Tag: Chemistry

Chemistry – DMABN – Oxford – Dream 14-11-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is this morning’s dream.  I have no idea where this came from.

The dream starts in a Chemistry laboratory with wooden lab top benches but otherwise modern services supplied. On the bench in the water bath of a rotary evaporator is a round bottom flask it is being rotated by the evaporator mechanism. There is a thermometer in the water bath and I can see a liquid in which a white compound is partially dissolved. It is dissolving. I am with a man in a white lab coat. I note that he is not wearing safety specs. He asks me what I think the intermolecular forces are in compound being dissolved. He says that at one end it has a cyano group. So I suggest that there may be a dipole involved. In a nearby tank is another flask similarly set up. He says that molecule also has a methyl group meta to the cyano on a benzene ring. I say that that would mess with the orientation of the dipole. He comes back to the near flask and says that para to the cyano group is a dimethylamino group. I say that given the push-pull effect that the intermolecular forces are probably dipole dominant but that there may also be significant hydrogen bonding with solvent at the amino end. I say that it is dimethyl-amino-benzonitrile DMABN. He says yes. He asks me what the reactivity would be. I suggest that maybe the ortho positions might be weakly reactive. I say that in a prior life I knew a bit about DMABN and that it can form TICT, twisted intramolecular charge transfer states in solvents of the right polarity. I probably know more about this molecule than is necessary.

I show him a reaction vessel on one bench. It is on a stirrer-hotplate and the flask is not stoppered. On the next bench behind me is  similar flask. The liquids in each are being stirred and one can see a mild vortex in the centres. I suggest he watches the far flask. I take a small pipette and add some liquid to the first flask. On addition a faint pink colour appears which fades. In the far flask a UV-purple colour appears. I say to look at the UV. He says it must be blue for us to see. I say OK look at the emission from that flask a part of which is just inside the blue edge of the visible spectrum. It is a form of unknown chemical transference. A type of remote chemiluminescence. He is surprised.

I am joined by a man roughly my age in a tweed like suit he ushers me off around the building. We are in one room in which a young man is brought in with two academics. He is to have a Ph.D. viva. I wish him good luck and we leave. I am then shown various offices and the underground chemistry stores. I can see banks of gas cylinders and empty basement rooms. He takes me back to the lab. I am there advised to put written labels on the experiment I have going, there are now new lab protocols. Ok I agree and write some out to be fixed to the bench. They ask me when was the last time I made a molecule. I say it must have been when I was ~22 say around 1986. I wanted a molecule that could not be bought so I had a go at making it myself.

I am told that I will need to participate in the Oxford chemistry outreach day due soon. I can use my fancy new experiment or see the man in the teaching labs downstairs. I am escorted down there thinking he might have something on molecular spectroscopy. This would be much easier and safer for me.

As we are going down the back stairs to the teaching labs it suddenly occurs to me that in some weird surreptitious way I am having an interview, I am being interviewed, implicit is for a job. I think to myself that this is fucking weird and that there is no way that I could teach nor could there ever be a sensible fit. Something is being manufactured, cobbled together, in a roundabout tortuous way. It does not bode well. It is a bit daft.

As the dream ends I come to thinking WTF, where did that come from?

South Africa – Richard W – Imperial College Colleagues Dream 29-06-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is last night’s dream.

The dream starts in the South African bundu or bush. I am driving along a rough dusty unmade road. The road goes up and own and has a yellow-orange bull dust. I am in an open sided Jeep like vehicle of a classical pedigree age. It is four wheel drive and contrasts with an antiseptic modern SUV. I am dressed in faded olive green park ranger type clothes with shorts. I have a pistol in a holster on my right hip, suitable for my left handedness. It is tremendous fun driving along the road / path. We are near a fairly fast flowing deep river like at the Augrabies falls which I visited two decades ago. I can hear a waterfall.

–

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The sound of the water is loud. The wind is in my hair and I can smell and taste the dry bush all around me.

The scene changes and I am now in the UK. I am in a busy Tesco supermarket. People are queuing. Outside the air is dank and wet. There is a constant hum of urban traffic. In one of the checkout queues I see Richard W whom I know from school and UCL chemistry. He is miles away up in his head. I tap him on the shoulder. At first, he does not recognise me. Then when he does, he is totally surprised to see me. I motion to behind the checkouts and will wait for him there.

When he has checked out, he comes over to see me. Although he looks a lot younger than he would be now, I can see that life is getting him down and he lacks energy. I turn him around and stand behind him. I open up a battery compartment in his back by sliding off a plastic over. I take out the two AA style batteries which are there and replace them with two fresh ones from my pocket. These batteries are similar in colour and design to Duracell. I replace the plastic cover and Richard reboots.

There is a short break for a loo visit.

I return to the dream back into a dank drab UK urban environment. You can hear the noise the cars make on the wet road. I enter a large building which I do not know with some kind of large atrium. It is Imperial College and Chemistry related. The hallway / atrium is being renovated. I bump into various ex-colleagues {sequentially} who were at Imperial two decades ago, all of them now professors. There are more than half a dozen of them both men and women. They are slightly sheepish about meeting me, there is an air of awkwardness or embarrassment. They are unsure as to how to greet me and if to greet or acknowledge me at all. Two males with whom I worked are very noticeable by their absence. The absence speaks volumes. There is a weird feeling that the former colleagues are surprised to see me even though there is a sense for them that I never left.

