Periodic Table of Brownies: The Limit of My Scientific Understanding

When I first started college, I was pretty convinced I was going to go into medicine, psychiatry, to be precise, and started my freshman year on the pre-med track.  This meant biology, chemistry, and their accompanying labs.  Somewhere in the middle of the second semester, I realized that I was terrible at chemistry, and even the help of a tutor (who patiently and repeatedly walked me through chemical reactions and equations) was not enough to get me much past a low C.   Thankfully, I did have the brains to realize my talents lay in the humanities, and made the switch to history and foreign languages.  Life (and my grade point) got back on track.

Since then, however, I've always had a deep appreciation/admiration for the sciences, and those individuals that make them their profession....doctors, physicists, chemists, biologists...they all do things that my literature-minded brain can barely grasp.   So when Dan Siegal-Gaskins founded the Columbus Science Pub last year, I was excited to dip my toes in some not-to-deep scientific waters and revisit my short-lived science education.

The Pub is based on the international Science Cafe concept: people get together to share a topic or variety of topics of a scientific nature in a low key, casual setting.  Dan, a mathematical biosciences post-doc at Ohio State, found a home for the Columbus group at Hampton's on Third, and began setting up a monthly roster of presenters from around Columbus and the nation.

Sadly, Dan is moving on to another post-doc and his last pub was this past week.  The crew that's taking over his organizing responsibilities decided to send him off in the most appropriate way we know how:  nerdy foodstuffs. A couple of us split the periodic table into halves and made brownie squares for about 48 of the elements. (We picked what we considered the 'good' elements....none of those 'invented-in-a-lab-for-two-seconds deals.)

What was amusing was watching the Science Pub guests pick their brownies--they actually would study them and consider which element they wanted to eat, as if Caesium might taste better than Beryllium.

If you're looking for a different (and educational!) way to spend a random Tuesday night, and you want to get your science-geek on, we'd love to have you join us at the Pub.  For further information, check out our Facebook page (Columbus Science Pub).

Maybe next month I'll tackle Krebs Cycle Cupcakes...