Several months ago, I postulated on history’s ranking of POTUS 45. I ranked him as, unequivocably, The Worst Ever. Little did I know how bad he really was. Like it or not, we need an update.

Presidential historians used to rank the several weak sisters surrounding Abraham Lincoln (Buchanan, Fillmore, Pierce and Andrew Johnson), along with 20^th century figures such as Richard Nixon and Warren Harding as the worst. None of these even begin to approach, in mendacity and sheer incompetence, #45.

No, I’m not a political scientist. I did spend a few decades as a federal worker and manager, including a tour as a naval officer (I couldn’t find a doctor to sign off on a 4-F draft status because of flat feet). In that capacity, I served as a Custodian of Registered Publications. I was responsible for maintenance, inventory and general safeguarding of classified stuff. Woe betide me if I lost, misplaced or shared any page, paragraph or sentence. The penalty was a courts -martial. I can only imagine the outrage felt by many Custodians when stories appeared in the media about how POTUS 45 had taken a bunch of these to his retirement home, and, to put it delicately, flushed some of them down the toilet! Why is he still walking around a free man?

Then, there are the events of January 6, 2021. With apologies to the Eagles, do I believe my lyin’ eyes? Here is the Chief Executive on video exhorting followers to proceed to the Capitol for a, er, peaceful demonstration. Cost the lives of several policemen, for what that’s worth. What is the commonly accepted term for these events? I thank it’s an insurrection. To the extent I can trust my lyin’ eyes, sure looks like the man committed treason. Why is he still walking around free??

As I write this, it is near the end of income tax season. I think, at long last,the man has been forced to make public some of his tax returns. What we seem to know, for certain, is that he valued some of his numerous properties low to evade taxes, and high to obtain loans. I think the term of art is income tax evasion. Didn’t they get Al Capone for that? Why not The Donald?

At the moment, we are shipping billions of dollars worth of military hardware to Ukraine, a victim of the “brilliant” (if demented) dictator of Russia. POTUS #45 is an unabashed admirer of Vlad the Terrible. He has expressed, in the earliest days of the “special military exercise” his admiration of how “brilliant” it is.

We often speak in parables about how “nobody is above the law”. How about “equal justice under the law”. Somewhere in Texas lives an ordinary person who wasn’t aware that her legal status prohibited her from casting a ballot in the 2016 presidential election (bet she didn’t vote for the Republican cabdidate). Fortunately, the election police voided the ballot, but she was sentenced to five years in the slam for this heinous crime. Meanwhile, POTUS 45’s Chief of Staff voted twice, once of which was in North Carolina, where he had bought a trailer, but never spent a single night in it. Is he doing time for this? I doubt it.

One of his sorriest legacies is one we will be dealing with for decades – best expressed by the term “hollow government”. Besides placing numerous totally unqualified individuals into key cabinet and sub-cabinet positions, for the most part these were put in as “acting”, thereby avoiding any pesky advise-and- consent by Congress. These could be fired more readily (sound like a TV show the man starred in, by chance?). His son-in law had a bulging portfolio of serious problems he had no clue how to handle.

As a populace, we Americans tend to be contemptious of government. This is one reason why the party which wins the presidency tends to do poorly in the off-year elections. Another effect of this ingrained attitude is the en masse resignation of just about all appointed officials, even if the party/president is reelected. The result is a lag in filling major appointments in most agencies for at least a yesr. Why hasn’t the Attorney General prosecuted any of the higher-ups (maybe including #45)? Probably because more help is needed. Much more. Prosecuting rich, well connected.folks is, to say the least, extremely labor intensive.

Don’t believe your lyin’ eyes………….

Profound question from my high school classes: “Mr. Canaff, are we going to blow stuff up?

Blowing stuff up involves chemical reactions. For the most part, these reactions need to be rapid, exothermic and have one or more products which are gaseous. What do all these terms and conditions mean?

Chemical reactions are not always rapid, to say the least. There is a subset, so to speak, of extremely rapid ones. All chemical reactions involve a gain or loss of energy. Reactions which release heat to the surroundings are exothermic, while those which do not are endothermic.

