Chem test

My professor seems to be very fond of maelic acid.
C4H4O4.
Or, alternatively:
HOOCCHCHCOOH.

When I look at that, all I see is:
HOOCH.

Whatever happened to, say, HCl or HBrO or H2SO4?

Shock.

Am I the only one who missed that Peter O'Toole is still alive?

Or that he played Priam in "Troy"?
(Troy being a badly made movie of "The Illiad".)

How do you go from "Lawrence of Arabia" to a movie that stars Orlando Bloom?

Sarcasti-chemistry.

My professor is so lucky I'm tactful.
When asked to list a real-world uses for various elements, these are my initial responses:
Lead: Paint.
Calcium: The bones in my backyard. ¹
Carbon: Footprint. (Next reaction: Freezing Han Solo.²)
Oxygen: Breathing. Or the lack thereof.
Iron: Pumping.
Tin: Cans.
Mercury: Poisoning.
Silicon: Breast implants.

My computations have also lead me to the conclusion that Erlenmeyer flasks have a negative mass.
I'm also capable of bending the laws of physics: I put 142L of water in a 125mL flask.

Also, a final chemistry tidbit:

1. There are no bones in my yard. In fact, I have no yard.
2. Did you know that there is a type of trilobite by the name of Han Solo? It's a member of the agnostida family, all of whom are religiously confused.

I Hear It's Pronounced Orr-gun.

This is where I spent the weekend:Doing some of this:
And a lot of this:
Generating this:
It was time for the annual grotto cave conservation lint-picking down in Oregon. I know it sounds crazy, but lint-picking is actually my favorite part of cave conservation. It's very soothing - listening to the cave, picking some lint, chatting with those around, finding a 6" long hair, picking some more lint - and the results are instantaneous.
This year I got to go on rope to do some of the cleaning, which was really cool - and also very nerve racking, as you avoid kicking the cave bacon or scraping the flowstone with your descender. It was well worth it, though.
It really feels as though we just got started, especially on the vertical section. There is a lot more cleaning to be done here!

One of the sections we cleaned on rope:

A section we've cleaned in previous years:

It was so nice to get out of the house, and out of town!

Spotted in downtown Oly:

Man carrying chainsaw.