26 The last time I did this, it was a rather successful and enlightening experience that, I think, turned a few undergrads on to departments they may not have thought about. So, I would like to do it again. I’m particularly interested in the schools that haven’t yet been discussed in the archives, but if a better description of one of those universities should come along, I wouldn’t be opposed to posting it.
I’m still looking for the same key things:
- Description of the facilities, instrumentation, etc.
- How you think the department compares to the rankings
- How do the faculty get along? Is there vicious animosity or so-harmonious-it’s-disgustingly harmonious relations?
Your submission is guaranteed anonymity and people in departments outside the US are encouraged to submit. Please email your reviews to kylefinchsigmate at gmail.com and I will post them, like I have in the past. Excellent research goes on at many universities, not just Harvard and Caltech, and I (as well as thousands of others) want to hear about it. This is a great opportunity to laud the things that need lauding and expose the things that need improvement at your school.
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For organic CSU is a highly underrated school. Williams, Wood, Rovis, and Shi are all accomplished scientist and would be great to work for. A word of caution: A recent accounting error has really screwed the finances of the whole dept and it will be a few years untill things are ok.
Are there enough chemical engineering students that read this blog to make it worth writing a review for one of those departments?
yes
i’ve considered applying chemE (or materialsE)
it would be worth reading
Well? You can use this as an open thread, I guess.
No reason to let a topic go to waste.
Open thread, huh?
Okay, I think hydrogen storage is *&$^ing ridiculous and I can’t believe articles on technology that will never work in a million years are published in JCAS.
It’s Ti(III) on silica, you didn’t think we noticed by looking at the graphical abstract and figured out that never in a million years would it work outside the glove box after a millisecond? Nothing wrong with making Ti(III) and putting it on silica and adsorbing a shitload of hydrogen, but don’t sell it as if it’s going to be the next best thing since sliced bread and will be important for ‘hydrogen storage’. Didn’t the reviewers have the thought, in the back of their heads, that went something like this: “Hmmm… I wonder what happens to Ti(III) after one second under air… Hmmm…”
Okay. I read that article yesterday and I’m still seriously pissed off. I await you all telling me that I’m wrong though, and I should calm the $*^& down because I’m stupid.
P.S. I bet if I focus my JCAS submission on the fact that my compounds may cure cancer (and they do all this interesting chemistry on the side), it will be accepted easier as well. I’ll do that in my next submission.
you should put the DOI in there. I have no idea what article you’re talking about.
Well, I didn’t want to talk shit about particular authors, just about hydrogen storage concepts in general. I’ll think about it, and maybe put the DOI here. The problem is, I remember reading an article by one of the authors earlier and liking it, so that makes me even more reluctant to talk shit about specific people.
I suppose I owe it to post the doi.
10.1021/ja710288g
It can’t possibly come back to bite me in the ass. I think… This technology could be useful in specialist applications like making a small hydrogen tank whose insides can never, ever be exposed to air. But they talk about DOE targets in the introduction, which are for cars operating in the real world, for the love of Heyzeus.
What I think about the idiotic DOE report (that I have read — what a waste of life), is the topic of another rant that I will never go into in detail here, but which others have heard.
If it is an unexpected result that Ti(III) on silica would adsorb huge amounts of hydrogen, then I have no problem with it being published in JACS. Of course all this is contingent on them explaining the mechanism for adsorption so that we can learn some new science.
IMO the field of hydrogen storage is timely and not so well developed that it has its own high-impact journals. I’m sure that some editors/reviewers would give this manuscript the benefit of the doubt compared to another manuscript that makes some bold claim in a well-developed field.
I don’t think it’s an unexpected result, but I disagree that JCAS should publish just any unexpected result that comes along. A really good study of an expected result deserves to be in the journal.
