President Bush recently announced that the strategic petroleum reserves would be breached to counter gasoline shortages in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Did you know that government maintains strategic reserves of other materials as well? The strategic helium reserves are kept in Amarillo, TX in a natural formation called the Bush Dome. The He reserve was created in 1925, when the major strategic use was military dirigibles. Helium extraction is incidental to methane (natural gas) production. These days helium is used in magnetic resonance imaging to cool the coils in the magnets so they will superconduct and other cryogenic applications. The reserve contains about 30 billion scm (an scm is a cubic meter at standard conditions -- not a square cubic meter as one report states!)
Camille Minichino visited the chemistry department at Bryn Mawr this week. She is the author of the Periodic Table mystery series. In her second book, The Helium Murder, physicist Gloria Lamerino suspects Congresswoman Hurley has been murdered because of her position on the sale of helium in the reserves.
Standard conditions for a gas are 298 K and 1 atmosphere of pressure.
- Home
- Angry by Choice
- Catalogue of Organisms
- Chinleana
- Doc Madhattan
- Games with Words
- Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
- History of Geology
- Moss Plants and More
- Pleiotropy
- Plektix
- RRResearch
- Skeptic Wonder
- The Culture of Chemistry
- The Curious Wavefunction
- The Phytophactor
- The View from a Microbiologist
- Variety of Life

Field of Science
-
-
Chandra and Johnny come close to discovering black holes20 hours ago in The Curious Wavefunction
-
Friday Fabulous Flower1 day ago in The Phytophactor
-
-
Europe's pause on the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine plays right into anti-vaxxers' hands3 weeks ago in Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
-
-
Does mathematics carry human biases?6 months ago in PLEKTIX
-
-
-
Daily routine1 year ago in Angry by Choice
-
-
-
A New Placodont from the Late Triassic of China2 years ago in Chinleana
-
Posted: July 22, 2018 at 03:03PM2 years ago in Field Notes
-
Bryophyte Herbarium Survey3 years ago in Moss Plants and More
-
Harnessing innate immunity to cure HIV4 years ago in Rule of 6ix
-
WE MOVED!4 years ago in Games with Words
-
-
-
-
post doc job opportunity on ribosome biochemistry!6 years ago in Protein Evolution and Other Musings
-
Growing the kidney: re-blogged from Science Bitez6 years ago in The View from a Microbiologist
-
Blogging Microbes- Communicating Microbiology to Netizens6 years ago in Memoirs of a Defective Brain
-
-
-
The Lure of the Obscure? Guest Post by Frank Stahl8 years ago in Sex, Genes & Evolution
-
-
Lab Rat Moving House9 years ago in Life of a Lab Rat
-
Goodbye FoS, thanks for all the laughs9 years ago in Disease Prone
-
-
Slideshow of NASA's Stardust-NExT Mission Comet Tempel 1 Flyby10 years ago in The Large Picture Blog
-
in The Biology Files

The Who, What, When, Where and Why of Chemistry
Chemistry is not a world unto itself. It is woven firmly into the fabric of the rest of the world, and various fields, from literature to archeology, thread their way through the chemist's text.
5 comments:
Markup Key:
- <b>bold</b> = bold
- <i>italic</i> = italic
- <a href="http://www.fieldofscience.com/">FoS</a> = FoS
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hee--you looked it up. Glad somebody did!
ReplyDeleteI'm still wondering if the "Bush Dome" is named for the Bushes of our presidency? I didn't spend long digging...but remain curious!!
ReplyDeleteIn the "Avenger" novel THE SMILING DOGS, there is a similar plot device (from Wikipedia):
ReplyDelete"A gang murders and schemes to control a remote Montana national park with resources (apparently helium) that will be vital in any upcoming war."
This pulp novel was published in 1940. I would also like to mention that one of the Avenger's side kicks was a chemist.
Standard temp for gases is 273 K while normal temp is 298. Standard temp for thermo values is typically 298 K. Gahhhh! Can't we all just get along?
ReplyDeleteI'd love to know where these came from! I've done a little looking around and asking but have yet to find any explanation.
Alan...good catch...yes, the standard temp is 273.15 Kfor gases, but most thermodynamic quantities are reported at 298 K. And indeed...why? I'll have to see what I can find out!
ReplyDelete