I blinded myself! With science!

As the project I’ve been working on comes to a glacially slow and agonizing close, I’m finding myself discovering a whole new meaning to the word “Stockholm Syndrome”*. This particular project has almost nothing to with my job, although it is for work. It involves nothing that I have any expertise in, although I am the person my directors put in charge of it. And although this project has put me two weeks behind on my real job, left with only one week to finish the project, train seven other people to do the work and then schedule everyone over the next three months – I’m loving every minute of it.

You know why? Because it has awakened the long-dormant science geek in me. The project itself involves polymer science which is basically little more than simple organic chemistry. And I am loving it.

This may come as a bit of a surprise to those of you who knew me in college as “the theater and econ major who never took a science class” - content to avoid labs and run around campus trying to figure out how to date girls before graduation. But there was a time when I was the science geek of my high school. I reveled in gyroscopes, dissecting crayfish, IUPAC naming conventions, and distilling tri-iodotoluene. Mmmm.

So now I find myself staying up late at night assembling molecular models of (clockwise from lower left): polycarbonate, polystyrene, polyethylene, polytetrafluoroethylene**, polypropylene, and nylon 6,6. All the while, wishing that I had three or four more model sets so I could crank out a few more iterations of the polystyrene monomer, a longer Teflon chain, and a model of acrylic.

Moreover, I now have a cooler in my kitchen chock full of what I can only assume is a deadly cocktail of salmonella and e.coli cultures, growing in 10 different petri dishes in order to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-microbial cutting boards. I’m supposed to let them grow for 3-4 days but I’m starting to wonder what sort of noxious cloud I’ll release into my residence if I open it indoors. Maybe I’ll wait a bit and hope that the weather’s nice this weekend.

Maybe this is why I didn’t become a scientist – I can only take so much danger typically. But science makes me want to live on the edge. Maybe I should write a screenplay about rebellious young amateur scientists who gather on long stretches of abandoned road to square off against others of their ilk in reckless and dangerous science experiments. Sort of like a “The Fast and the Furious” for the pocket protector set. That’d be money.

Off to soup up my TI-85. But - just in case - if ya'll don't hear from me on Monday, could someone please call 911? Tell them to wear biosuits.

*All right - admittedly, that’s two words. Just stay with me here…
** AKA Teflon