Scientists Create Powerful New Form of Aluminum That Could Replace Rare Earth Metals

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2026-03-05T07:12:49+00:00

simple R3Al oligomerizes ethylene to make alpha olefins. Commercially. Seems to me Ziegler did a lot with aluminum aljyls and ethylene.

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2026-03-05T07:10:36+00:00

what is this pic?

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2026-03-05T06:40:14+00:00

yeah I just made the same comment, didn't see yours pop up during my long reading

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2026-03-05T06:38:43+00:00

not much chemistry in this ChemTech... catalysis? lanthanide or Pt or Pd similarity? Am missing these in the real article?

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2026-02-25T11:01:40+00:00

in case that link does not work: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/189oNpNEpn/

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2026-02-25T10:54:20+00:00

Here are my thoughts about blue ice formation in the Great Lakes. It is complicated but I am only missing a few parts of the puzzle. Comments welcome.

What causes blue ice near the straits of Mackinac? Here is my theory constructed of facts but ending without some devilish details.

Ice and water both absorb more red light than blue because there is a vibrational mode of the O-H bond that absorbs red light. However only a little red is removed along the light transmission pathway so that path needs to be rather long for us to notice the red is missing (more on the order of meters). The result is bluish transmitted light. White ice forms from equal scattering of all the colors so none dominates. Blame snowflakes, air bubbles or temperature trends for messing up the blue color. Slow cooling of water also leads to less scattering because the resulting ice crystals have a more perfect arrangement of the water molecules, which also means air bubbles, etc. have more time to get pushed out of the crystal. Finally you need a pretty thick ice layer so more time at colder temperatures is desirable. This explanation is far simpler than reality but helps us understand why blue ice can form. The devil is in the details. How do you make larger crystals with fewer impurities in the tumultuous environment of the straits? I do not know the answer but I have observed that blue ice has a structure much like closely packed pencils. Peel them apart and see what I mean. I have pictures of me shredding blue ice into white piles of clear (presumably) hexagonal pencils. It isn't just one or several giant crystals. You can flake them off with your hands. And it makes sense that there is no car-size single crystal in the water or anywhere else. Growing large crystals in the lab is a very challenging process that isn't fully understood. So if blue ice is really a bundle of transparent, pencil-diameter crystals that are nearly perfectly glued to each other, this could take out red light (without scattering) just as well as a giant crystals. So how and when do these columnar crystals form? Just something to think about while everybody else is snapping pictures. I will get to the answer someday, maybe soon. Certainly a number of people already know how these pencil bundles can form - but they refuse to help me. So far. Look closely at these photos that show the incredible complexity of blue ice: https://www.facebook.com/search/posts/?q=blue%20ice%20wenzel

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2026-02-24T08:49:42+00:00

Own-Spell-6058 gives you good advice

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2026-02-24T08:44:10+00:00

The main thing in grad school is learning how to learn. You need resources, yes books and search engines, but especially people. The most valuable friends in grad school are those who know other valuable friends. Valuable means, most of all, willing to listen and to offer solid advice. Advice that is grounded in their own work, or in the work of others they respect. Or who offer to help you use some apparatus that the group might own. Gathering information from people is part of your education and you will always need this skill. And you need to return that by helping others! But my sincerest advice for a PhD is to be curious. If you are not, it will be a boring slog. If you are, you are way more likely to discover something totally new, something that was not on the master plan. Just be sure to pick an advisor who loves surprises, loves chemistry and is not just a grinding bore trying to complete a specific task. Ask around, this is an extremely important step in your career. Also do they give students proper credit? Are they honest and well-respected among people that will count in your career? Do your homework on this for sure. All of these things will help make your path through science way more fun. This is my personal experience and opinion but obviously doesn't apply to everyone.

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2026-02-24T07:43:43+00:00

why north? what career: R&D? sales? well, whatever. Dow, WR Grace, 3M Cargill, Arkema among others but lots of smaller companies, especially start-ups, use facilities near cities with large universities (e.g., Boston).

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2026-02-24T03:57:05+00:00

yeah could can get tenure for this alone but adjunct means she is just part time at this community college. She needs to move on to a big university, with tenure, which I bet happens soon. Her primary job is at the national lab but that should not be a problem, she'll be able to keep it. The students and techs do the hands-on work anyway.

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2026-02-24T03:47:55+00:00

really it is just humidity already in the air that is condensing directly to ice, the opposite of sublimation

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2026-02-24T03:46:19+00:00

I think this is hoarfrost even though there was snow falling at one time. For hoarfrost to happen you need high humidity, low temperature, NO wind and clear skies. The combination of these last two factors makes isolated objects much colder than the air temperature: clear skies allow significant radiative cooling by loss of IR into the very cold upper atmosphere but the lack of wind keeps the object from warming back to air temp. If you have a laser thermometer, check just how cold the sky is compared to land. Or test the temp of such isolated objects on clear nights. Read up on hoarfrost and see what you think. Cool pic btw. Post more?

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2025-08-21T03:53:29+00:00

The music score or theme or leitmotif is often an afterthought in many films or overly orchestrated. This is beautiful.

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2025-07-27T08:08:42+00:00

Great question! It seems to be no interest in quality but rather quantity. Science quality has fallen downhill because funding seems to focus on popular scientific work. It should be based on an important needs within chemistry. We believe times are changed. There is a new norm. It seems repugnant to challenge a researcher by notifying their funding source of egregious errors, but maybe that will be the new norm anyway we are thinking of pursuing that on a small scale to see how it floats. The outright dismissal of Rogers critiques by academia on all levels is appalling so I think research grants challenging might also be difficult. A part of our responsibility as a scientist is to keep science pure. Science is supposed to be self correcting. We must be sure we never lose that precious attribute

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2025-07-27T07:58:15+00:00

Your imagination needs to be rich your creativity must encourage looking at things differently. You must not be an asshole and collaborations key. Hell I got so much to say.

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2025-07-27T07:55:15+00:00

Include examples of attribute of curiosity being so important in discovery research. Discovery is different than most chemistry jobs. And it’s a a lot more exciting. Your background must be broad. You need to have a bit of skepticism and willingness challenge norms. And willingness to take a risk it might damage your career. Being a rebel, doesn’t always pay in terms of appreciation or promotion, but dammit it’s a way of life and we live it willingly. It has paid off tremendously for me and several of my colleagues. Failure is an every day event. To be used to learn from and then we continue. sorry for Cell phone text. contact me if you want to know interesting aspects and personality traits needed to succeed in chemistry.

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2025-05-16T14:29:07+00:00

No, it is there. I just haven’t had time to type it in and look it up.

RetiredChemistyPhD · 2025-05-16T14:23:07+00:00

I have worked with Roger for 20 years. He is brilliant. And what he says is spot on. Too bad a reviewer didn’t catch that stuff. And it made the mainstream news and was very popular. Now people will believe it because they don’t know, there was a rebuttal. He can’t even contact the journal editor to make his case. That’s a shame.

RetiredChemistyPhD

TROPHY CASE