When Chemists Attack

This is probably not the best way to get more space in your laboratory.

The fire in a chemistry lab on the fourth floor of Hunter Hall [at Clemson University] was reported to officials around 9:10 p.m. and was under control roughly 25 minutes later, said Robin Denny, news services director for the university.

The fire took out one of the chemistry labs and caused some damage to the rest of the fourth floor.

The building reportedly was unoccupied at the time of the fire, and officials had not found any indications as of Friday night that any release of chemicals had taken place,

I went to grad school at Clemson, and I’m glad that no one was hurt in the fire.

But … since when is the chemistry building unoccupied – on a weekday – at only 9 PM? Sure, it was a Friday, but there had to be some grad students around!

If anyone else has any info on the fire, please let me know. I’m curious to know what started the fire. So far, I’ve only seen/read this, this, and this.

When you work a community college schedule, you take lunch whenever you can get it. On Wednesdays, that’s about 1:30 PM. It’s not too late – considering that I have had schedules where I don’t get to eat lunch at all – but it did put me outside in the suffocating heat of the early afternoon.

Today, I’m at the Subway in the local truck stop. I’ve just finished my sandwich, and am walking out to my car. I see something at the corner of the building. Something that looked a little like this:

Dust devil image from Wikipedia

I didn’t take the picture above, but it’s a fair sample of what was churning at the corner of the building as I started to walk out to the car.

It didn’t register immediately that I was standing about ten yards away from a dust devil, and that it might be a good idea to stand somewhere else. A dust devil is just not something you expect to run into at a truck stop on the outskirts of a city.

That, of course, did not matter much to the dust devil – which was heading my way. And so I am currently brushing sand off my drink and out of my hair, my clothes, my eyes …

Great start to the afternoon, don’t you think?

It looks like GM is planning to roll out a plug-in hybrid vehicle within the next three years.

GM is designing the highly-anticipated Volt to run 40 miles on battery power alone, reducing or even eliminating the need for drivers to fuel up an on-board gasoline-powered engine provided as a backup power source.

I’ve said before (but probably not here on the blog) that if I’m going to start making car payments again anytime soon, I want a car that I can use to do my daily driving entirely from batteries, since I don’t see PEM fuel cells being ready for prime time anytime soon.

40 miles would probably do it, unless there were lots of errands to run. (One problem with the town I live in is that nothing is located conveniently next to anything else!)

Toyota (if they can extend the range of their plug-in Prius using modern battery technology) may still beat them to the punch, but it’s nice to see GM figuring out that maybe – just maybe –  giant SUVs are not the way of the future!

Those of you who aren’t in education are probably not aware of the sheer volume of paper educators have to push around. I’ve been cleaning up the office a bit in preparation for the fall semester, and look what I discovered!

I have a white desktop!

I hadn’t seen it on so long, I’d forgotten what color it was. But at least I will always have this picture to remind me if I ever lose my desktop again…