When a physical chemist asks a question during an organic Ph.D. seminar, it’s often prefaced by, “I’m not a synthetic organic chemist, but…(insert random BS about something measurable).” Energy is important. Okay, we get it. Yup, bond lengths are important, too. I’m convinced that first year organikers are required to memorize pKa’s, BDE’s, bond lengths and random other crap (such as, “a 10:1 diastereomeric mixture is typically worth 1.37 kcal/mol”) so we have ammo to go after any annoying physical chemist that wants to belittle our research efforts by nitpicking. It’s an organic chemist’s equivalent of an Irish jig.
I was horrified to see a senior, tenured, “well-respected” faculty member lambaste a fellow group member of mine (as well as my boss) at the end of a seminar (in a moderately occupied room) for abbreviating thinyl lithium “ThLi.” In an effort to relearn my manners (since I’m a Southern transplant from New England) I’ve learned to keep your damn mouth shut: make your point then move on. This professor tore into my colleague and PI for a good 60 seconds about how the talk was overloaded with organic jargon. Oh, for the record, this (supposedly) amazing chemist actually admitted that he thought my colleague was “doing experiments with thorium.”
You might be thinking, “J, that’s not fair.” Maybe you’re right. But surely a physical chemist should have some modicum of intelligence when it comes to basic organic nomenclature. Nope. Another colleague of mine recently asked a computational chemist to run HOMO/LUMO calculations on a carboxylic acid she had prepared. The computational chemist took one look at her hand-drawn molecule and said, “What does C-O-2-H mean?” Sorry. The jargon’s too thick for this one.
What if the shoe were on the other foot? What if you encountered a computational seminar where the speaker mentioned that pentazole should have a definite, workable half-life? Do you really think an organic chemist would ever stand up and ask the speaker to describe the reaction setup (including solvent, reagents and glassware) for preparing pentazole? Absolutely not. But you’d be certain that the physical chemist would grill an organic chemist about Hartree-Fock calculations.
I guess I’m just upset about the double standard.
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7 comments:
Did your group member define ThLi anywhere in the talk before hand? Honestly, how else should we know. This goes for all acronyms, reminds me of the recent phd comics:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php
Thank you for your comment.
ThLi was not defined earlier in the talk, and, quite honestly, the professor does have a point. My point is that he shouldn't have harped on the issue...and issue that was (honestly) moot at best.
In talking with a bunch materials chemists afterward, they all felt the same way.
I guess I'll side with your original frustration. The P-Chemist wasn't interested in clarity. He wanted to deliver a spanking because somebody wasn't living up to his standard of fussyness. Screw 'em. Golly perfesser, I missed a spot shaving. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?
There are just some profs who feel it's their right (nevermind duty) to ruffle a few feathers.
I guess you can't please everyone, right?
These stories make me cry. I feel for you 100%...especially as someone who jumped ship from physical to organic chemistry.
Jerks are jerks, in any area of chemistry. I have heard a few anecdotes of organic chemists doing the same thing to materials.
Thank you for your comment.
Personally, I like materials people because they always have really strange, random chemicals you might need in a pinch (at least in my building they do). I find that materials chemists generally have a good, broad understanding of the interface of organic and inorganic.
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