The Forgotten Middle Child Of The Actinide Family

Behold the mythical creature of analytical chemistry labs everywhere! Column chromatography—the technique where you separate compounds by letting them travel through a stationary phase at different speeds—has created its own subspecies of scientist: the obsessed "Coloomner." What we're witnessing is the lab equivalent of a gym bro, but instead of protein shakes, it's chloroform fumes. That right arm isn't from lifting weights—it's from cranking that column stopcock for hours on end, collecting fraction after fraction while muttering "just one more pure compound" under their breath. The truly magnificent part? Despite purifying 1000+ compounds, our hero has no idea what they actually are. Who needs structural analysis when you can just admire those beautiful colored bands separating down your silica gel column? Recrystallization? That's for chemists who actually want to finish their PhD this decade.

Oganesson (element 118) is having an existential crisis, and honestly, who can blame it? This superheavy element only exists for less than a millisecond before radioactively decaying. Scientists literally create it in a lab, and before the poor thing can even figure out its place in the periodic table—poof, it's gone! It's basically the mayfly of chemistry, except instead of living for 24 hours, it gets about 0.0000001 seconds to contemplate its noble gas classification. Imagine being so unstable that researchers have only made about 5 atoms of you... EVER. No wonder it's confused about its identity—it barely has time to introduce itself to the neighboring elements before disintegrating!

Organic chemistry professors really woke up and chose violence with E/Z isomerism. The exact same molecule can be labeled completely opposite ways depending on which side you're looking from! It's like naming your dog "Fluffy" when you're standing in front of him and "Not Fluffy" when you're behind him. The real chemistry lesson here is that perspective matters—unless you're taking an exam, then only the professor's perspective matters. Suddenly those stereochemistry questions on exams feel like a personal attack.

The chemistry joke that keeps on giving. Bath bombs are those colorful spheres of sodium bicarbonate and citric acid that fizz in water, releasing pleasant scents. A toaster in water creates an entirely different reaction—electrocution. But the pièce de résistance? Sodium metal in water. Pure sodium reacts violently with H₂O, releasing hydrogen gas and enough heat to actually explode. Chemistry professors have nightmares about students getting this confused during lab practicals. Safety goggles wouldn't help much here.

When your brain is stuck in chemistry lab but your body is trapped in Ancient Greek history! This brilliant doodle shows the chemical equation NH₄⁺ (ammonium) + 🐼 (panda) = 🐼⁺ (pand-ammonium). The perfect pun for when your professor is droning on about Archaic Greece and your mind wanders to ionic compounds. Who needs to pay attention to lecture handout 6 when you can create chemistry wordplay that would make Democritus proud? The ancient Greeks gave us atoms, but this student gave us pand-ammonium!

The electron's ultimate betrayal! In the top panel, our little electron friend is reaching eagerly for oxygen, forming a nice covalent bond. But then fluorine shows up with its superior electronegativity and the electron can't resist - it's like watching your date abandon you for someone with a better credit score. That sweating electron knows exactly what it's doing - fluorine's electronegativity of 4.0 beats oxygen's measly 3.5 on the Pauling scale. It's basically the chemical equivalent of your friend ditching you for the cooler kid at the party. The title "Press O To Pay Respects" brilliantly references gaming culture while mourning oxygen's loss in this electron custody battle.