What’s with gaseous products? It involves the taking up of space, what physical scientists define as “volume”. Basically, all matter exists in one of three phases: solid. liquid and gas. Solids and liquids are often called “condensed states”, in that the atoms/molecules are touching each other. With gases, on the other hand, the atoms/molecules are not in contact. Let’s look at a familiar substance – water. The molecular weight of water is about 18 grams. In the logical setup of the Metric System. one gram of liquid takes up 1 milliliter of room, so to speak, so that 18 g of water would take up 18 ml. Barely a half a shot glass. At the boiling point, the gaseous mole of water would take in excess of 30 liters, about 17,000 times!

Of course, water doesn’t burn, Heating it to the boiling point represents a phase change from liquid to gas (steam). Let’s check out something which does burn: propane, C₃H₈. The balanced equation: C₃H₈(l) + 5 O₂(g) —–> 3 CO₂(g) + 4 H₂O(g) (s,l and g are phases).

Both products are gaseous. For each mole of propane, 7 moles of gas are formed. The volume change is, to say the least, considerable. Gas volumes also increase with temperature. The reaction is strongly exothermic. You need to cook those hamburgers! If the reaction is carried out in the open (gas grill) where the volume change is dissipated, no problem. If, however, the reaction takes place in a closed environment, (you forget to leave the cover open) watch out!!

Then there is the “classic” gunpowder recipe:

4KClO₃(s) + 3S(s) + 3C(s) —-> 3SO₂(g) + 3CO₂(g) + 4KCl(s)

Here again, we start with three solids and end up with six moles of gas. The huge volume of gas formed, having no place else to go, is funneled along a gun barrel and pushes bullets along. Some of the energy released causes the action/reaction bump along the shooter’s hand or shoulder. (Full disclosure: I HATE guns!).

In addition to the noise, one often feels a “shock wave”. This is caused by the sudden compression of the atmosphere in the vicinity of the explosion.

So,there you have it, boys and girls. Chemistry can be fun!!

In a previous post, we took a peek at the structure of the atom. We looked at how atoms (elements) build up in weight, most of which consists of positively charged protons and uncharged neutrons, roughly equal in mass to each other. The atomic number of each element is equal to its number of protons. In each of them are a number of electrons equal to protons; since you don’t get a shock when you, say, handle aluminum foil, the charges (plus and minus) obviously must be equal.

Electrons lie in regions of (probablistic) space outside of the core (nucleus) of atoms. These are known as orbitals (suggesting the model of the solar system I told you not to take too seriously). Just a reminder -these are tiny, really really tiny. When confronted with stuff or entities too small to visualize, scientists sort of construct models. Models are very useful, if you don’t take them literally. Often, as new information is discovered, models are modified, or discarded outright. Chemists pigeonhole electrons into orbitals designated “s”, “p”, “d” and “f”. I won’t bore you with what these things look like (remember, these are just models); suffice to say electrons are found in them.

Why don’t we look at Public Enemy #1, aka methane. The chemical formula for this bad boy greenhouse gas is CH₄ , meaning that the moleculeconsists of a carbon atom chemically bonded to four hydrogen atoms. What happens is that carbon, with 4 valence electrons shares four electrons with hydrogen. Not an outright donation, as I described in my previous post, but a sharing. Relatively simple compounds often follow something called the Octet Rule – whereby they enter arrangements which provide 8 electrons, like the fat-dumb-and-happy “noble gases”.

The two basic types of chemical bond are ionic (where electrons are given/taken outright) and covalent, where they are shared. Ionic compounds, such as sodium chloride, aka table salt, when dissolved in water conduct electricity. This results from the water molecule being capable of separating electric charges (also known as ions). In the case of salt, the negative chloride ion (chlorine containing an extra valence electron) exists along with sodium ion (short a valence electron, charged positive) results in a solution which conducts electricity.

Most ionic bonding occurs with elements in Columns 1 and 2 forming compounds with those in Columns 16 and 17. More typically, we can look at a (seemingly) well understood compound, H₂O. The formula tells us that each of two hydrogen atoms is bonded chemically with a single oxygen. Water doesn’t conduct electricity, in its pure form. No ions are present to do this. The bonding between the oxygen and hydrogens is covalent in nature.

The vast majority of chemical compounds exhibit covalent bonding. Even in large, complex molecules, the driving force forming compounds is to provide a pseudo noble gas configuration for each element. Exception is hydrogen, where a helium configuration (2 electrons) does the trick.

Carbon is found in the vast majority of compounds. It is part of just about every drug we take, along with most stuff we burn (combine with oxygen) to produce electricity or just stay warm. Unfortunately, most of the byproducts of burning are sent into the atmosphere. Many of them are greenhouse gases.

