Note: This blog was originally posted on September 18, 2017 on www.manyconversations.org as part of One Book, Many Conversations, an international dialogue on reading George Orwell's 1984.

Graduation always leaves me in a reflective mood. It's a thrill to watch our graduates march across a stage and think about all of the things they've accomplished over the last four years. It also made me remember that I needed to submit the form for JMU's nominee for the 2018 ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry Undergraduate Award in Inorganic Chemistry!

Perhaps you noticed the poll about element symbols in names and were curious as to the answer. Well, given the need for a new BITeS post and my ability to think at this point in the semester, here are the answers. As a refresher, the question was, how many elements have element symbols in the middle of their names? For elements with an odd number of letters in their names the symbol must be the middle letter while for elements with an even number of letters in their names the middle two letters must be a symbol. I've made the symbols bold and inserted captial letters where appropriate.

The Interactive Online Network of Inorganic Chemists (www.ionicviper.org) has an opening for a Research Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of South Florida (Tampa, Florida) with a focus on transforming postsecondary inorganic chemistry courses into more active and engaging learning experiences.

It's natural.

It's chemical.

It's logical.

Greetings my loyal snakelings. If you tried to register for an account in the past day or so, or if you do so for the next little while, I just wanted to let you know we are dealing with a little bit of an issue. You can read more of the technobabble below. This issue seems to be impacting the creation of new accounts and it might also lead to a little more junk hitting the site for the next little bit.

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

- Walt Disney

Ahhhhhh, New Orleans. I have such mixed feelings about this city. It's a wonderful place. Great food, exciting atmosphere, bottomless hurricanes, and, more important for our community, it is the site where Adam Johnson pushed the big red button that officially launced VIPEr to the web. Why do I have mixed feelings? It's also the place that Chip Nataro decided that I could be an accessory during his talks. If snakes could shudder, I would. In a little over a week we will be decending on New Orleans for the third time!

In early February I was teaching vibrational motion in water using vibrational mode analysis and group theory. I remember learning about vibrational modes as an undergraduate and I remember distinctly feeling uneasy about it. Why can’t water just vibrate one of the two OH bonds at a time? What is it that forces the linear combination of the two OH stretches into the symmetric and antisymmetric stretches?