I can explain the mechanism for adsorption as well as they can. There is not much science to be learned there. A d7 complex can potentially bind five H2 molecules if you follow the 18 electron rule religiously. Of course, an small, early transition metal like Ti will never do this due to geometrical constraints and the fact that there are only so many d orbitals that it has. That’s why they never see more than 2.6 eq. bind, but say that five should be possible at higher pressures. So the mechanism involves sigma bonding by H2 for a three center two electron interaction to the metal. There you have it. Whether Ti(III) splits apart H2 to form radicals, god knows. What is more interesting is that Ti(IV) appears to be a lot less active at H2 adsorption, and if what they suggest is really correct, then there should be an interaction between the unpaired electron and the sigma antibonding orbital of all the adsorbed H2 molecules. However, that’s not talked about because it’s a can of worms.
Hydrogen storage is timely in the sense that ‘nanotech stem cells’ (see In the Pipeline) are timely. It’s just a fad (as long as it’s related to cars like the current article). No one wants to drive around with tanks of compressed, explosive hydrogen gas unless your car is flying around in outer space. And a car with Ti(III) hydrogen storage material is going to have to be flying in outer space to avoid destruction of said material. This stuff still needs to be compressed to ridiculous pressures because I guess a sigma bond to an empty orbital of Ti is not all that strong. If it was stored chemically (inside a molecule to be dehydrogenated), it might make more sense. Never mind that it costs more money to make than electricity.
While I agree that the communication is pretty bad and contains mostly unfounded conjecture, I think that dismissing the article as jacs-unworthy because of ties to hydrogen-storage is a bit much.
I would contend that it is indeed an unexpected result and you would be hard-pressed to come up with more than a handful of Ti(III) complexes (d1, not d7!) that coordinate H2 in an eta-2 fashion.
However, the author’s don’t seem to have a good grasp on organometallic chemistry of early metals as their major thesis relies on obeying the 18 electron rule. Clearly, this rule is broken for many early metal complexes.
With regard to Ti(IV) being less active than Ti(III), I think that point is reasonably well understood by considering that the strength of a M-(H2) bond is influenced to a large extent by the d(pi) – sigma-antibonding backbonding contribution. Ti(IV) has no d-electrons, therefore there are no electrons to backbond.
Anyhow, I guess the point is that while the discussion of the science is questionable, the result is intriguing. There is a bit of fluff with regard to hyping up their science to get it into jacs, but hell, everyone does that.
Don’t be a hater, H2 is the future.
Probably not. The bioengineers will figure out how to make petroleum-like long chain hydrocarbons from cellulose. Either that, or we’ll clone whales and grow them in vats.
Well, it’s only us, and not the authors, who are suggesting that the single electron contributes to bonding via the sigma star orbital. I agree that it’s a logical thing to think about. However, it’s still a bit of a controversial idea and you won’t get far by trying to argue for it without any evidence in a JCAS article. Whether the H2 is all binding in an eta-2 fashion is a tougher call. Since it is a d1 Ti complex, you’d assume that the chance for radical chemistry could be quite high. If the material went through a lot of reversible cycles, then the case is clearer, but I had a hard time gathering that from the article.
I don’t think that the result is quite ‘that’ intriguing, but we’ll have to disagree there. I was much more impressed by the dehydrogenation of ammonium-borane (as a possible H2 storage material). I don’t think H2 is the future for cars. It’s completely ridiculous just as that DOE report that was written up by the auto industry (to probably kill the idea) and old professors who don’t know their chemistry anymore. Especially adsorption on solid support; that idea has no future when it comes to cars. I agree that H2 storage might find an application in industrial settings and residential sources of energy. Also in space stations.
Attacking/discussing the science of the article is a lot more interesting to me than discussions of their motivations. The acreage of JACS isn’t so precious that we can’t allow a few crazy neighbors if —their thoughts are at least reasonable by metaphor.
What I don’t appreciate in JACS is capstone articles to summarize an individuals thesis and get them a job. One can go to the UMI database for that.
On another note, i get annoyed by the part of the nanotech stem cell debate that mocks the scientists trying to bring new ideas into our shared field. Maybe I am too laissez faire or worse too much of a theory-lover.
