Trapped at Berkeley

The other day, I’m at the deli and I say, “Waiter, there’s a subatomic particle in my borscht! It’s enormous! Look at it go!” So the waiter says, “I’m sorry, sir, but you know what Heisenberg says about the limitation of measuring two properties of a quantum object with infinite precision.” “But Werner Heisenberg was a big fat Nazi,” I say. So the waiter says, “I’ll get the manager.”
Patricia Marx, of The New Yorker, impersonating Albert Einstein

There’s just something about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that draws me to any mention of it…

An uncertainty principle relating to Chemistry 120A says that a student’s grades become more uncertain when fewer classes are attended.
Chemistry 120A Syllabus

Although a spoof of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, my professor’s statement is actually quite truthful in regards to most UC Berkeley classes.

After five weeks of intense work, I’ve finally finished my Chemistry 4B special project, “The CO Content in Cigarette Smoke”.

Here’s a graphical representation of my results:

Surprisingly, Virginia Slims cigarette smoke had the highest concentration of CO. Marlboro cigarette smoke had a slightly lower CO concentration, and Camel cigarette smoke contained the lowest concentration of CO. It was also surprising to find out that ‘light’ cigarette smoke had practically the same CO concentration as regular cigarette smoke. In fact, in the case of Marlboro cigarette smoke, Marlboro Light cigarette smoke had a slightly higher CO concentration than Marlboro Red cigarette smoke.

I was only able to test one type of unfiltered cigarette smoke, Camel Unfiltered, and determined that unfiltered cigarette smoke contains the highest concentration of CO (in comparison to other types of cigarette smoke of the same brand). Of course, this conclusion was based upon the result of only one type of unfiltered cigarette smoke, so take it with a grain of salt.

Virginia Slims and Marlboro cigarettes are both manufactured by Phillip Morris, which explains why both brands of cigarette smoke had similar results. Camel cigarettes are manufactured by RJ Reynolds and apparently use a blend of Turkish tobacco, which could explain why their smoke has such a low CO concentration.

However, I must admit that there could be a great amount of error in my results. As you can see from the graphical representation of my results, there was quite a large spread of experimentally determined CO concentrations for each type of cigarette smoke. Tobacco is a natural plant, so no two cigarettes are the same. It’s possible that a cigarette I sampled just happened to produce an extraordinary large or tiny amount of CO gas.

Nevertheless, I’m confident that my results paint a somewhat accurate picture of the CO content in cigarette smoke. One interesting tidbit is that, for the most part, the CO concentration in cigarette smoke is substantially greater than the CO concentration in the exhaust of most modern cars. If that’s not enough to scare cigarette smokes, keep in mind that cigarette smoke contains plenty of other nasty chemicals like benzene, formaldehyde, and arsenic. And oh yeah, it coats your lungs with this nasty ‘tar’ that I couldn’t even remove with 15 M hydrochloric acid (stomach acid)…

I’ve discovered a practical use for my Berkeley chemistry education: I’m going to brew beer.

The idea started with rumors about my Chem 4B GSI Alex’s brewing abilities. I had heard from other students and other GSIs that Alex was a master beer maker. Although I don’t like beer, I was interested in the subject of zymurgy, the branch of chemistry concerned with fermentation. All I knew about the subject was that it involved water, yeast, and something called ‘hops’. Needless to say, I knew practically nothing.

Since I had finished my special project early on Friday, I decided to ask Alex about brewing. He briefly explained the process and described the types of beer he had produced. I was surprised to learn that brewing beer was a relatively simple and low-cost process. I was also surprised to learn that a person could purchase the ingredients necessary for brewing at age 18, even though the legal drinking age is 21.

After talking with Alex, I was anxious to try my hand at brewing. I thought it’d be an interesting chemistry experiment, of sorts. I also wanted to try to produce a decent tasting brewed beverage. Alex had said that there was a store in Berkeley that sold the equipment and ingredients I’d need. All I had to do was find detailed instructions on the process, and I’d be ready to go.

This morning, I discovered some Internet resources on how to brew beer. I learned that the same process and equipment could also be used to make soda, cider, wine, and liquor (with a distillation still). As a result, I wouldn’t be limited to just alcoholic beverages; I could make my own soda.

So, that’s how I became interested in brewing. I plan on starting this summer.

So, I didn’t completely fail my chemistry midterm. Out of 100 possible points, the mean was approximately 57 points and the standard deviation was approximately 18 points. The lowest score was 11 points, and the highest score was 98 points.

