FOUR DECADES OF DEMYSTIFYING SCIENCE

Chemistry demos at Man and His World led to a show on CJAD and columns in the Gazette, and the questions from the public keep coming

Tempus fugit. Yes, I took Latin in high school, which really does date me. It means “time flies.” Does it ever! It is hard to believe that almost four decades have passed since I answered a call on a dial telephone from CJAD radio host Helen Gougeon. “Would you like to comment on the controversy in the Gazette article?” she asked. And that conversation would lead to a long and continuing run demystifying science for the public on the radio. Yup, I’m heading into my 40th year doing what I like to call the longest running radio show on chemistry in the history of the world. (Of course, it may be the only radio show on chemistry in the history of the world.)

Here we need a little history. It was back in 1980 that organizers of the UNESCO pavilion at the Man and His World exhibition, a descendant of Expo 67, approached Ariel Fenster, David Harpp and I to see if we would be interested in putting on a series of chemistry shows. They had heard that we had been exciting students with our lectures and chemical demonstrations. Sounded like a great opportunity for demystifying chemistry for the public, and we jumped. Over two summers, thousands would be attracted to our performances, including Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who brought along a young Justin.

One of our featured demonstrations was the production of some polyurethane foam that involved mixing two reagents in a cup and generating, within minutes, a mountain of foam that hardened into a mushroom-shaped blob. It was a neat demo. We had a lot of fun with it until, during our second summer, a fly fell into the ointment one Thursday morning. I remember it well.

I picked up my morning Gazette and began to glance through it in the usual fashion. Ted Blackman’s city column immediately got my attention. It was all about our chemical escapades! Ted described how in spite of the great anxiety about urea-formaldehyde foam insulation, some chemists were brewing the stuff in public and were singing its praises. That got me more than a little hot under the collar. True, there was concern at the time about urea-formaldehyde, an insulating material that can release toxic formaldehyde if improperly applied. But we were not dealing with urea-formaldehyde! We were demonstrating the properties of polyurethane, a distinctly different material. The only common feature was that these were both foams!

By nine o’clock that morning I had delivered a letter to Ted, typewritten in those days, along with a large egg formulated out of polyurethane, which I suggested he hang around his neck for penance. After all, he had laid a large egg by not appreciating the difference between urea-formaldehyde and polyurethane! Much to his credit, Ted followed up with a “mea culpa” retraction, explaining that he had leaped to an inappropriate conclusion.

I was satisfied, and thought the case to be closed. That’s when I got the call from Helen Gougeon asking if I would like to comment on this controversy, which of course was really a non-controversy. She must have liked the way I explained the matter, because, while I had appeared on the radio before that, I was soon asked to be a regular on CJAD. To underline just how long ago that was, one of my first memories of working on radio was editing audio tape by cutting and splicing! The radio show would eventually lead to an invitation to write The Right Chemistry column for the Gazette. I recall writing the first one on a floppy disk!

Over the years there have been questions galore, ranging from the serious to the amusing. A woman visiting her sister in the Caribbean found that while her sister’s bed was overrun with ants, hers was free of the creatures. Could it have anything to do with her sister being a diabetic? Possibly. At one time physicians used to diagnose diabetes by tasting a patient’s urine to see if it was sweet. And ants are known to go for sweets. Ditto fruit flies. A gentleman queried whether wine in which some fruit flies had drowned was safe to drink. It is. That question presented an idea for fruit fly control. Just leave a few glasses of wine around and wait till the flies drink themselves to death. It works.

There certainly have been questions I was unable to answer. Where does one go to get a goldfish autopsied if there is a suspicion it has been poisoned? What is the best way to remove the green colour from an emu egg before dying it? Can a gentleman’s lack of success on his honeymoon night have anything to do with having just consumed 12 bananas? I didn’t dare ask about the motivation for the banana frenzy.

And just last week, I was asked about the Covid-denier who vowed never to wear a face mask or underwear because “things gotta breathe.” Time to invoke my Latin knowledge. Semper ubi sub ubi. And masks too. joe.schwarcz@mcgill.ca

Joe Schwarcz is director of Mcgill University’s Office for Science & Society (mcgill.ca/oss). He hosts The Dr. Joe Show on CJAD Radio 800 AM every Sunday from 3 to 4 p.m.