The weight of water

It's the UN's international year of the periodic table, so I've been writing and thinking about the elements. While writing a piece for Nature Chemistry about the hidden depths of the periodic table (the more than 3000 isotopes that could be stacked onto their elemental spots), I wandered across an interesting set of papers on heavy water and isotopic tracing, which along with some questions my students had in the intro chem course led to another piece for Nature Chemistry (The weight of water).

Heavy water (D₂O) is water where the hydrogens have been replaced with deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen that weighs about twice as much as standard hydrogen. Heavy water weighs just over 10% more than regular water, a tablespoon weighs only about a gram more, so it is probably not noticeable should you heft a glass of it.  (Heavy water was a key element of some nuclear weapons programs, check out the harrowing story of the raids on a Norwegian heavy water production facility in WW II.)

In one of the papers I read, future Nobelist George de Hevesy stuffed some twenty (albeit tiny) goldfish into 60 ml of water, in another he reports drinking heavy water and making thousands of distillations of urine to recapture the water, measure its density and track deuterium through the human body.

Drinking your experiement sounds dicey, but in small amounts heavy water is safe to drink, and as I recently learned, used in human metabolic studies in doses of about 10 ml. An interesting question raised in the papers I read was about the taste of heavy water. One report suggests a burning sensation might be felt when drinking it, another (by Harold Urey, who discovered deuterium) suggests it tastes like undeuterated water. But other reports say it tastes sweet.



With a bit of help from my youngest son, I set up a repeat of Urey's blind taste test. And was surprised to find I could indeed taste the difference. It is sweet.

And for the next few weeks, until the last of the extra deuterium clears my systems, I'll be just a little bit heavier than usual.

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Shameless self-promotion, George de Hevesy is one of the Catholic scientists featured in the audio series I did last year with Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ, the director of the Vatican Observatory.

Done is good.

There is a saying at Bryn Mawr, "Done is good." A way of reminding students (and ourselves) not to hang on to a project beyond its time, that the enemy of the good is sometimes the perfect. And also a reminder to celebrate what has been finished, that to finish something is itself an accomplishment.

The book of Lenten reflections I have been working on for the last six months is done, the last of the copy edits made and sent off. And it is good. At least I hope it is good!  But it has been nice to begin to clear up my office, to re-shelve the books (a selection of the books that I referred to in the text are in the photo: Augustine, Eliot, Levertov, Ignatius....). It's a chance to clear physical space to work, but also the mental space this writing has been holding in my brain.  To be done is a good thing.

So I should celebrate...a dinner out? a good movie with Math Man? A long walk? So many things I could do — but most of all what I crave is more time to read....books! I'm midway through Radium Girls, Kate Moore's compelling read about an industrial accident that played out in slow and awful motion, and have ordered Balaam's Donkey to dip in and out of.

1950s Male Academic Privilege

About two weeks ago I declared that I was invoking "1950s male academic privilege." To be clear, not the kind that has been in the news lately (as in here or here or...oh, never mind, that kind of behavior is unfortunately not confined to the 1950s.) What I meant was that I was electing to focus entirely on my writing, not on doing household chores, or fixing dinner. I felt free to stack up books on the floor and turn my back on dishes in the sink. I worked after dinner and early in the morning, my door firmly closed (to keep out the cat). I did draw the line at demanding a tray be brought up for my dinner.

It worked. I made the last revisions on a book manuscript I had been working on for the last year and put the finishing touches on an essay. The talk I'm giving on Thursday is in reasonable shape. My classes got prepped, an exam got written, office hours happened, a teaching plan was made.

But of course, I'm not a 1950s male academic, so all the "1950s faculty wife" things I didn't tend to are now popping back onto my to-do list. Memos to write. A dinner party for a newly minted faculty chair to organize. Books to reshelve and return to the library. A study to lightly tidy — only lightly so as not to disturb the intellectual work of the occupant. Grocery shopping. Laundry. Except for getting a haircut. Math Man called and made me an appointment.  He's the perfect faculty spouse.

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Math Man and I watched The Wife last week. I saw the ending coming a mile away.

Beset

I was responding to a spate of emails from students — it's the start of the semester and my inbox is filled with small, urgent requests.  Yes, I told a student, that's fine. And closed with "Beset, Dr. Francl".  Oops!

Sometimes my fingers know before my mind does, what is going on.  Beset indeed. This morning I am channelling my inner anchoress and closing my door to write, write, write.

1000 words for the day, if I can. And no, I'm not checking email. Thanks for asking.

Overreading Nehehmiah

Lots to see here for even the littlest!

Sunday's first reading has provoked some interesting exegetical conversation about the presence of young children within the sanctuary,

In the square in front of the Water Gate, Ezra read out of the book from daybreak till midday, in the presence of the men, the women, and those children old enough to understand; and all the people listened attentively to the book of the law. Nehemiah 8:3

Fr. Michael White reads this passage to support excluding children from the sanctuary, falling clearly on the side that the Mass is entirely a rational experience and those without the intellectual capacity to understand (presumably including those with dementia or other cognitive deficits) should be provided for in other ways, e.g. by investing in strong children's programs. Worship should be serene and uninterrupted by the messy realities of everyday life.

White mocks those who sit where their children can see, "as if they’re looking." Certainly my experience in a church which does not provide differently for children, or those otherwise unable to "understand," is that children are far more attentive to what is happening on the altar than you might think. The three year-old boy next to me who joins in the prayers of the faithful, the little girl dancing to our song — Alleluia — or my own son, who on hearing the opening to the second reading, "St. Paul's letter to the Romans" leaned over to say, "Rome, I've been to Rome." He was 4. Father White might spend a few weekends sitting incognito in the pews somewhere to see where children are looking and what they are doing and how parents are investing in their formation, and then revisit the issues he takes up in his essay.

Listening to the reading this weekend, I was struck by who was in the assembly. If all the people, the men and the women alike were there, who was home with the children too young to understand?  I had visions of houses with infants abandoned in cradles and toddlers wandering the streets. Perhaps the meaning to be wrung from this passage isn't that we shouldn't bring children into the church until they are old enough to understand, but that they are old enough to grasp out for and onto God from the very start. For are we not to love and worship God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength.  Frankly, it's more than any of us can understand.

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H/T to Fritz Bauerschmidt at PrayTell, "Suffering the Little Children"