This page is the report centre for three biopsheres set up with a class from Vancouver’s Admiral Seymour Elementary School. This is part of the pilot run for the Science Creative Literacy Symposia. Full details for setting up the biosphere can be found at Martin John Brown’s website (direct link pdf of article published in MAKE magazine found here).

- – -
DAY 01

NOTES:(From left to right), [1] “Shrimpy’s New Home”; (shrimp names) Flipsy, Zippy; (smail names) Floaty, Gary, Boulder. [2] “Biosphere EJKKPPLF”; (shrimp names) Thumper, Jumper; (snail names) n/a; [3] “Schnomadome”; (shrimp names) John Doe, Boe Doe; (snail names) Roman, Yanderbin, Noma, Hair.

Some concern about floating snails (are they alive?). Amphipod counts could be low (~2 to 3 per biosphere). Water is cloudy due to oyster shell Calcium Carbonate.

- – -
DAY 04

NOTES: Order change [1] Biosphere EJKKPPLP, [2] Schnomadome, [3] Shrimpy’s New Home.

All shrimp look good No more snail “floaties.” Calcium Carbonate has cleared, so biospheres look quite pretty right now.

- – -
DAY 23

NOTES: Order [1] Biosphere EJKKPPLP, [2] Schnomadome, [3] Shrimpy’s New Home.

All shrimp still accounted for, and generally have increased in size by about 50%. Generally, they look happy and are still swimming happily around. Shrimpy’s New Home is fast becoming Snails’ New Home as it has a lot of new “baby snails.” Don’t see this so much in the other biospheres.

I’ve always loved geology. I don’t know why I do,
but something ’bout the changing earth excites me through and through.
Subduction zones, orogeny, the earth’s great heaving powers,
and cleavage, groins, and hot spots. I could study this for hours.

I love to learn of hardness, swells, and continental rise;
of columns, stacks, and mountain peaks, all pointing to the skies.
Of caverns and crevasses, valleys, fissures, rifts, and trenches.
I like to know what’s going on in beds, on floors, on benches.

I like to learn near all things geological. And yet,
I’m not so keen on permafrost, and aa, and arrête.
Those topics just aren’t any fun. With them, my studies slowed.
I spent far TOO long learning all about suspended load.

But soon came partial melting. Infiltration, soon enough.
Confining pressure, overthrusts, my God I love this stuff.
I learned about the body wave, and felt a great sensation.
Eruptions, geysers, discharge, streams, and blowouts. And deflation.

Of aftershock, and P waves, and of angle of repose.
Of parent rocks, and daughter products… Where’s it end? Who knows?
And if normal polarity is not quite where it’s at,
there’s always dikes, and wind gap digging. Nothing wrong with that.

So hey, take up geology, ’cause it’ll knock your socks off
to learn how constant weathering can get a mountain’s rocks off.
I still don’t know the reason, not a clue what it could be,
but when I learn geology, the earth DOES move for me.

Our evening began in Peter Seychelles comfortable study in his New York townhouse, where the candlelight was just right, the hi-fi was in the background, and the Bisphenol-A was causing a stir.

- – -
Narrator: A worried friend rushes in worried about recent plastics news. She is worried. The scene is set.

Worried Friend, rushing into the study (appears worried, gnawing fingernails, shifty, unsteady eyes, a mauve t-shirt that says “concerned” right across the chest): What do I do? What do I do?

Other friend, not worried (puffing a pipe, which he is quick to note is not a pipe): What do you mean? Is this about all that Bisphenol-A?

Worried friend: Yes! Yes! We need to talk plastics….I’m scared to buy anything in plastic, use plastic, have plastic near….is everything that is being said true? What’s it mean? Why haven’t I heard of this? Is it new? It’s all over the news! My kids, my God, my kids! I’ve been just sitting around and freaking out!