Originally, when I saw the score distribution, I was pretty sure that I had managed to get the lowest score in the class. Thankfully, I didn’t.

Nevertheless, I still got a pretty low score. But, it was my entire fault. I missed many lectures, and I failed to seek help early enough. So, without much ado, my tips for future college freshmen:

1. ATTEND LECTURE, even if you sleep through it. Your professor will be writing your tests; the authors of your textbooks will not be writing your tests. Although the material presented by both may be similar, they probably won’t be the same. Learning solely out of the textbook is not a winning strategy.

2. SEEK HELP FROM FRIENDS IN TIME. Surrounding yourself with smart friends is a good strategy, but there’s no point if you don’t take an active role in asking them for help when you need it. Plan ahead.

Now if only I can follow my own advice…

I crashed and burned on my organic chemistry midterm. I guess the blame falls upon me because I didn’t start studying early enough and because I missed too many lectures. This makes for two chemistry midterms that I’ve done poorly on; each midterm was worth 10% of my overall grade. Since I am really committed to my chemical engineering major, I have to start seeking help, and I must start getting my priorities together.

But, first, I need one happy thing today to rise up my spirits. I’ll probably run over to San Francisco to watch Kill Bill 2 after my ESPM discussion.

For those that don’t know, I chose to measure the CO concentration in cigarette smoke for my Chemistry 4B special project. I wanted to see how much CO gas a smoker inhales with each draw, and I also wanted to see if there was any difference between the CO concentration in regular, unfiltered, and ‘light’ cigarettes.

I was able to sample Marlboro Red, Marlboro Light, and Camel unfiltered cigarettes today. In each case, I used my cigarette smoker to simulate a person smoking and withdrew 10 mL samples of the ‘inhaled’ smoke. I filtered the cigarette smoke to remove residual tar and injected my samples into a glass gas cell. I transferred the cell to an FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscope) and measured the absorbance of the CO gas in each sample.

Because I had yet to prepare calibration standards, I was only able to make two preliminary qualitative conclusions. The first one may be surprising:

1. There is no difference between the CO concentration in Marlboro Red and Marlboro Light cigarettes. Although there may be less nicotine in the latter’s smoke, the level of inhaled CO remains the same. Consequently, ‘light’ cigarettes may be less addictive, but they are just as toxic.

2. Unfiltered cigarettes contain a significantly higher concentration of CO than filtered cigarettes. In addition, there was more tar in the unfiltered cigarette smoke.

I have included some pictures of my project; more can be found here. Thanks to Shelly for kindly lending her digital camera.

Experiment Setup:

Cigarette Smoker:

Gas Cell in FTIR:

My chemistry teacher likes explosions.

Just got out of my Chem 4B lab. The lab this week was pretty straightforward, so we finished early. And now, I can finally rest.

I’m going to meet Bryan of ABSK for dinner at 7 around Durant Square, and afterwards, read my Chemistry textbook (quantum chemistry is evil). Sometime afterwards, I’ll setup some test-blogs at test.evilcoder.com to see which one I’ll migrate to (if I choose one, that is). Oh yeah, I’ll do zeroion.evilcoder.com at the same time.

Linux 2.6.4-rc1 was just released. e100 has been rewritten, among other things, so I’m looking forward to improved network performance. I might just load the new kernel sometime tonight…

Whoa! I just got back from my EECS 20N midterm. It was pretty straightforward; there seemed to be no major traps, and it was pretty similar to the past exams. Pulling an all-nighter last night REALLY helped, since I read most of the textbook, which covers EVERYTHING. I expect the mean to be high though…

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LaTeX rocks. I used it last night to write up my EECS 20N cheatsheets (nothing beats LaTeX math markup). Once I figure out how to make an MLA template for lyx, I’ll be ready to ditch MS Word. Oh yeah, getting free PDF output is also a nice benefit of LaTeX.

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I have a chemistry lab in 2 hours. After that, R&R for the weekend (well, if a written lab report is to be considered rest…)! I’m going to be working on setting up zeroion.evilcoder.com and exploring replacements for MT (PHP-based blogs seem better). When zeroion is up, I’ll post my kernel configs (rejoice ThinkPad T-40 users!) and most of my configuration files. I’ll also try to document a debian-unstable install (those who need it, you know who you are).

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I FSCKING hate the Berkeley bandwidth limit. I’m up to 4.25 GB, and my counter gets reset 12 AM Monday. I want to finish downloading my CSI episodes!