Next time, we’ll take a plunge into naming some of these chemicals (the stuff you probably hated in college or high school). We’ll try to make it stress-free (after all, no grades or any other such nonsense…..)

One of the singular accomplishments in science was the assembling of chemical elements into what is known today as the Periodical Table. This was done before computers and many of the other measurement devices we take for granted nowadays. Dmitri Mendeleev, a 19^th century Russian professor of chemistry, did much of the heavy lifting toward the placement of the known elements, 63 at that time. Currently, the Table lists 118.

Chemistry, the branch of science concerned with the stuff comprising the universe (matter) classifies it in two groups: elements and compounds. Elements (atoms) are the basic building blocks of matter, so to speak. Compounds are chemically bonded combinations of two or more elements. Whereas elements number in the low hundreds, there are nearly an infinite number of compounds. Examples: Dihydrogen monoxide (the familiar H₂O), carbon dioxide (CO₂), sodium chloride (NaCl), chlorine (Cl₂), sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO₃), etc, etc.

Elements, themselves, are comprised of three “subatomic” particles: protons, electrons and neutrons (full disclosure: there are numerous other particles out there, but for simplicity, we’ll just consider these three). Protons and neutrons are the “load bearing” particles, each having about 1,800 times the mass (weight) of electrons. Protons also carry an electric charge of +1, while electrons (despite their light weight) carry a single negative charge. Plus is attracted to minus, while like charges repel. Sort of like a magnet. Elements and compounds are neutral, overall, so the number of protons and electrons must be equal to each other. Neutrons have no charge.

By the mid 19^th century, chemists were able to weigh elements. Mendeleev ranked them in order of weight, starting with hydrogen. He found that the elements, if placed in order, had similar chemical behaviors in repeating columns of eight. For example, lithium (#3) seemed to behave chemically in the same manner as sodium (#11). Both elements reacted with water almost violently. By contrast, helium (#2), and neon (#10) seemed totally unreactive. Fluorine (#9) and chlorine (#17) were nearly identical. A serious break in the pattern occurred with argon, the 18th , an unreactive gas like helium and neon, and potassium, the nineteenth, which behaved like lithium and sodium. The other load bearing particle, the neutron, had not been identified at the time Mendeleev first assembled the table. Turns out that argon has a greater number of neutrons than potassium, making it heavier. The two elements switched places in Mendeleev’s scheme.

Mendeleev’s work illustrates what is often referred to as the scientific method. One does something like assembling known elements working with what is known at the time. As new info becomes available, one modifies the “hypothesis”, or working model, to explain anomalies, or draw more accurate conclusions. A similar process is at work in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Atoms are extremely small.. They take up only a tiny amount of space (room).

Protons and neutrons are concentrated, cheek-to-jowl within the center of the atom, aka the nucleus. Electrons are found in regions surrounding the nucleus (think of planets orbiting the sun, but don’t take this too seriously). The electron regions, so to speak, comprise the vast majority of the space the atoms occupy. If one pictures all those positive charges jammed into the tiny space (nucleus), how the hades does the thing not fly apart? ( remember, like charges repel each other). Might the electrically neutral neutrons sort of keep the pieces together? (This is why we need physicists…..)

Meanwhile, electrons form the chemical “bonds” to make compounds, But only the outermost electrons. We call them “valence” electrons. Consider the 11 electrons in the sodium atom, Only one of these is a valence electron, and capable of entering into a chemical bond. On the other hand, chlorine has 17 electrons, 7 of which are valence. Turns out that if sodium donates an electron to chlorine, a compound called sodium chloride is formed. Voila! Table salt! Moreover, the resultant chlorine now has 18 electrons, same as (chemically inactive) argon. If sodium loses an electron, its structure sort of becomes neon, also a fat-dumb-and-happy camper.

Where am I going with this? Science is the thought process humans have used since the beginning of time to figure out the world around us. The reality is that “truth” is dynamic and constantly changing, as we learn new stuff. This goes far toward understanding why the covid pandemic nature and facts seem to change constantly. As new stuff is learned, the “plan” needs to be changed. A popular musical a few decades back featured a song called “Stop the world, I want to get off”. A lot of us, I’m sure, feel this way at times.

We’ll talk more soon. We need to consider chemical bonding, where it’s really at.