Other friend (removing pipe from mouth, setting it on knee, appearing more attentive and pensive now in repose): As an honest broker of scientific issues in contexts both historical and contemporary I have to defer to a more informed colleague who can answer your questions. Any answers I offer would either be facetious or in the vein of, How could you not already know that this is going on, always, everywhere, as a consequence of our risk-producing new modernity?

Worried friend: You, uhh, kinda broke character there…but yes, yes, thank you thank you!

[In the distance a trumpet blares three times. There is pomp. Some circumstance. But mostly pomp. From stage left comes a new character, as if from the sky, with appropriate cape and superhero garb, at the ready to help his non-worried compeer and worried friend.]

New character, who looks official: Amazing how the tides turn, eh? Where once it was all candy and roses, now we find distress. But I can offer this: Here are some rules I try to live by: plastics #1 and #2 seem to be ok. So let’s start there. Plus, and you have to follow me here, BPA shows up in #7s, though not all #7s have BPA – it’s a logic puzzle.

Non-worried friend who is now more frustrated by the complexity of plastics consumption patterns than not-worried, per se, about their existence: OK, that’s fun.

New character, our be-caped and chemically informed hero: Listen, what I’m saying is there are things you can do, things your worried friend can do if worried about BPA. I, for example, don’t use canned goods unless I have to (BPA liners) and if I do I try to use Eden brand products (they use a BPA free liner). Here’s what else you can do: Get a good stainless steel container for water (like those from Klean Kanteen) – at least until the new BPA free versions are out from folks at Nalgene and other places.

Non-worried friend who is indeed worried, about more than he can comprehend (oops, he gave away his gender, narrowing by half the possibilities of who the former-non-worried friend could be), wonders if knowledge is the answer: Is knowing more about the issue the answer?

Our be-caped hero, softly but not condescendingly chuckling: More awareness is always better, but we certainly can’t assume that simply knowing more about it is the end stage. For some background, here’s a write-up that Sarah Vogel did on the history of the controversy about BPA. It’s really a must-read for this topic.

Newly worried friend [NWF], worried for the integrity of society, worried at such a diffuse and abstract scale as to be pointlessly worried, but still going on, still wondering what one can do, how one can think: Is that the same Sarah Vogel who is finishing her dissertation on the history of BPA? The same one who was even quoted in a Washington Post article a few weeks ago about this very subject?

Hero: Of course.

NWF: And if one wanted a bite-size news story to think about the broader plastics context within which this BPA issue fits, what would one do?

Hero: Am I right to suspect that “one” is actually “you”? Ah yes, then, I too know the comfort of the impersonal pronoun. This link would be good, I’d say: Not to mention that “one” should seek a broader view that the Chinese dog food and toy poisoning and lumber inspection and deforestation and coal-fired plants and unblinkered production schedules to meet the demands of the West are also part of. Lead. Phthalates. Vinyl. Benzene. It goes on. Not to mention, oh I don’t know, Rachel Freakin’ Carson almost fifty years ago now.

Narrator: I admit this all seems a bit forced, but they hired me so I have to narrate it. I had some others ideas about breaking the fourth wall, about some meta-dialog and whatnot, but they got scrapped in the editing room. I think what they’re getting at is that BPA is just one thread in a thick fabric.

(stepping into the spotlight from stage left) Other person, a new character: But this BPA really is all over the news, isn’t it? Like in this National Toxicology Program report.

(stepping in symmetrically from stage right) Another other person: It really is. Like here, from Salon.

Yet another reasonable person (apparently having dropped in from the roof, a la Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible): It really is, isn’t it? Like here, in the LA Times.

An additional reasonable person (and really, who cares where this one came from): I even think the wikipedia page has something like 70 plus references in it. How about that!

A Canadian reasonable person (arriving by pony): Yeah, the Canadians are way out ahead on this one. Like here, in the Toronto Globe and Mail, and as reported at Grist.

Narrator: I better step in. Yes, yes it is all over. That WP article was particularly well done. It seems the rub is not between whether or not we test BPA for health effects. There have been untold numbers of tests for such. Plus, if you’re the time-line type, here’s a good rundown of BPA over the past 117 years.

