Curiousities Related to Chemistry

• Bad Science
  Not really a curiousity, but I did not know where to put this page, which is an attempt to sensitize teachers and students to examples of the bad science often taught in schools, universities, and offered in popular articles and even textbooks. There's a chemistry section in there too, but I thought it was better to let you have this link instead.
• Book of Quintessence
  These pages present a mid-fifteenth century magical text, The Book of Quinte Essence. Both a translation into modern English and an HTML version of the original can be found here.
• Characterization of Organic Illumination Systems
  Recent anecdotal reports of novel principles of illumination have stressed qualitative aspects. This note presents a quantitative study of an organic illumintation system, characterizing the temperature and current-flow properties of the system as functions of time and device parameters. Theoretical and practical implications of these measurements are discussed. A similar attempting to create new incandescent devices is communicated in the The Light Emitting Vegetable Diode page.
• Cooking HKN Hamburgers and Lighting the Grill
  See still photos or an MPEG movie of lighting of a grill with 3 gallons of liquid oxygen. "Result is a grill ready to cook in about 3 seconds, and all the old grease, etc burned off. " Don't try this at home!
• Cure for the Common Cold
  In April of 1995, the unthinkable happened. Fast Dry^TM Lozenges were finally patented as the cure for the common cold. Learn how such an astonishing patent came about!
• Fun with Grapes - A Case Study
  The authors have made an important new discovery in the field of culinary entertainment. Properly prepared, the common seedless grape can be made to combust spectacularly when subjected to a short (5-10 second) duration of microwaves. Don't try this at home either!
• Cold Fusion
  The ICCF5 Discussion Group - This is the archive of an independent discussion group devoted to substantive scientific critism of the abstracts of papers that have been submitted for the Fifth International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF5 April 9-13, 1995, Monte Carlo).
• Cold Fusion Times
  "The journal of the scientific aspects of loading isotopic fuels into materials."
• Introduction to Alchemy
  "Alchemy is a multifaceted subject. No longer can it be seen merely as a kind of proto-chemistry dominated by the desire to make gold from base metals or prepare an elixir that would prolong life. This reductionist view would confine alchemy to be of historical interest only. The wide sweep of different ideas and perspectives found in alchemical literature, both in printed books and manuscripts, shows us that alchemy in many ways holds in its kernel, philosophies and ways of looking at the world that are still entirely relevant to us today."
• Mad Science
  First International Virtual Conference on Mad Science - IVCMS'96. Among the submitted "papers", there are some entries that bear a distinct resemblance of chemistry.
• Molecule of the Month
  A collection of interesting molecules, put together as a collaborative project between the Chemistry Departments from around the UK. A new molecule is added each month...
• Science Jokes Archive
  This archive contains science jokes collected by Joachim Verhagen. There is a chemistry section linked in this URL, but it would not be just to direct you past the pointers to the other topics. Some quite fun ones in the chemistry section. Enjoy!
• Science Made Stupid
  "The cornerstone of modern science is the scientific method. Scientists first formulate hypotheses, or predictions, about nature. Then they perform experiments to test their hypotheses." This is a quote from this site, but that is also where the serious stuff ends. The rest is, mildly speaking, hilarious!
• Skeptics Society Web
  The Skeptics Society and Skeptic magazine investigate claims by scientists, pseudoscientists, and pseudohistorians on a wide variety of theories and conjectures. The question the Skeptics Society asks about all claims it investigates is this: How well do they hold up under scientific scrutiny?
• Strawberry Pop-Tart Blow-Torches
  Not necessarily chemistry, but I could not resist it: Yet another "don't try this at home" experiment. The same experiment is also available from another site with MPEG or QuickTime movies .
• The Alchemy Virtual Library
  This site, dedicated to Alchemy in all its facets, has been set up by Adam McLean.
• T.W.I.N.K.I.E.S. Project
  Twinkies is a series of experiments conducted to determine the properties of that incredible food, the Twinkie.

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