Category: Wanderings

On a mission: To be a good writer

Akshat Rathi6 Comments

I started blogging because I wanted to write better and become a writer. Even after blogging for three years, that still remains my strongest driving force.  However, I’ve never done any serious research on good writing, so I thought I should get to it.

Like any generic google search the “How to be a good writer” search is full of links that don’t have enough content in them to be valued so high on the search results. I thought it would be valuable for the community if I utilise my time by demoting links which weren’t useful. It turned out I had to demote two results for every one that I found useful. Nevertheless, I persisted on my mission and I am now about to write a gist of what I learnt.

The wikiHow is a good start but just like most wikis has a lot of content but little structure within the content. Yet, I think the most valuable points from the wiki are that one must try and write everyday. Reading a lot will help improve vocabulary and grammar. Improving one’s vocabulary though will require active effort not just reading. Maintaining a vocabulary notebook might be a good idea. Plan your writing but write the first draft quickly. Be specific and tailor your writing to the audience.

MD Weems notes that one must start with what you know and start with small articles. “Your writing must instill confidence in a mind that is inclined to doubt you” says Robert Warren who makes two very good points on how to keep the reader on the writer’s side by being bold and confident and maintaining an optimistic, positive tone.

Most people seemed to suggest that one must always read their own writing and make edits and to gauge one’s writing it is best to have someone else read it and get their opinion. Reading will help you gain knowledge about different styles of writing and explore new perspectives.

To conclude, I would like to share some interesting quotes on good writing:

  • “Write without pay until somebody offers pay” and “When you catch adjectives, kill most of them — then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together; they give strength when they are wide apart.” — Mark Twain
  • The abstract is seldom as effective as the concrete. — John Gardner
  • Vigorous writing is concise. — William Strunk Jr.
  • Don’t write about Man, write about a man. — E.B. White
  • Is every word doing new work? — William Zinsser
  • Never use the passive where you can use the active. — George Orwell
  • Pick up every sentence in turn, asking ourselves if we can possibly make it shorter. — Sheridan Baker
  • We don’t reject writers; we reject pieces of paper with typing on them — Isaac Asimov
  • Ptahotep noted, “Happy is the heart of him who writes; he is young each day.” Yes, but only if he writes from the heart, and not just for copious beer. — Marvin Olasky
  • “The first million words you write will be crap” — Anonymous

A Chemist’s carbon footprint reduction

Akshat Rathi5 Comments

As a synthetic chemist, it is a very embarrassing question if asked about our personal carbon footprint. Frankly, it is much greater than normal citizens. We use flammable and non-flammable solvents very regularly. Most of the chemical reagents we use are of 99.9% purity requiring large amounts of energy to manufacture and purify. These chemicals are shipped from all over the world and require extra care in transportation. We often use rare metals in reactions, these require a great amount of energy to isolate. Yes, we are guilty of a larger carbon footprint than normal citizens. But no one asks how can we reduce it?

This question bugged me for quite sometime. We can do all those things that normal citizens do but as chemists can we do something more? One of our major contributions come from our use of solvents. I thought, looking into solvent disposal might give a hint into some simple steps that may be taken to reduce emissions. So I had a chat with our department‘s Safety Officer. He started the conversation with a very blunt question, “Why do you ask?”. May be he thought, I am one of those extreme climate change activist. After I explained to him what I wanted to know about it and that I meant no harm he said, “I was taken aback because no one wants to what happens to it after it’s dumped.” So he realised some people care and he was happy to answer any question I had.

One of the companies Oxford regularly uses for it’s waste disposal is Grundon. While we are in the lab, we separate our solvent waste in Hydrocarbons (Petrol, Diethyl Ether, Ethyl Acetate), Chlorinated (Dichloromethane, Cholroform) and Acetone (Wash acetone with lots of water). Chlorinated wastes needs to be disposed by incineration to avoid formation of dioxins where as hydrocarbon can be used for energy recovery. But what he thought is that the HC waste is used to create the high temperature furnace for the incineration of chlorinated waste. What about acetone? He said, “Most of it is taken by cement industry. If they see it’s dark in colour they won’t touch it, but otherwise they use it.” But is recycling not possible for any kind of waste? “No, I think it’s too energy intensive to get clean solvent than to just burn it off.”

He digressed and gave some interesting statistics, Oxford University produces a lot of waste. The only chemistry department that has comparable volume of waste is Cambridge. “Sure, but that’s because we are the biggest chemistry department in the UK, right?” Yes he says, “I talk to most Russell group universities about what they do about waste management. It turns out some universities don’t produce more than two barrels a month! And here we fill couple a day.”

Anyways, ending the talk I said, “So the best we can do is make sure we separate the different types of solvents with care?”. “I guess, but I don’t think that will make a big difference unless everyone does it.” From all this, the conclusion I could come up with is that we can do the following to help cut emission in someway.

  • Minimise use of chlorinated solvents. (even though DCM is my favourite, low-boiling and polar)
  • Try not to mix chlorinated and non-chlorinated solvents. (I often rinse column tubes with DCM even if I have done a hydrocarbons only column. I guess using ether is a better option but it is much more expensive than ethyl acetate. Thus, although acetone (not wash acetone) is high-boiling it is the best option or use ethyl acetate?).
  • Turn the temperature of the oven lower?
  • Do smaller scale reaction when one can (reduces a lot of things, smaller columns, less solvent and lesser time for same results, most of the times).
  • Spend time thinking which experiment to do, make sure you have a strong justification (saves time, saves waste!)

These are conclusions based on my experience and the very little data that I have gathered. I am hoping to look into it a bit further and try and collect some hard statistics on this issue. If anyone has anything to add to this, I would be really happy to hear from you.