Other person (I forget which one): And so you mean it is not a matter of doing the science or not doing the science?

Narrator: That’s right Timmy, it goes beyond that. The rub seems to be that it also matters who does the science, and why, and through what research regime.

Polonius:

Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth:
And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlasses and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out:
So by my former lecture and advice,
Shall you my son. You have me, have you not?

Other person, along with Hero and that first person way up there, the one who was originally the NWF: But does that mean it is about whether or not the science was slanted? Whether or not it was done by interested scientists and not the fabled Mertonian disinterested scientist? Are you about to tell us that this is just another story of corrupt corporate science versus noble public science? Because we hear that a lot.

Narrator (chuckling): No, no Timmy. This is not so simply cast in binary good/evil terms, nor in terms of objective/subjective science, or corporate/non-corporate. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of evidence that corporate lackeys are trying to steer the testing results. Don’t let’s get started on all the Tobacco Industry tactics again.

Chorus: Why not? What’s with the tobacco folks again?

Narrator: Oh, well if the playwright will allow it, I’d add that one notable feature is the link between the tobacco litigation and the chemical lobby via one guy in particular, attorney Terry Quill.

Anonymous other character, who is strangely similar to the “Our Hero” character above, but who is becoming less and less comfortable being so-called: Yes, ummm, sorry I’m late [adjusts tie]. You should go check out the Philip Morris webpage. Once Philip Morris realizes that Endocrine Disruption (ED), and BPA, might be a problem for them, you see this guy Quill taking over as the expert on the matter, prepping them to fight the claims from scientists. You’ll see that his success in the manufacturing-of-uncertainty tactic for tobacco was noted by the ED folks, and he was brought on board in the later 1990s. Like in this, and this, and this, and this. All pdfs.

Fig.1. Excerpt of a business meeting on strategies to counter new science on ED.

Chorus: Is this where we feign surprise? Because we gotta tell you, we just came from Lysistrata, and this isn’t so surprising.

Narrator: Oh chorus, how you mock the conventions of the theater. Getting back to my earlier train of thought, before the tobacco guys derailed us….The WP article has a telling passage that helps explain why this situation is not so simply reduced to good science/bad science, and it’s worth repeating it here: “A decade ago, Frederick vom Saal, a reproductive scientist at University of Missouri at Columbia, came up with a different research strategy. He theorized that because BPA can mimic estrogen, a female sex hormone, minuscule amounts introduced to fetuses or infants could change cell structure and cause significant health problems later in life. He found that doses 25,000 times below what the government has labeled as safe harmed developing cells in mice.”

Everyone else: So what’s that mean?

A different someone else: Oh, what you mean is, at first, for the first few decades of minor research on the subject, if I can quote that Sarah Vogel, “The idea was: Look, this stuff is at such low levels, it really couldn’t effect any harm.” This was a research regime, a way to identity and approach issues of public health and safety with new products. But eventually other kinds of researchers opened up other kinds of questions. And it turns out that it isn’t just what answer you get, but what questions you ask? Vom Saal “came up with a different research strategy.”

Narrator: I’d say that’s a good way to put it, yes.

Vice president of products divisions for the American Chemistry Council, Sharon Kneiss: Yet I “said in a conference call with reporters two weeks ago that industry research is unassailable. ‘We make it a policy to supply government agencies with data, and we have done it in the case of BPA,’ [I] said. ‘We supplied studies following the highest levels of quality in terms of their study. We stand behind the quality of the studies.’”

Unconvinced member of the public (i.e., everyone else): Yes, I expected that you would say that.

Dow Chemical spokesman: “We categorically reject any suggestion that what we did was in any way unethical.”

Anybody else in the universe: You’re kidding us, right? I thought this was a tragedy, not a comedy.

Worried friend (remember her?): Thanks! You are the best!

