Bitter Grad Student T-Shirt

[quartzpebble]

We got (unofficial) chemistry department t-shirts today. Since I didn't want one that said "Need Money for Beer Research" I got the snarky one (much funnier, anyhow):

Physical Chemistry
The grand attempt to apply y=mx+b to everything in the universe

Organic Chemistry
The practice of transmuting vile, toxic substances into publications

Comments

[memnus]

I'm not sure I see the sheep that icon claims to be. Apparently I also need a "pointless comment" icon

[quartzpebble]

It's lying on its side with its legs toward you. It's one of those silly "desktop pets"--google eSheep and you'll probably find something. We used to have it on our old computer and it was really, really cute.

[dclayh]

"Combinatorial chemistry"? Wow. I never heard of such a thing. Do you do stuff like (sucrose)choose(ethanol)?

[quartzpebble]

It's combinatorial in the sense that it's like the setup for an easy discrete problem, as far as I can tell--given a molecular framework with m points that can vary, with n possible variations on each, how many compounds can you make? Good--now go screen them to see if any of them work for what you wanted them to do (usually drug-related; it got started as a way to look for and optimize different drugs).

I would so go for (sucrose) choose (ethanol)... outside of lab, like a good little chemist.

[notsteven]

Yeah, that's an important job of the biochemists. Otherwise people could use buffer overflows to freely rewrite your DNA.