Rob Carr

🧪🧬 About 45 years ago, I signed up for a graduate class I didn't have the prerequisites for. Quite possibly only the professors teaching it did. I couldn't drop out after the first class because it was so fascinating. We were studying how pores in membranes worked. I probably should have.

And yes, I realize my survival in that class was two diagnoses deciding to cooperate for once. It's a shame it requires a disaster to activate that "superpower." And when it's not a disaster, they fight brutally and become my kryptonite. If I swore, I would say "DUCK" here.

🧪🧬 About 45 years ago, I signed up for a graduate class I didn't have the prerequisites for. Quite possibly only the professors teaching it did. I couldn't drop out after the first class because it was so fascinating. We were studying how pores in membranes worked. I probably should have.

And there's a surprise: Magnesium probably doesn't stop Toursades de Points. That's electricity or statistical luck. Magnesium keeps TdP from coming back. And I am fascinated over a deadly rhythm, where looking on in horror feels more human and less mad scientist. An epiphany a betrayal. Fin.

🧪🧬 About 45 years ago, I signed up for a graduate class I didn't have the prerequisites for. Quite possibly only the professors teaching it did. I couldn't drop out after the first class because it was so fascinating. We were studying how pores in membranes worked. I probably should have.

It was like that, except with microscopic details. I'd love to see the structure of real pores & how close we came to divining their mechanisms without the genetic sequencing we had today. How does the equation for laminar fluid flow give the right answer for atoms and molecules going single file?

🧪🧬 About 45 years ago, I signed up for a graduate class I didn't have the prerequisites for. Quite possibly only the professors teaching it did. I couldn't drop out after the first class because it was so fascinating. We were studying how pores in membranes worked. I probably should have.

I just viewed a five part series on magnesium and Torsades de Points. Most people taking ACLS know that rhythm by sight and dread. And my brain filled in all the little details. Channels that kept ions out. Channels that kept ions in. What caused the Q-T interval.

🧪🧬 About 45 years ago, I signed up for a graduate class I didn't have the prerequisites for. Quite possibly only the professors teaching it did. I couldn't drop out after the first class because it was so fascinating. We were studying how pores in membranes worked. I probably should have.

I learned how electrical potentials across membranes of living cells were measured. How pores might work. (We only had the genetic sequence of E. coli at that point.) How pore structure affect which ions can pass and which can't. How the electrical system of the heart worked on a molecular level.

🧪🧬 About 45 years ago, I signed up for a graduate class I didn't have the prerequisites for. Quite possibly only the professors teaching it did. I couldn't drop out after the first class because it was so fascinating. We were studying how pores in membranes worked. I probably should have.

Dottie Number We were one of the first high school chemistry classes to have multi-function calculators. (Yes, we learned to use slide rules.) We had a guessing game: someone would pick a number and someone else would pick a function. We'd guess the answer and then check to see the result. 1/n

I figured out that it was solving for: cos(x)=x I couldn't solve for it explicitly, which wasn't saying much for second-year calculus. I couldn't find any other one-button function that would do that. Turns out cos(x)=x is a fixed point. It has a name. I'd found an "attractor." 4/5

Dottie Number We were one of the first high school chemistry classes to have multi-function calculators. (Yes, we learned to use slide rules.) We had a guessing game: someone would pick a number and someone else would pick a function. We'd guess the answer and then check to see the result. 1/n

This resulted in some of us practicing with various functions: log, ln, sin, cos, sec, cosec, tan, cotan, 1/x, etc. One guy memorized a couple of digits of log for integers and got rather good at estimating a lot of answers. We were "scientists" (for some loosely defined value of "scientist." 2/n

@dykanite.bsky.social I went to a gem show with my wife. I loved rocks as a kid, but the science was all about digging the stones up, not chemistry and geology. I had no idea there were so many different gems and rocks. I asked one of the workers if a book they had went into the chemistry

Repost with your first crush. Joan of Arc Just a teenager, in a world where women meant little. Horrified at what the war had done to the common people. Chosen by God to do what the men around her would not and could not do. Brilliant strategist. Held an English soldier and cried while he died.