Winnie the Pooh: Oh, bother!

Our hero (mumbling by the sink off-stage): If the concern extends beyond BPA, we could get into phthalates and vinyl…but maybe your worried friend is just concerned about BPA? You need to get into this slowly, I’d tell her.

Narrator (speaking to the Worried Friend): But don’t be so relieved! I once heard a little bird say something more important on the whole issue. Oh wait, was it our hero again?

Our hero (returning to the stage, dabbing water from his pantlegs): Sorry, yes, I was just rinsing out my canteen. I’d say that while the fight against BPA might have been a success (or will be) the fight against the entire regime of consumer products and late-modern chemical production that gave birth to the problem still exists. While the regime is by its nature irreducible, some features can be noted: we don’t know how to do toxicity testing for these sorts of effects, at least not on a massive scale; we still fight over “good” science; and we still have literally tens of thousands of chemicals out there that have had no testing on them whatsoever.

Narrator (stares pensively from the catwalk): …

Our hero: so what’s the big deal about BPA? Well, we actually did have some data (folks have had there eyes on it for decades). So, the point of all of this is: how do I know that BPA free is really any better?

Narrator: And so it begins, another new day in our modern world where we feel this is the beginning, not the end.

- – -
Lights dim, curtain draws, Peter Seychelles returns to his chicken and wine affair. An eye-of-the-storm kind of clam fills the theater.

Purple powder gently falling
Safely in my hands
Mixing it, shaking it, pouring it
Suddenly it forms bands
Coming back, finding it
Red between white
In the light.

Picking flowers when I was three
Scattering them next to my mother,
On a tree
Cherry blossoms in my hand
Gently land
On the sand
Of the beach

Now its time to go
To leave that happy scene
And return back home
Where I belong with my
Column chromatography

- – -
(Written during a Science Creative Literacy Symposia – more pieces can be viewed here)

We walked into the lab full of science.
Promise for work, excitement, and discovery awaited
We had an experiment to do

We picked a plant, pink, purple or green
We went up in groups refining it
Turning it to powder with a crackling and squelching
The nitrogen froze it brittle we ground it mortar and pestle

We put it in bottles, filling it with a forest scent
But then we destroyed it, with acetone yet
It turned from transparent to green,
But soon it was ready to be changed yet again

More bottles were assembled, silica, acetone filled
We then added our liquid green mixture
Pouring it through a chemical filter
Letting it sit to make the answer clearer

Then it was done, ready for analysis
Under the UV light, showing shades of red, yellow and green
It was chlorophyll, redirecting the light
Changing green to a reddish beautiful sight
This experiment has more than the eye can see

It makes me think of what we see and what we don’t
If it cannot be seen is it real?
If it cannot be sensed, what is it then?
Are dreams real? Thoughts real? Maybe another dimension?

Can something unseen become seen, become real?
I ask you this question in hopes for an answer
So could column chromatography prove what is the almighty truth?

- – -
(Written during a Science Creative Literacy Symposia – more pieces can be viewed here)

Shining. Draped in purple. The fresh smell. It calls to me.

Mortar and pestle. Grinding. Crushing. Destroying the beauty that once was.

Beauty lost, never to be regained. A last chance to recover: Acetone. Bringing back what once was?

Purple to brown. Beauty to hideousness. They say we have gained, but forget about what we have lost.

The beautiful coat of His Purpleness. On the outside, a gleaming pharaoh. On the inside, a murderous thief. Alter egos are his undoing.

- – -
(Written during a Science Creative Literacy Symposia – more pieces can be viewed here)

It started with an empty tube
Filled with a murky green liquid,
Clumps of plant clung on to the sides.
Left to settle, the plant material and liquid eventually separated,
Like oil and water.

Extracting the liquid from the test tube,
We mixed it into a combination of ethanol and silica.
The solvent tore it apart
The greasy, darker liquid sank to the bottom,
While the lighter, purer liquid remained at the top.

