same day, walked, and found a place to sleep and talk to other pilgrims. What we didn’t bring, we didn’t miss.
