Chemphasis

@chemphasis.bsky.social

Exploring the overlap of chemistry and poetry. https://chemphasis.com/

$A photo of fireworks from this year's Fourth of July celebration. This photo was taken with a diffraction grating in front of the lens, leading to the rainbow effect seen in the bottom of the image.$

Two gray squirrels are climbing the same walnut tree with similar postures, almost exactly opposite from one another; there’s an effect of a near-reflected image if one imagines a slightly slanted mirror plane. I used Shakespeare’s famous household descriptor given the squirrels’ identical appearances and the phrase’s fit with the meter of the rest of the rhyme.

Sunrise, turning the clouds suddenly golden against a pale blue sky; a building, a tree, and a set of power lines are also visible. This was a moment from a morning walk last week. The power lines had seemed at first to obscure the surprisingly vivid view a bit; however, with five of them in sequence, they ultimately suggested a musical staff.

Sunshine streaming through the green leaves of a tree in April, in honor of Arbor Day. The poem’s meter parallels that of Joyce Kilmer’s famous 1913 verse (“I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree…”).

A small red cardinal in a tree. The photos in this post celebrate signs of spring including birds, deer, and flowers, in honor of Earth Day. The poem itself is inspired by quotes from natural philosopher John Herschel and poet Mary Oliver. In "Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy," written in 1851, Herschel states: "To the natural philosopher there is no natural object unimportant or trifling,” citing “the fall of an apple” or “the situation of a pebble” as two examples. He ultimately notes that one “walks in the midst of wonders.” In Oliver’s 2012 poem “A Thousand Mornings,” she celebrates, in part, “...morning, the light deepening, the wind easing and just waiting, as I too wait (and when have I ever been disappointed?) for redbird to sing.”

Yield! This photo shows the familiar red and white triangle of a yield sign, in the context of driving/traffic. In a lab context, the actual yield is the amount of a given chemical product you’ve obtained; the theoretical yield is what you could have obtained if the experiment went perfectly; the percent yield gives you a comparison of the two (by taking actual yield divided by theoretical yield and converting to a percentage). Evaluating all three types of yield would be common when completing a lab procedure.

This photo shows an array of simple cyanotype prints, with their characteristic deep blue contrasting with lighter images of flowers and ferns, created via stencil. It is impossible not to think of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” when my classes complete these lab activities, and so it was nice to find inspiration for a limerick to highlight that link.

I learned the vocab term “crepuscular rays” relatively recently for the specific scattering effect seen when sunbeams pass through clouds; such rays are more subtle in this photo than others I’ve taken, but some can be seen at the top. “Crepuscular” comes from the Latin for “twilight” (crepusculum)… and it is a descriptor that fits well into a limerick’s rhythm!

A small bird sits in a tree, silhouetted against the sky of the early dawn. The moon is still visible in the sky.

Equilibrium! This photo shows what looks like a set of half-headed arrows written on chalk on the sidewalk: one pointing backward and the other forward, one on top of the other. In Intro Chemistry terms, this is typically read as an indication of chemical equilibrium: the forward and backward directions of the reaction are balancing one another. At the end of a busy spring semester, it can be a reasonable goal to achieve metaphorical equilibrium, as well!

Some flowers in sharp focus against a blurry background of tree branches and spring blossoms.

This photo shows a sign for a road named “VESPER WAY.” This is both the name for the road and the punchline of the poem. VSEPR (valence-shell electron-pair repulsion) theory, typically pronounced "vesper theory," is a first step toward more complex depictions of three-dimensional molecular geometries in Introductory Chemistry courses. One key idea underlying VSEPR theory is that “electron regions will repel.” (Obviously, this poem takes many shortcuts to achieve a reasonable rhyme scheme!)

A red cardinal is barely visible behind several tree branches on a winter afternoon.

A great blue heron stands in a nearby creek.

A small red cardinal is visible in the center of trees in the midst of a rainstorm. (This limerick takes poetic license in alluding to Hooke’s Law, used in physical science to define the movement of a spring via a “spring constant,” to reference the reliably back-and-forth nature of the changes in May’s spring weather.)

A tree in springtime, with blossoming pink flowers

$A quote from the essay “Learning to See,” in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s GATHERING MOSS: A NATURAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY OF MOSSES, first published in 2003. Kimmerer writes: “Slowing down and coming close, we see patterns emerge and expand out of the tangled tapestry threads. The threads are simultaneously distinct from the whole, and part of the whole... Knowing the fractal geometry of an individual snowflake makes the winter landscape even more of a marvel. Knowing the mosses enriches our knowing of the world.”$