In the dark room, the UV light coated the mixture,
Reverting colours never seen before.
Neon! Red! Bands of colour!
Who knew that a purple light could transform simple liquid
Into a work of art?

- – -
(Written during a Science Creative Literacy Symposia – more pieces can be viewed here)

This poem is a collective construction from one of our symposia days. Each student wrote one line about the topic they chose (rubber gloves), and then the students put the lines in order to create a poem. The instructors let the students have free reign over their collective creative process, and they wrote it and put it together within five minutes. More pieces from the day can be found here.

- – -

God! How do you put these ON?!?!?!?!?
The rubber glove is blown up like a balloon, used to whack people.
They snap! They really help nurses save lives! They come in different colours,
and make funky balloons who can HIGH-five! (Ha! Get it?)
You pull them on, and they stick between your fingers.
OUR HANDS ARE SUFFOCATING.
Rubber gloves are very uncomfortable, however necessary.
Pale blue, horrible smell, hands covered, sweating irritably.
They Feel Really Weird.
Stretchy, oh so STRETCHY.
Feeling like you want to burst with the heat.
Hero Jaejung likes wearing them.
They make great balloons that float up to the heavens.
It’s probably hard to play video games while wearing rubber gloves. I’ve never tried.
The latex material squishes between your fingers as they move.
Protective, wearable, made of rubber, sounds like “gloves.” What are they?
RUBBER GLOVES!
Full of sweat, no breath for my hands.
Congealed sweat smells.
My hand is blue.

Part of our Science Creative Literary Symposia. During this day, students from the Grade 7 class extracted compounds from various plant and flower samples, which were then loaded on a silica based chromatography column for characterization.

- – -

THE DIAMED FLOWER

The DiaMed flower
Magenta petals,
Slightly browning,
Texture of satin,
In a single row.

Varnished, stiff leaves,
The colour of pine needles,
Pointing up walls.

Thin sheet of ice,
Crackled and sizzled like afire
Pestle ran over the helpless plant.
Trampled on, chunks all over the place.
A victim of the evil white smog.

Out of the freezer,
The strong smell of grass wafted out
A murky pond was collected in the tube, with algae clinging to the sides

How did the flower,
With its beautiful leaves,
End up like this?

~Melody Kwong

- – -

A MAPLE

A smooth, red leaf.
Flat and waxy,
Yet soft and silky.
Intertwining loves mesh together.

Soft crunching breaking
Into thousands of pieces, as the leaf cracks,
Cold chill envelops my fingers,
As the mist pours out,
Flowing like a soft cloud, spilling and vanishing.

Watching the powder trickled into the tube,
Wondering, how it smells, finding the answer.
What will happen?
To this, there may never be an answer.

Who knew this maple could be so small, yet colourful?

~Kimi Cheong

- – -

GRASSY GREEN

Thin, twiggy, needles;
Everywhere they are.
Dry, crunchy, common;
To find, not need go far.

When crushed up sounds like sand,
Swaying in the beach
Crushing liquid nitrogen,
Crumbling with its reach.

Hopeless there, sitting
All alone by itself.
Being broken to pieces,
Like a crazy mudman’s elf.

Being put in a tube,
First smelling so fresh.
Then I think a bit,
It really smelt like mesh.

Pouring solvent into it,
Creating liquid gel,
Creating an orange section,
I watched it as it fell.

I wonder what this was about,
What have we got now?
Does this help anyone?
Why? And. How?

~Tascha Shahriari-Parsa

- – -

THE PRETTY PINK PLANT

The pretty pink plant
Clean, delicate, curly
Timid, crisp, soft.
Light, airy, breeze
Intense
Bitter. Thin ice.
Cold, sweet aroma,
Defeat, under a
Grinding stone.
Crushed into
Infinite invisible pieces,
Falling,
A tunnel
Closing
Fragrance, light.
Water,
Disgust
Now what?
The Pretty Pink Plant
Lies fallen.
Shattered
In the
Dust.

