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It’s A Chemical World!

6 Mar 2024

It’s a chemical world out there! We are awash in some fifty million known chemicals, the majority of which are created by nature, a minority by chemists. They’re not good or bad, not safe or...

Don’t Throw the Baby Out With the Hydrogenated Bathwater

23 Feb 2024

This article was first published in the Montreal Gazette. “Congratulations! You have in your hands one of the best available tools to increase your health and vitality.”

Faraday, Dickens and Lighthouses

22 Dec 2023

I have a longstanding fascination with Victorian arts and sciences. It was the era when Darwin published the “Origin of the Species,” Perkin synthesized dyes, Lister introduced antiseptic surgery,...

A Call To Teach Chemistry

10 Nov 2023

Is there something in your past to put you on a path to become an educator? When I was a teenager I did one of those guidance counsellor tests which suggested I should become one. I laughed. But a...

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry - No Small Matter

6 Oct 2023

The word “quantum” derives from the Latin word for “amount,” so that if something is “quantifiable,” it means that it can be measured. Although I think I have a reasonably good grasp of chemistry,...

The First Canadian Nobel Prize

29 Sep 2023

As we approach the week during which the 2023 Nobel Prizes will be announced (October 2-9, 2023), it is perhaps timely to consider the events that surrounded the first Nobel Prize awarded to a...

The First Consumer Activist

26 Jul 2023

So you are worried about aspartame or a little Red #3 in your food? You know what you would have to worry about back in the early years of the 19th century? A little strychnine in the beer.  A...

Looping in to Chat GPT

24 May 2023

Like so many, I have been experimenting with Chat GPT, the artificial intelligence technology that can answer questions or produce articles on a given topic in humanlike conversational language. In...

Dancing With Gummy Bears

15 Mar 2023

No, Oprah Winfrey and Dolly Parton do not endorse CBD Gummies. Neither does David Suzuki. That may come as a surprise to customers who purchased the gummies thinking that they must deliver the...

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