Editing 2373: Chemist Eggs
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==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
+ | {{incomplete|Created by a HOUSE FULL OF EGGS. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Please do <s>not</s> delete this tag too soon.}} | ||
+ | This comic details how some people attribute smells to certain things that aren't always common to smell - in 2020. Decades ago, when the 'rotten eggs' descriptor became commonplace in chemistry education at high schools and universities, rotten eggs were indeed common enough that cooks avoided adding eggs directly to other ingredients, lest the rotten egg, not detected until after it was too late, force the cook to discard everything and start over. Vastly improved farming, shipping, and marketing practices have made the rotten egg vanishingly rare, at least in the USA. Moreover, much greater recognition of the health hazards of {{w|hydrogen sulfide}} gas (the principal chemical associated with the rotten egg smell) means that, due to various occupational safety precautions, opportunities for sniffing the gas have become scarce, and usually engender swift reactions such as building evacuation. | ||
− | + | The trope, however, has outlived the circumstances that spawned it, thus chemistry teachers parrot a line they learned as students, which is no longer relevant to the student's experience. Given the health hazards of hydrogen sulfide and the regulations now enforced in recognition of those hazards, the competent, and compliant, chemistry teacher doesn't often experience the smell either. Thus, the crack in the title text ("chemists actually use the rotten-egg smell as a baseline for measurement") is unfunny and potentially dangerous, not least because a characteristic of hydrogen sulfide is its ability to deaden the sense of smell, so that a person in an environment with toxic amounts of hydrogen sulfide will not smell the gas. | |
− | Cueball | + | [[Cueball]] takes the disconnect between the trope and his experience and pushes it for all it's worth. This could be taken as symbolic of people who spot such discordances and blow them out of proportion to troll others (in which case, Cueball has most definitely succeeded, based on how [[Ponytail]] reacts - she is clenching her fists in anger as she leaves the conversation, presumably to avoid further irritation.) |
− | + | ==Transcript== | |
− | + | {{incomplete transcript|Please delete this tag too soon.}} | |
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:[Cueball and Ponytail face a table with something like a lab stirrer or heater on it, supporting a flat-bottomed and -topped container from which bubbles are rising.] | :[Cueball and Ponytail face a table with something like a lab stirrer or heater on it, supporting a flat-bottomed and -topped container from which bubbles are rising.] | ||
:Cueball: How will I know if the reaction fails? | :Cueball: How will I know if the reaction fails? | ||
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:Ponytail: '''''My house is not full of eggs!''''' | :Ponytail: '''''My house is not full of eggs!''''' | ||
:Cueball: What do you consider a normal amount of eggs in a house? | :Cueball: What do you consider a normal amount of eggs in a house? | ||
− | :Cueball: If kids egg your house this Halloween, how will you know? | + | :Cueball: If kids egg your house this Halloween, how will you know? |
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{{comic discussion}} | {{comic discussion}} | ||
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[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]] | [[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]] | ||
[[Category:Chemistry]] | [[Category:Chemistry]] | ||
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