~Abigail Liu

- – -

PINE NEEDLES

Flexible yet firm
Fresh and green
To be exposed to – 123^o degrees!

To crush a plant
Fizzle! It is hard as a rock,
But yet fragile as glass.
Crush crush, crush!
Mortar and pestle,
Going round and round.

Collection of powder,
A powder so fine,
Very fresh to an extent
What would come upon this?

A question
Shake, shake, shake!
What shall I do next?
With so much equipment,
I am confused,
There are so many going-ons around me.

What a waste!
Such a fresh smell of ground pine needle,
Does need to be preserved.

~Anthony Hsu

- – -

THE FLAT GREEN LEAF

The light green leaf;
Lying on the table.
With two other leaves,
They waited together.

Suddenly torn away
From his friends.
The leaf was placed
Into a bowl
Frozen, unable to move,
The leaf was crushed
And grounded,
Releasing a fresh smell.

The cold mixture of
Plants were poured into a tube,
And later, was joined by liquid.

The person holding the tube of
Leaves wondered what would become
Of these leaves?
Would they be grounded,
Blended,
Or thrown away?
The person thought of this as
He place the tube
Onto the rack.

The flat green leaf
Mixed with others
Was surprised as he
Transformed into a green
Liquidy
Mess.

~Ethan Jung

- – -

THE ARCTIC TULIP

It smelled like sweet sausages.
It looked big and purple.
It rotted at the edges.

Mortar and pestle, brittle and cold
Round and round in circles
The Arctic broken into pieces.

What will it turn out as?
Will the colour change?
Powder dissolving.
Bits and pieces gathering.

What will happen next?
Will the colours mix together?
Purple, green, pink, needle
Forever?

Arctic white, tulip purple
Added up, arctic tulip,
Soft to touch, smelled like spice
Altogether very nice.

~Nicole Chan

- – -

ROSEMARY

Its smell so sweet upon my nose
Its needles so prickly poking upon my fingers
Its stem giving way for shoots of dark green
It’s what I chose, Rosemary.

But then, I needed to destroy it
I threw away its touch and sight
Dousing it with nitrogen
I brought the pestle to its frozen form
I crushed it, sending it squelching and crackling
Rosemary, turned to dust.

The dust was put to a tube
With acetone dissolving its smell
With solvent turning Rosemary to liquid
The forest scent changed to chemical.

What will happen to my Rosemary?
Will it turn to air, will it be stripped of its beauty?
Rosemary, what will I do?
Science will decide what will happen
Rosemary, is this my goodbye?

Rosemary, your destruction is near complete, why was it so easy?

~Patrick Sheppard

- – -

COLUMN CHROMATOGRAPHY

We decided
And, oh what a decision: Purple, green, red, yellow. Leaves, needles, flowers.
We ground.
Felling the frozen plants crush between mortar and pestle.
We inserted and observed.
Smelling the chemicals, feeling sick. Nail polish remover adds to smell as
The fly does to a dogs excrement,
We waited,
The solvent slowly separating, showing us the true colours of our plants.
We observed
Under UV light, we saw more than ever expected.
We have learned.

Column chromatography,
It lets us see into the unknown. Shed light on dark
And yet…
We have only used plants. I now wonder what everything else in this world would look like.
We decided.
And as a result, we learned.

~Niko Savas

- – -

COLUMN CHROMATOGRAPHY

The flowers have changed.
From beautiful delicate petals,
To liquids that glow.

Underneath the UV light,
Pink turns darker
Green turns orange.

This reminded me of
The cat I saw while studying genetics
It glowed as well under the UV light.

I’ll never see a flower the same way again!

~Patricia Zhu

- – -

COLUMN CHROMATOGRAPHY

Kaleidoscope of colours
Science and literature come together
Crushing the plants
Sticky powders
Dissolved in rubbing alcohol
Neon under the UV light
Water and grease

Changing from one vivid colour into a
Completely different colour
Michael smith
Rubbing alcohol vs distilled, drinkable alcohol in
Wine
Extracting DNA from strawberries.

