Fluorescent Nanodiamonds

Katie and I went to an awesome P chem lecture at the ACS Conference in San Francisco. The researcher there talked about his research into fluorescent nanodiamonds as biomarkers. Isn't that cool! Apparently they're the least toxic carbon-based nanoparticles. They fed them to worms and could image the worms without affecting their life-span.

The color that the diamonds fluoresce at is determined by their nitrogen content, so the researchers form them under different conditions to get different fluorescing colors.

I'm always amazed at the wonderful things Chemistry is used for.

Sidenote: this is what Matt is planning on using to propose. He's going to get a wedding band and then epoxy some fluorescent nanodiamonds on since they're only about a dollar a carat. His line: Even though this doesn't sparkle in the sunlight baby, it fluoresces under UV light.
We'll see how that ends up working out.... good luck man.

Why does it snow?

So this weekend I was upset at nature for pouring down frozen white stuff in March, so I put as my facebook status the philosophical musing "Why is it snowing?"

Luckily, the brilliant Dr. Asplund reminded me that I should already know why:

"Because the temperature is low enough that the enthalpic drive to form strong hydrogen bonds is winning out over the entropic drive to create a non-crystaline water droplets. Have you learned nothing in P-Chem?"

Thanks Dr. Asplund! Since I didn't get on facebook again until it was sunny, I was amused at and not bitter about that answer.