Zaitsev observed an elimination trend.
Hofmann said, "No, it's the opposite, my friend.
When ammonium groups leave,
Less hindered alkenes we receive.
You might say they are just amines to an end."
A Freudian who considered agua
In a dream compounds with oxygen saw.
Hydrogen by the pair,
Four electrons to spare
It is a chemical menage-a-trois.
It follows boron in electronic sequence.
Without it, we would have no existence.
It's not at all brassy
For a guy like Djerassi
To call carbon "the atom that makes a difference."
Indium is quite a tempting seducter,
Wooing many a chemistry instructor.
A Lewis acid in brine,
Making reactions benign,
It turns ceramic to superconductor.
Boron forms diborane, but with some added bluster,
It can combine to make what's called a cluster.
It's acidic, not caustic,
With hydrogens agostic,
Reducing organics with all the strength it can muster.
'Tis it from the color of chlorine?
Or profits that companies have seen?
Processes by design
To environs benign--
That is what maketh chemistry green.
Baekeland made Bakelite, Staudinger re-wrote the rules,
Carothers made nylon, and DuPont used his tools.
Some are brittle, some are elastic,
Some polymers turn into plastic.
It's all better living through macromolecules.
Nondescript the absorption spectrogram was.
Despite my reciting hexes and mantras,
The structure stayed a mystery,
A form without identity.
My nemesis? The silence of the lambdas.
For Earth Science:
Flint was a man who lived in a shack.
Munificence was his special knack.
Ever lending supports,
His friends loved him, of quartz,
'Cause he'd give them the chert off his back.
Courtesy of Glenn Barton:
Two oxygens found it ironic
That so many compounds are ionic.
Of the covalent bond
They had always been fond
And that's why they were known as diatomic.