~Linda Zhu

- – -

COLUMN CHROMATOGRAPHY

After careful
Crushing,
Dripping,
Picking,
Fussing,
The concoction
Is ready,
After lunch
The result,
I carefully
Step into the
Dark room,
A single, violet
Light,
Sweeps across,
Catched my
Eye.
FLASH!
It’s dark,
What happened?
I can’t see!
Blindness?
I thought
It was skin cancer!

~Abigail Liu

- – -

COLUMN CHROMATOGRAPHY

Needled twigs, frozen crushed
Mixed with ethanol.
Separated, chunks from liquid,
Poured into a tube,
Left to sit a while.

Separated colours
Under UV light
Neon orange mixed with red
Where chlorophyll is plentiful.

Like a sunset at the beach,
On a summer trip.
The brilliant colours
Lie the sun, when it actually looks like
A fiery sphere.
The sun, sandwiched between layers,
In column chromatography.

~Claire Senn

- – -

COLUMN CHROMATOGRAPHY

Colours, blending.
Liquid, dripping.
Beauty, barely
Yellow, too much.

Colours blend as the plant matter drips on tirelessly.
Liquid seeps through silica, finding a way through.
Beauty is not needed, as it is replaced by interest and curiosity.
Yellow mixed with some brown, just enough for hideousness.

Colours, rainbow.
Liquid, water on a leaf.
Beauty, beast.
Yellow, sun.

Colours, a rainbow, glowing in the sky.
Liquid, water, collected on a leaf, dripping slowly into a puddle.
Beauty, hard to find where the beast is common.
Yellow, a murky sun, hidden by terrible clouds.

Connections, hold these things together.

~Kimi Cheong

- – -

COLUMN CHROMATOGRAPHY

1.
As we dropped our liquid into our solvent, drop by drop.
Nothing happened.
As we looked to other groups, some other solvents were more effective.
We waited and waited.
To our joy, it had gone down though the silica.
But to our dismay, we had only achieved the 1/3 mark.
Seen through UV light, unlike others, our experiment produced nothing special,
Except for a few glowing white circles.
At the end, our experiment produced nothing interesting.
But we succeeded at the experiment
Like all groups.

2.
As we saw it seep through the silica,
A memory came to my mind.
It was in a lab, extracting DNA from strawberries.
These two experiments are similar.
As we saw it progress,
A thought came to mind.
Why not clump our experiment and the strongest solvent into
A huge tube?
Of course, no one is such a careless person.
And should have fun with this exciting experiment.

~Ethan Jung

- – -

COLUMN CHROMATOGRAPHY

I wait. Yet still nothing has happened.
Is my solvent too weak? Is there not enough silica?
Am I a failure?
I must leave; I cannot bear witnessing my failure.
But something is clawing at me.
“Come back” it says. I resist.
But hours later, I am not so strong. I return to my lab.
What is this? My experiment is not a failure!
All this time that I have been sulking.
New form has emerged.
What could it be?
Only time will tell.
But now I will have more patience
Success will be at hand.
I’ve found something new!
It is deoxyexodicarbonphotohexasulfurplutonide.
I am rich!
But I am not satisfied.
I shall do more research in column chromatography.

~Anthony Hsu

- – -

COLUMN CHROMATOGRAPHY

Column chromatography
It’s what we did today.
It went –
“Oh.”
“Squeak.”
“Hissss.”
“Crunch.”
“Oops…”
“Hissss.”
“Squeak.”
“Don’t touch it.”
“It’s like a murderous thief, dude.”
“Silica is like water.”
“Hey! Check this out guys!”
“Solvent is like grease.”
“UV stands for ultraviolet.”
“Actually, our green is like orange.”
“This subway. It actually moves!”
“When you sit with a pretty girl for an hour, it feels like a minute.”
“By the way. How do you spell column?”

