I hoped to have a catchy title for this CoLuMn - one that I could spell with elements - but as Anne pointed out, the new elements don't provide much help for spelling!

Last week, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) announced provisional names for elements 113, 115, 117, and 118, formerly known as Uut, Uup, Uus, and Uuo, respectively. With the additions of nihonium (Nh), moscovium (Mc), tennessine (Ts), and oganesson (Og), the seventh row of the periodic table is now complete. The names will become permanent after a five-month review period ends in November.

Adam may have just written about his experience using Lit Discussions. I want to follow up with my experience moving almost exclusively to Lit Discussions.

Way back in January of 2014 at a snowy project meeting of the leadership council held in Easton, PA, I had an idea. That's actually not quite true, my brother-in-law, Ian O'Bryne, had an idea. He thought we had developed a great website full of tremendous content, but we needed to find ways to bring people back to the site on a regular basis. I liked the idea, but I wouldn't say that it was met with widespread enthusiasm.

I've missed over 9,000 shots in my career.
I've lost almost 300 games.
26 times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed.
I've failed over and over and over again in my life.
And that is why I succeed.

- Micheal Jordan (Nike Culture: The Sign of the Swoosh (1989), Goldman, R; Papson, S., 49)

I’ve heard great things over the years about the “Blue Solids” learning object. Things like “it’s a great ‘introductory’ solid state literature discussion,” or how the students really like the paper because it is easy to read.

As this semester comes ALMOST to a close, I’ve begun to think about my Inorganic course this semester.  What was the most successful? What would I have changed? What was I most excited about?

Today (March 31^st) is Robert Bunsen's 205 birthday. While many of us know him best as the scientist that developed the burner that bears his name, I can't help but wonder if the generation of chemists we are currently training will soon forget his name. I can't think of a single lab experiment at my institution where a Bunsen burner is used. And I imagine the same is true at many other institutions. And for safety reasons, I am perfectly fine with that. But it sad that he may soon be forgotten. Sure, he had some other very significant contributions to chemistry.

Hi everyone. It has been an exciting and busy ACS meeting so far. There were flight delays, airport shuttle snafus and a 7 hour overnight power outage at our hotel. But we have managed to overcome these difficulties to have a great conference. The teaching at the frontiers of inorganic chemistry sessions have been awesome. It's great to get people together discussing how we teach. And the research symposium got off to a wonderful start on Sunday and still has morning and afternoon sessions left on Tuesday. The poster session Sunday night was very busy.