Help fund the DIY Science Zone at GeekGirlCon!

Lots of science blogger/Twitter folks are going to be helping out at the DIY Science Zone at GeekGirlCon (a convention for young women about geek culture) on September 30 and October 1, including myself.

We're soliciting donations for our efforts. Your contributions would be spent on Zone supplies (activity ingredients, tarps, cleaning supplies, etc.)

Here's what I am offering to you, Chemjobber reader. If you donate and tell me, I will offer you a handwritten thank you note and, for any donation of $20 or larger, a post of your choosing.

I do not love soliciting funds, but teaching science and the scientific method to kids is worthy in my opinion. Thanks for listening. 

How do you use data sorting tools?

Credit: cambridgesoft.com

Friend of the blog Philip Skinner donated $200 from Perkin Elmer Informatics to the DIY Science Zone at the 2015 GeekGirlCon. With that donation, he gets a post on any topic. He asked to talk about Spotfire and other data tools, as he writes below: 

As a medchemist I lived and breathed SAR. And, working with Spotfire, I still kind of do as that tool is often used to allow quick comparison of many properties and make SAR much easier than looking at Excel tables. My question is this.... how many other industries use similar methodologies? 

I talked to a major unnamed oil and gas company once, but their homogeneous catalysis unit (metallocenes) and they were doing essentially SAR on their catalysts - albeit with different properties than the cLogP and #RotationalBonds that a medchemist is used to. 

I'd be fascinated to learn what other non medchem chemists use similar techniques - be it battery development, paints, stuff to keep mollusks from growing on your boats or maybe process chemistry. What tools do people use (Excel, Spotfire, JMP?). And what properties do they use in lieu of the traditional cLogP etc. 

I think in process development, there are a variety of data tracking tools (and various Design of Experiments software packages.) I think I'm still a fan of Excel, but I am probably stuck in the Dark Ages. I think most research-intensive organizations do some sort of multi-parameter optimization, but I dunno what kind of parameters they have, and how they keep track of all the data. Readers? 

As requested, a reading of a portion of the Feynman lectures

Harry Elston of Midwest Chemical Safety donated $50 to the GeekGirlCon DIY Science Zone; he requested a dramatic reading of a portion (Volume 1, Chapter 2.1-2.2 (Intro + Physics before 1920)) of Feynman's lectures on physics. So, as requested, here it is:



I'll be doing GeekGirlCon next year; as this year (and every year), if you donate $20 or more to the DIY Science Zone, I'll write a post to your liking. 

"Rosie Revere, Engineer": a reading

For a couple of years now, I have been involved with the DIY Science Zone at Geek Girl Con. This is an annual science fiction convention; prominent online science communicator Raychelle Burks has been putting on the Zone, where children (and adults) are invited to interact with hands-on science demonstrations and the like. It's a lot of fun and I have enjoyed participating in it.

We do a lot of fundraising for the Zone for supplies, etc. One of the things we're supposed to do is Acts of Whimsy when we meet certain fundraising goals. Because we reached $1500, I did a dramatic reading a portion of the infamous arsenic life paper.

A commenter noted that the reading was not exactly in the spirit of Geek Girl Con; I agreed and so I convinced someone I know to read a book that is much more relevant to the ideas behind Geek Girl Con and the DIY Sci Zone. The book is "Rosie Revere, Engineer" by Andrea Beaty.



Hope you enjoy. If you feel like donating, here's a link.

(And if you do donate $20 or more and tell me, I will send you a handwritten thank you note and write a post of your choosing.) 

A dramatic reading of (a portion of) the arsenic life paper

As part of the Acts of Whimsy for this year's Geek Girl Con, I decided to make a recording of the (in)famous "arsenic life" paper. I hope you enjoy.



If you can, feel free to donate to the cause. Just like last year, if you donate and tell me, I will offer you a handwritten thank you note and for any donation of $20 or more, I will write a post of your choosing.

I do not love soliciting funds, but teaching science and the scientific method to kids is worthy in my opinion. Thanks for listening.

A dramatic reading of "A comprehensive overview of chemical-free consumer products"

As part of the Acts of Whimsy for this year's Geek Girl Con, I decided to make a recording of the paper that Alex Goldberg and I submitted to Nature Chemistry. I hope you enjoy. (One more dramatic reading on its way.)



Please, if you can, feel free to donate to the cause. Just like last year, if you donate and tell me, I will offer you a handwritten thank you note and for any donation of $20 or more, I will write a post of your choosing.