~Carmen Cheung

- – -

COLUMN CHROMATOGRAPHY

We put it in a bowl
Added liquid nitrogen
And crushed it
Then we added
Solvents
And separated chemicals

What are the chemicals
Used for?
Cleaning shoes?
Gluing bricks?
Fertilizer!
Electric guitars?

The stuff smelled like a small
Animal has drank a glass of sharpie ink,
Defecated and died. Right below
My nose.

~Angus Hay

- – -

COLUMN CHROMATOGRAPHY

Chromatographic with solvent and silica
Acetone improved chemical extraction
Causes UV light to have effect

Sand swaying from side to side, down the beach,
When the liquid nitrogen is poured into its new home,
Before the plant is poured into its new death.

Putting on gloves impossible to fit,
As I see the plant putting on a frozen
Segment to call its end.

Scissors and tools of all sort
Used to find the castle’s doors,
Hidden by the shadows of the light,
But will it work or will it not,
Will it stay the same?
Must we start over,
Start all over again?

Test tubes, cylinders, cubes,
Eye droppers, gloves, coppers,
Glasses, wipes, of all types
Many more tools we use for our equipment,

One miniscule speck of grass
How can it contain such a mass
Of beauties, truths, and signs of life,
Or signs of death, though there’s no knife.

~Tascha Shahriari-Parsa

- – -

COLUMN CHROMATOGRAPHY

When we waltzed in
To a little UBC lab
We had no idea what we were about to do
We knew it had something to do with science and literacy
But nothing really came to mind.

When our teachers explained
We crowded around
A table picking our subjects.

When the nitrogen flowed
Some kids exclaimed “ooh”!
And the first group hurried to line up.

It was a curious thing
Watching the small human masters and their little plant slaves
Lining up to be crushed
Pouring
With chemicals
Is what happened next
And the goopy mix
Burned

Under the UV light
We examined the mixture like it was an animal
Instead of once proud plants.

The experiment reminded me
Of a slaughterhouse
Only it was more “humane.”
Does anyone think of the plants anymore?
I guess not.

Even if they can’t think for themselves
They were alive like you and me
All in the name of science.

The name of the experiment is column chromatography.
An oddly long name for an experiment.

~Kimberly Truong

When I look out my office window, I see two sets of nucleotide bases – guanine and cytosine. I don’t mention this as an admission of psychotic delirium. The building where I work just happens to have a DNA molecule emblazoned on its windows. Admittedly, it’s an odd workplace view, but in my case it fits.

I’m a molecular geneticist—genomics, gene expression, cloning, and the rest of that good stuff – and these little guys are some of the fundamentals of what I study. In many ways, my field is actually about the flow of information in genes; how a code is represented in that mother of all blueprints and gets read to construct something so detailed and nuanced as life. My area of interest is how the information in that chain is used and communicated. It almost always happens in the same way; DNA to RNA to protein. It’s as good a slogan as any, and from time to time we even get to call it dogma.

More important than this dogma, is the way my field appears to me to be so much bigger than the molecules I study. Molecular genetics represents some of the most exciting, profound, communal, and frightening aspects of the collective scientific endeavor. Its speed of advancement defies belief, and its effects on the social, cultural, political and economical issues of the day do not afford the luxury of ignorance.

That’s why I sit at my desk and look at that DNA; to remind myself of the larger importance of those molecules on my window not only to myself, but to everyone else. I see that I am a participant in a greater flow of information—from expert to layman, from creating the trenches where research happens to leading the tours that engage our local community.

I suppose this isn’t a fashionable reason to do science. Perhaps a more proper reason is to talk of the glory and honor of being “first” —the first to discover, to see, to understand. But in my mind, that privilege is severely limited to just one or a few. Frankly, I have my sights on something bigger: a privilege that can be shared with as many people as possible; to make science come alive.

Scientist to citizen to decisions made – wouldn’t that make a lovely dogma as well?