Sam Shepard

@konstructivizm While I appreciate the awe in your post, it's worth taking some time to acknowledge the source (from 2013) and the authors: journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/1…

Humanity has, for the first time, captured a direct visual glimpse of an electron's orbital within a hydrogen atom—literally peering inside the simplest building block of the universe.This feels almost dreamlike, even impossible. For over a century, electrons existed as mathematical ghosts: probability waves, abstract clouds, never something you could actually see. They were ideas, equations, patterns of likelihood—not pictures. Now, that boundary between theory and tangible reality has been crossed in a way that feels deeply personal, as though the subatomic world has finally looked back at us.For decades physicists spoke of electron behavior, not electron paths. Textbooks offered elegant probability distributions, but no portrait. This image shatters that emotional distance. It sculpts the invisible into form, turning the most fundamental unit of matter from a distant concept into something intimate, almost recognizable—like catching sight of the scaffolding beneath everyday existence.Hydrogen may be the universe's simplest atom—one proton, one electron—yet its significance is cosmic. It powers the fusion furnaces of stars, forms the backbone of water, and underpins all chemistry. Gazing into its heart is akin to opening the very first page of reality's book. It whispers a profound truth: complexity springs from profound simplicity, and even the smallest structures pulse with extraordinary meaning.Don't expect the tidy, planetary orbit of old Bohr models. What this image reveals is a delicate, ethereal cloud—a probability haze sculpted by quantum rules that defy classical intuition. The surprise is the revelation itself. Nature rarely conforms to our intuitive sketches; it favors subtle elegance, layered mystery, and quiet defiance of expectation.Discoveries like this don't tie up loose ends—they unravel new ones. They stretch curiosity rather than satisfy it. Seeing an electron's orbital laid bare doesn't conclude the story; it multiplies the questions, deepens the enigma. True wonder lives not in neat final answers, but in these fleeting, humbling glimpses that urge us to lean in closer—with awe, patience, and an open-hearted readiness to be astonished again.

Photochemistry is a great tool for making strained heterocycles! Out now in ACS Organic Inorganic AU. I'm grateful to my colleagues at @haverfordedu for support and research collaboration and to @alleghenycol for helping make this work open access! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac…

🧪 Hear from co-presidents of the Chemii chemistry club, Lauren Schmader '26 and Sydni Junker '26, about how Allegheny faculty supported them every step of the way! 🌟 Connect with an Allegheny professor by scheduling a personalized visit experience at go.allegheny.edu/visit-allegheny.

Incorporation of the CW pump to create a steady state population of the initial charge separated molecule is a great way to demonstrate the two-photon nature of this process. Beautiful work which brings us close to replicating the multiphoton nature of biological photosynthesis.

Some excellent undergraduate chemistry research presentations at the 2024 ISCC conference at @LincolnUofPA . Special congratulations to @haverfordedu students Aliya, Kyra, Trinity, Hannah, and Sidney from the Shepard and Seebald Labs for winning presentation awards!

@RacicotLeanne I buy a bag of Scandinavian Swimmers every time I go to Trader Joes. They're like a tastier, multi-flavor Swedish Fish! Seconding the mango recommendation from @Patrick_Lutz42 as well.

The lab is photo-flow ready! @haverfordedu

@DrCBrew disp('You are not done yet!') Add another 4000 lines! That's awesome to see that it's come in handy for your research. I'm teaching Quantum this semester and the class is using Python for our computational work, though I miss MATLAB!

When @sgshepard first showed me MatLab a few years ago, I never thought I’d see a day where I could come up with 4000 lines worth of stuff to stick in a script.

America is suffering from a lack of bureaucracy -- by which I don't mean rules and red tape, but a competent civil service capable of getting things built cheaply. We need to bring back the bureaucrats! noahpinion.blog/p/america-need…

@NaOHBartfield He's less useful than other items on my shelf, but it never hurts to have a possum on hand....

Oh cool thanks amazon!

Starting tomorrow, I enter the period of maximum happiness loss.

@hiltonlab @JFlowChem @UCLLifeSciences This is a great resource and hopefully will lead to further standardization of light flux in reports on photo-flow chemistry. Would you be willing to share the STL files by any chance so I could print one for my lab?

Really happy that our #3dprinted #continuousflow #photochemistry publication in @JFlowChem is now out - you can read how we created a simple continuous flow system for photochemistry using simple polypropylene 3D printed reactors below: rdcu.be/dgbXu

Capillary action + fluorescent dyes #FluorescenceFriday

@andrechemist My guess is that the chemistry knowledge it will test is the Moblin Combustion reaction using a red barrel as starting material.

@KCGOrtiz My headcannon: The eternal conflict between the spiral and anti-spiral forces is just a battle between fans of R and S enantiomers

I didn't expect Gurren Lagann to hit me as hard as it did but man 😭

It was great celebrating the hard work of all of the chemistry majors at @haverfordedu this afternoon in our chemistry department senior poster session. Thanks also to the students over at @BrynMawrCollege who brought posters over to present.

@SuperChemGirl Fantastic news! NCSU chemistry is a great program and they're lucky to have you. I'll stop by the next time I'm in Raleigh.

I am honored to join the amazing chemistry department at NC State University, where I will establish a group focused on theoretical research of quantum materials!

Just now discovered that the regal portrait of Legendre from my textbooks is wrong and the mathematician that helped me turn internal energy into Gibbs free energy actually had the same expression I made throughout my statistical mechanics class. #Mistaken_portrait" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrien-Ma…

@Rachel591 There's something so adorable about those dang dancing Barbie dogs that I love so much. I taught an undergrad photochem class last semester, but I wish it was a spring course just so I could share this in lecture. Keep up the good work and the teens will care about TTA one day!

..and then I go back to the TikTok app and look at the video. There are no comments?!?! TURNS OUT I DREAMT THE WHOLE THING and the teens don't care about TTA-UC after all...yet. (3/3)

I posted this video to the lab account on Friday, knowing it wouldn't get much traction but I thought it was funny. I fell asleep on Friday and woke up to a few comments to the effect of: "this is the problem with scientists, they never explain what they're talking about" (1/3)

My thanks to @alexnorquist and @gathwaegl for lending me the props.

This box can only mean one thing... It's symmetry day in Inorganic Chemistry!