I walk into some kind of a hallway. There are poster boards up with academic conference style poster presentations on a blue “felt” background. These are all chemistry related. I can see molecules and graphs. Walking past I think some things do not change despite modern technology. A poster is a poster. In the dream I do not know why I am there in that building with them. It seems anomalous to me if not to them.

The dream ends.

Chemical Leak – Surgery – Padmasambhava – Floods – Drinks – Dream 18-03-2025

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This dream comes after many days with very unsettled sleep due to intensely painful gout(?) in my right knee. I had 60mg of Codeine in co-codamol in order to get off to sleep.

The dream starts in a very modern building used for chemistry and science. The building is unknown to me. It is in London. On an upper floor where there are chemistry laboratories with fume hoods there has been a major incident. There are youngish people lying on the floor wearing white lab coats. Some of them have safety spectacles and purple nitryl plastic gloves on. They are not moving and are dead. There has been a leak of gas a chemical leak. The gas is an organometallic tin compound, a stanyl. It is volatile. Apart from being dead they look well. I am alone on the floor and immune to the leak. Slowly I drag the bodies out on to the landing and start to pile them into a heap ready for collection. From the landing I can see the entrance atrium which is rather grand. There is a glass banister topped with a hand rail. The bodies are both female and male. They are still warm to the touch yet floppy and lifeless. The work is easy and they do not feel heavy. There are well over a dozen bodies. I pile them up easily.

The scene changes and I am with G, R and T all of whom were / are academic chemists. We are waiting in turn to be operated on. We are to have sebaceus cysts removed from our faces. The man doing the operating is completely naked and devoid of any bodily hair. His genitals are visible. He is wearing blue plastic surgical gloves and nothing else. It is my turn to be operated on. I ask him why he is naked. He replies that it is a lot easier to clean up, the blood washes off. I understand the logic. He starts to cut out two cysts from my face. One of them is deeper than the other and he makes a slight mistake. He is worried that I am angry. I say that I am not in the slightest concerned with my appearance and that a scar of the right side of my face will match the one from the basal cell carcinoma removal on the left side. I suggest that he stitches away. This he does with a dark-black thread of a thicker than usual thickness. I get out of the operating chair and leave. The others are waiting nervously.

I am now walking around London with Padmasambhava, Guru Rinpoche. The atmosphere between us is fraternal as if we go way back. He is in a dark royal blue manifestation. We get into a right hand drive old Mk3 Ford Cortina in white. I drive us down to the embankment then we get out. Rinpoche puts his right arm around my right shoulder. He points with his left hand at the Thames water level. He says that in due course it will flood London. The water level rises and as it rises, we retreat uphill. Soon large tracts of land near the embankment are flooded. We work our way up towards Victoria and then Kensington. As we get to the north side of Kensington High Street, he shows me how much of London has been inundated by the sea level rise. He comments that much of this might have been stopped but it was not. There is a feeling of bond between us as we survey.

The scene changes and I am in what once was the Norfolk Arms but now is a hotel. It is very late well after closing time. I am in the bar with G, R and T. There is a young woman decked out as a waitress with a white apron and a black waistcoat. She is drying glasses with a towel. T orders a round of drinks from her and brings them over to us. There is some conversation about the chemical leak. The time comes and it is my turn to buy a round. For some reason I forget G. He feigns upset. I buy him a drink and the woman asks if I have any change, loose coins. She says that we always run out. I pull out coins from my trousers pocket to pay for the round. Her colleague, a male comes over and counts them out. He adds them to a small metallic coin-change box. He gives me back three coins. These coins I/we know are antique, they have a patina of age upon them. The others then go off to bed in the hotel and I sit at the bar with the waitress and her senior colleague. The night is our time, we are creatures of the night.

The dream ends.

Famous Scientist – Maps Dream 28-07-2024

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is this morning’s dream.

The dream starts inside a university building. I am walking past a desk with my name on it. For some reason nobody has claimed that desk though I know that I have not used it in a very long time. I go past a locker which also has my name on it. For some reason I am the only person who knows that I am not still there, nor have I been in a very long time.

I find myself next to a stack of large filing cabinets. The top drawer is open in one. A tall man {J?} is talking with me.

He asks me what I think makes a famous scientist.

I ask him for an example of a famous scientist.

He says, Andrew.

I say that in my opinion there is a difference between a famous scientist and a good one. I say that a good scientist does thorough studies like Physical Review B, whereas a famous scientist is forever seeking headlines.

He says that I will never be a famous scientist.

I say that I never was a famous scientist, nor will I ever be. I already know that. At best it is now only a hobby of mine.

I leave and head through the exit hall of the Imperial College chemistry department.

I pause and head back towards what once was the library. Its function is restored.

I go in and there is a student sitting at a large communal table. He is looking at a map. I take a souvenir map of London off the shelf.

I can see that one of the chairs is broken, as is one of the cabinets.

I start to open up the map on the communal table. I explain to him that the map is free. I can see a massive new development in East London which is labelled University College Hospital. I am struggling to find our present location on the map. The librarian comes over. I explain that I used to cycle around London and that I am looking for my route.

She says that I probably came in on the A roads from the South.

I reorient the map and can see an area labeled SW4. The map only shows SW4.

I note in the dream that this belongs to a class of dreams called map dreams.

The dream ends.

*Numerologically SW4 is 1 + 5 +4 = 10 = 1 Impeccability reducing to fluidity. Impeccability is the jewel of the Southerly Dreamer.

*SW4 London is Clapham and Stockwell and ends close to where I once lived in Brixton.