Mass Spectrometry or Poetry? Why not Both?

An article in the Arizona Republic (signin required) has a report on Glendale Community College organic chemistry students writing poetry to help them deal with complex topics such as mass spectrometry and photochemical oxidation.

How about haiku? It’s short and perhaps easier to write than a sonnet or epic poem about mass spectrometry. For example, UCLA undergraduate organic chemistry has these

Mass Spectrometry–
I can’t even pronounce it
But I can do it!!!

Dreaming of pi bonds
hallucinating mass spec
ochem rules my thoughts

Look at mass spectrum
Find mass to charge ratio
And number of C

To deduce structure
Use Mass Spectrum and IR
And H-NMR

IR, NMR
oh in mass spectroscopy
it fits together

Spectroscopic graph
IR or mass peaks?- no clue
I got a 50

The Lutefisk website hews more to proteomics:

valleys with no peaks
the tranquil landscape
of dirty samples
    -Ioannis Papayannopoulos

maldi-tof spectra
so many peptide masses
what is all this crap
     -J. S. Richar

b and y ions
low energy CID
mystery sequence
    -RSJ

Feel free to add your own mass spectrometry poem in the comments.

LCMS of King Tut’s Wine

Researchers at the University of Barcelona used LC/MS/MS to analyze dry residue of wine from King Tut’s tomb: see First evidence of white wine in ancient Egypt from Tutankhamun’s tomb in Journal of Archaeological Science (via) and the related article: The origin of the ancient Egyptian drink Shedeh revealed using LC/MS/MS Journal of Archaeological Science 33, 98 (2006).

Identification of Proteins in Renaissance Paintings by Proteomics

Analytical Chemistry (subscription required) has a unique article on the proteomic analysis of Renaissance paintings. The authors worked with microgram quantities of paint from Benedetto Bonfigli’s triptych, The Virgin and Child, St. John the Baptist, St. Sebastian (XVth century), and from Niccolo di Pietro Gerini’s, The Virgin and Child (XIVth century) and found proteins from the egg yolk and white that were used as binders in the paint. The presence of egg white is interesting in that the traditional recipe for tempera paint called for only the yolk, while the more radiant “tempera grassa” called for both the yolk and white.

Historical Mass Spectrometry Books and Articles

Sir J. J. Thomson’s 1913 Rays Of Positive Electricity and 1921 Rays Of Positive Electricity Second Edition are online at the Internet Archive Million Book Project.

ChemTeam’s Classic Papers has J. J. Thomson On the Masses of the Ions in Gases at Low Pressures, Philosophical Magazine, 1899, 48, 547-567 and F. W. Aston Isotopes and Atomic Weights, Nature, 1920, 105, 617.

Some other classic mass spectrometry papers are available online: A. J. Dempster A new method of positive ray analysis Phys. Rev., 1918, 11, 316-324, A. G. Dempster, Positive-Ray Analysis of Potassium, Calcium and Zinc. Phys. Rev. 1922,20, 631-638, and J. A. Mattauch, J. A double-focusing mass spectrograph and the masses of N15 and O18 Phys. Rev. 1936, 50, 617-623 (subscription required).

Also see Scripps and Washington University for more references and links.

Wikipedia vs. Britannica on Science

Nature compares Wikipedia and Britannica coverage of science (via). The mass spectrometry community should be paying attention since the Wikipedia entry for mass spectrometry is one of the top hits for “mass spectrometry” on an increasing number of search engine pages (e.g. the #4 hit on Yahoo today). The entry has been edited more than 100 times since September 2005.

Update: Nature Podcast on this topic (hat tip Kristofer).