Saturday, March 19, 2016

WWWTP: Czech academia edition

Credit: Anonymous reader
From the inbox, a reader comments: "This is an ad for vscht, a chemistry school in Prague, Czech Republic, one of the most prestigious and big in central Europe. They just ran an ad campaign featuring 2 pentavalent carbons."


11 comments:

  1. The picture link above seems broken. Also, VSCHT ("College of Chemical Technology") is not as prestigious - it is one of the two chemistry schools in Prague, it competes with Charles Uni - not exactly a high bar if you ask me... It isn't anywhere near the grandeur and reputation of University of Vienna, for example.

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  2. Pentavalent carbon seems like something the soviet government may have mandated to improve binding strength in crosslinked polymers---presumably a military application.

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    1. I thought vscht was something the WTO governments did to chemists not demonstrating sufficient patriotism.

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  3. I have tremendous respect for the Czech/Hungarian chemists and they missed out on this one. Is it not true that pentavalent carbon chemistry (and other hypervalent elements) was done by Prof. J. C. Martin that begin to look like SN2 intermediate?

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    1. I think it was some graphic artist who misplaced a double bond, or just a lazy random dude at ad agency grabbed a faulty template from internet - I think I have seen this messed up "structure" before, used in advertisement by western companies. What concerns me is that the college administration went into trouble of making make very technical-looking ad but they did not bother to show it to anyone from chemistry.

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  4. I think that's a resonance form for the benzyne - not that that helps much, since that would give two hexavalent carbons... I think I can hear that molecule screaming from here.

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    1. no....two pentavalent carbons still. Ack

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  5. We -group of 6 chemists going out in the evening- saw it on bus station, laughter erupted, then the other people joined but Im pretty sure they had no idea whats going on :D

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  6. Considering all the weird videos I see of soviet/eastern euro origin, who knows? In soviet russia carbon is pentavalent?

    Probably just an errant graphic designer who was just looking for generic chemistry structures. What is it anyway? Doesn't look familiar to me, or is it just a random hydrocarbon?

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  7. HAHAHA of course, i get a kick out of it when people say they have a PNAS article.

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20