You are too laissez faire, in my opinion. We don’t mock new ideas, we are just concerned that funding is appropriated incorrectly. You have to justify your basic science in the days of grants. There is lots of good basic science and theorizing to be done in many directions. Using unfair/untrue arguments to prioritize a particular flavor is not kosher.
The capstone articles in JCAS are good as long as there is some new chemistry in them. There needs to be a full article to summarize a body of data. No one is going to read it in a thesis and if the chemistry is good, then it deserves a full article. It’s not going to be in JCAS if all the new chemistry is not that interesting, but if it is, it deserves to be there. People in the field are going to read them.
Besides, nowhere in my post that you were replying to, did I talk about their motivations, unless I’m blind or something. I read over it, and I saw that I was only discussing the science that I have a problem with. And yes, part of my problem is what I believe to be disingenuous arguments pushing the science beyond the attention it deserves. I think the auto industry supported DOE report upon which a lot of introductions are based is a disgrace and also that no one really reads it. I actually pay attention to the H2 storage field (unlike nanotech stem cells) and we really should drop dead ends and focus on what works. Ultimately, you have to deliver the goods on funding and you can’t get stuck researching a technology that appears inferior for the task. Although, it’s kind of hard to turn your entire group around, but the focus should be on covalent storage of H2. I think I’m discussing science and not motivations, but I could be wrong.
“The acreage of JACS isn’t so precious that we can’t allow a few crazy neighbors if —their thoughts are at least reasonable by metaphor.”
I don’t care about keeping non-crazy people out as long as the editor and reviewers think the science is sound and novel. But the metaphor metaphor reminds me of that horrible Star Trek TNG episode where Picard and this alien captain were stuck on a planet and had to figure out each others’ language. Eventually Picard figured out that the aliens only communicate in metaphors. It’s a pretty foolish episode since every single sentence contains hidden linguistic metaphors in our language, and most people, including the show’s writers, probably never took that linguistics class. Still, I just hope that when the crazy neighbors publish in JCAS, they won’t be like that race of aliens. “Nanotubes and Picard at Tenagra” indeed.
Why not creating a small survey online? You can use surveymonkey or other free tools out there.
It should be fun!
Hope this helps.
What are people doing to avoid the high prices of downtown hotels for the Philadelphia ACS?
I need a room mate for that conference actually, let me know if anyone is interested in splitting the costs of a room.
Why don’t you set up a (really simple) site on your forums, Mitch, for people to hook up at Philadelphia as roomates to abate the costs of travel. I can link to it from my site in a post.
Mitch — I sent you an e-mail on your university account. My e-mail address is a gmail account.
It’s gonna be tough to get a room for <$150/night. See if your frat from your undergrad days has a chapter at Temple, Drexel, or UPenn, and crash there. They’ve usually got some empty rooms in the summer.
Otherwise, I hear Camden is lovely in August, though, and even though Admiral Wilson Boulevard ain’t what it used to be, the PATCO will get you into Philly alright.
El S: 1) Is Camden relatively safe? 2) How long it take to get to the convention center from Camden via PATCO?
Camden is, I believe, currently the per-capita murder capital of the US, but it does have some cheap motels. The areas *around* Camden like Haddonfield and Collingswood are relatively nice, though, if you can find something there, and they’re on the PATCO line. PATCO does take you straight to the downtown area of Philly, with the time depending on how far out you are.
Alternately, Philly has a decent regional rail system, so if you could find something in Chestnut Hill or the other suburbs, you’d be looking at a ~40 min, ~$6 ride into the city. Even staying in Wilmington, DE isn’t *completely* out of the question.
Even more alternately, a number of Philadelphians spend the night on the streets, so there’s always that.
Thanks, El. That’s very helpful.
avoiding the ACS recommended hotels is a must, since all the cheap ones were booked instantly… we had good luck with the travelodge located across the street from the conference ($132 canadian a nite, taxes in).