Sceptical Chymist tells me (via Twitter) that they were enjoying the favourite things about chemistry meme started by ChemJobber and continued by Azmanam (known to Sciencebase readers for his chemical spelling dictionary and the C+EN team. As is the wont of meme creators, you pay it forward and have to come up with your own “list” or whatever.
Skeptical Chymist had, “The smell of ethyl acetate (in the morning)”, Peter Atkins’ textbooks, the elements song, and freaky glassware and the prowess of glassblowers on their list of ten favourite things about chemistry. They then passed the baton on to the Chemistry World gang, Michelle Francl of Culture of Chemistry, their Boston- and Tokyo-based teammates Steve and Anne, and yours truly.
Now, I usually don’t bother with the generic memes (unless it’s one I’ve come up with myself) but how could a chemist resist a chemical meme? Unfortunately, several of the things I thought about putting on my list, like Tom Lehrer’s The Elements Song have already been listed by by meme predecessors. So, I thought I’d do something slightly different and list my favourite compounds in no particular order:
As with all of these kinds of memes, one has to pass it on, so I’m nominating ChemistPD, Jon Edwards, and Egon Willighagen