which extinguished the wicker flame to the mild disappointment of the assembled
class. Spirits were revived somewhat when hydrogen peroxide was reacted to form
O 2 , which notably enhanced the wicker’s flame when inserted into the collection
bottle. Oxygen supports combustion but is not by itself combustible was the take
home message. Other gas bubble demo-spectacles included that of nitric acid with
copper to form colorless NO, which when the test tube was opened to the air, formed
the brown NO 2 gas. Wow! It was very heady stuff, especially for me and I was
hooked.
At some point in the course, which occupied my entire junior year, I became a
veritable chemistry nerd. I adored the exotic chemical glassware, the colored liquid
reagents, and especially my acquired lab-poseur form of correctly holding a reagent
bottle’s ground glass stopper between the middle and fourth digitals of my right hand
when meting out fluid. This became my version of being “cool” and added just a bit
of swagger to my step. OK, it was not exactly an acquired James Dean sexy
disillusioned look and persona meant to quicken the heartbeats of our high school’s
female student population, but it was good enough for me at the time.
Mr. Rosenthal also endowed us with a simple mnemonic device to understand
chemical redox reactions that I employ to this day:
LEO the lion goes GER (LEO: Loss of Electrons ¼ Oxidation; GER: Gain of
Electrons ¼ Reduction).
Next came Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). At RPI, the curriculum was
demanding and rigorous. There were, nonetheless, a few memorable instructors, one
of whom was the late Professor K. Jack Bauer a naval historian. Dr. Bauer had a
knack for telling a story coupled with a charismatic lecturing ability that could make
virtually any topic interesting. That would include furniture. No kidding! This
included a table, now owned by RPI that was once employed to end a war.
Specifically, by the parties to the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the RussoJapanese War. Incidentally, it also gained President Teddy Roosevelt the Nobel
Peace Prize. A second memorable instructor, recently deceased, was Professor
Henry L. Ehrlich who taught general microbiology, along with his specialty,
geomicrobiology. Professor Ehrlich was not a charismatic lecturer, but his talks
were clear and interesting, especially because geomicrobiology had sealed into its
core the basic chemistry that I first took a shining to back in high school. The Sixth
Edition of Ehrlich’s Geomicrobiology was published just a few years ago (Ehrlich
et al. 2015).
30.2 Got Methane (and a Bathing Suit)?
In grad school, I pursued investigations on methane biogeochemistry (Oremland
2019), where much to my chagrin, the first gases I collected with a funnel while
hovering over a seagrass bed were mostly composed of O 2 and N 2 with only a trace
of CH 4 (Oremland and Taylor 1977). Yet when I incubated anoxic seagrass slurries,
638
R. S. Oremland
class. Spirits were revived somewhat when hydrogen peroxide was reacted to form
O 2 , which notably enhanced the wicker’s flame when inserted into the collection
bottle. Oxygen supports combustion but is not by itself combustible was the take
home message. Other gas bubble demo-spectacles included that of nitric acid with
copper to form colorless NO, which when the test tube was opened to the air, formed
the brown NO 2 gas. Wow! It was very heady stuff, especially for me and I was
hooked.
At some point in the course, which occupied my entire junior year, I became a
veritable chemistry nerd. I adored the exotic chemical glassware, the colored liquid
reagents, and especially my acquired lab-poseur form of correctly holding a reagent
bottle’s ground glass stopper between the middle and fourth digitals of my right hand
when meting out fluid. This became my version of being “cool” and added just a bit
of swagger to my step. OK, it was not exactly an acquired James Dean sexy
disillusioned look and persona meant to quicken the heartbeats of our high school’s
female student population, but it was good enough for me at the time.
Mr. Rosenthal also endowed us with a simple mnemonic device to understand
chemical redox reactions that I employ to this day:
LEO the lion goes GER (LEO: Loss of Electrons ¼ Oxidation; GER: Gain of
Electrons ¼ Reduction).
Next came Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). At RPI, the curriculum was
demanding and rigorous. There were, nonetheless, a few memorable instructors, one
of whom was the late Professor K. Jack Bauer a naval historian. Dr. Bauer had a
knack for telling a story coupled with a charismatic lecturing ability that could make
virtually any topic interesting. That would include furniture. No kidding! This
included a table, now owned by RPI that was once employed to end a war.
Specifically, by the parties to the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the RussoJapanese War. Incidentally, it also gained President Teddy Roosevelt the Nobel
Peace Prize. A second memorable instructor, recently deceased, was Professor
Henry L. Ehrlich who taught general microbiology, along with his specialty,
geomicrobiology. Professor Ehrlich was not a charismatic lecturer, but his talks
were clear and interesting, especially because geomicrobiology had sealed into its
core the basic chemistry that I first took a shining to back in high school. The Sixth
Edition of Ehrlich’s Geomicrobiology was published just a few years ago (Ehrlich
et al. 2015).
30.2 Got Methane (and a Bathing Suit)?
In grad school, I pursued investigations on methane biogeochemistry (Oremland
2019), where much to my chagrin, the first gases I collected with a funnel while
hovering over a seagrass bed were mostly composed of O 2 and N 2 with only a trace
of CH 4 (Oremland and Taylor 1977). Yet when I incubated anoxic seagrass slurries,
638
R. S. Oremland