Ten years are a long time when it comes to (recent) technologies. The first post on this blog was on the topic of how to present chemistry with three intact dimensions.

The site fairsharing.org is a repository of information about FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) objects such as research data. A project to inject chemical components, rather sparse at the moment at the above site, is being promoted by workshops under the auspices of e.g. IUPAC and CODATA and the GO-FAIR initiative.

The molecules below were discussed in the previous post as examples of highly polar but formally neutral molecules, a property induced by aromatisation of up to three rings. Since e.g. compound 3 is known only in its protonated phenolic form, here I take a look at the basicity of the oxygen in these systems to see if deprotonation of the ionic phenol form to the neutral polar form is viable.

In several posts a year or so ago I considered various suggestions for the most polar neutral molecules, as measured by the dipole moment. A record had been claimed[cite]10.1002/anie.201508249[/cite] for a synthesized molecule of ~14.1±0.7D. I pushed this to a calculated 21.7D for an admittedly hypothetical and unsynthesized molecule.

Around the time of the 2012 olympic games, the main site for which was Stratford in east London, I heard a fascinating talk about the “remediation” of the site from the pollution caused by its industrial chemical heritage. Here I visit another, arguably much more famous and indeed older industrial site. The remediation of Stratford involved the removal, cleaning and returning of a vast amount of topsoil, something which was not cheap to do.

C&EN has again run a vote for the 2017 Molecules of the year. Here I take a look not just at these molecules, but at how FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) the data associated with these molecules actually is. I went about finding out as follows: The article DOI for all seven candidates was linked to the C&EN site.

A bond index (BI) approximately measures the totals of the bond orders at any given atom in a molecule. Here I ponder what the maximum values might be for elements with filled valence shells.

A little while ago I pondered allotropic bromine, or Br(Br) ₃ . But this is a far wackier report[cite]10.1126/science.aao7293[/cite] of a molecule of light. The preparation and detection of dimer and trimer bound photon states is pure physics; probably considered by the physicists themselves as NOT chemistry. It is certainly true, as a chemist,  that I understood only a little of the article.

Last year, I showed photos of wildflower meadows in west London close to where we live, evolving as the seasons changed. Today we hear the announcement that London itself is set be declared the world’s first National Park City in 2019. What is a park city you may ask? It draws on the principles of National Parks such as the Peak District, the New Forest, or the South Downs in the UK, but in a city setting.

The title here is from an article on metalenses[cite]10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b01897[/cite] which caught my eye. Metalenses are planar and optically thin layers which can be manufactured using a single-step lithographic process. This contrasts with traditional lenses that are not flat and where the optical properties result from very accurately engineered curvatures, which in turn are expensive to manufacture.