How was kevlar accidentally invented?

Jam, I think we're gonna have a little bit of a different approach today. Okay. So I'm gonna start off with a little bit of story time here. Okay, okay. You and I are really lucky in that it's difficult for either of us to really imagine the fear that would come with entering a war zone or what it's like to be a first responder. Yes. In some kind of bomb or active shooter event, we have not experienced that. Correct. And many people don't choose to encounter those situations, but some do. Some enter those situations based on their own will and those are members of the press, military, first responders, people who are managing these life threatening situations, especially threats coming from bullet, trapnel, debris that's basically flying projectiles. And those people probably wouldn't be able to do that. If they weren't equipped with personal protection of equipment, that is bulletproof. Ah, right. They have a sense of safety more so because of those bulletproof helmets, which protect against bullets, but also all the other flying objects that we discussed. And that sense of safety is thanks to the curiosity and drive of one woman. And it truly understands the story and chemistry of how bulletproof vests work. We're going to have to go back to the 1940s and follow the career of a recently graduated, hopeful she wanted to be pre-med student by the name of Stephanie Kool-Eck. And so today, I'm going to share with you the story of how Kevlar was invented and the chemistry that saves lives all around the world. Nice. Okay, let's do it. Let's do it. Hey, I'm Melissa. I'm Jam. And I'm a chemist. And I'm not. And welcome to chemistry for your life. The podcast helps you understand the chemistry of your everyday life. Okay, and this was actually, first of all, say inspired by the explain it like I'm five subreddit. Oh nice. Somebody asked how Kevlar so strong. And I was like, oh, I'm going to get all over that. Dang, that's a great question. And also, we have two new members of the community that I want to shout out. One is Kelly D. Welcome for the first time, I think, for Kelly D. But not for the first time. Welcome back. Bree and. Yes. Bree used to make drawings for the show, right? Yes. We have a Bree and a Bridget. And sometimes I have a heart of memory, which is much. No, Bree used to make drawings for our show. Yes. And we're so glad to have Bree back. And just in general, the community has been a really fun space lately. We did a music league. And once my classes wrap up, I think we're going to plan on doing another one. And we've got lots of messages and comments from people. So go check that out. And you also get some other perks. I can add free episodes of the show. There's like a little chat that some people do in there. So it's awesome. And just like Kelly and Bree are getting today, you get a shout out at the top of the show when you join our community. And at the bottom of every episode. It's right. Yep. So we just, we're just very thankful. So lots of other reasons for you to do it. But most importantly, you keep the show going. You keep it free for everybody else. So if you're interested in joining the Kim community like Kelly and Bree, we did, uh, come, uh, wait, uh, patreon.com. So let's come for your life. Hmm. Almost at our, almost at our own website. Do you check that out too? Yeah. All right. Are you ready for a story time? Mm-hmm. Okay. In 1946, Stephanie Kualaak. I hope I'm saying that right. Was a recent graduate of what's now Carnegie Mellon University, um, separated into men's and women. So she was in the women's program as a chemist, uh, bachelor. She wasn't sure what she wanted to do. She had lots of passion. She was interested in fashion design. She liked the creativity of that. But she was really interested in medicine. So she thought she wanted to go to medical school. She really wanted a job that would be a benefit to mankind. But she didn't have the money for medical school. So she decided to get a job and save up her money. She applied it a few different places. And one of the places she interviewed, um, an eventually would work was DuPont in the textiles lab. We have talked about DuPont before. Do you, do you, what do you remember about DuPont? DuPont, I think weren't they the, um, the PFAS beginning. I mean, it did tons of stuff in my understanding, right? But they loomed large in the PFAS story. And the, uh, effects of it in the waste from it at the, uh, the factory. Yeah. Up there, wherever that was. Yeah, I remember. I remember the DuPonts. Also, uh, just I think a weird family in general. Like one of those like, um, not none of that current members. But like one of those like back in the day, you hear all these, there's a lot of stories about all the Deponts that were rich and did stuff. And just like, do you think they were all connected? Uh, the ones that were involved in that business. Yeah, I believe so. Interesting. Yeah, kind of crazy. Well, yes. So, you know, DuPont has been a little bit of a villain. And they are the villain. But just like people can contain multitudes, you know, you can be the villain and sometimes contribute positive things. You know, yeah. So that is, that's what's happening here. This is going to be a little bit of DuPont. Maybe doing some right, uh, offset the mountains and buckets of wrong. They've done, they've done right, too. They've made some things that have made life easier, but they've also done wrong. Right, right. So she ended up working in DuPont. Um, uh, working for DuPont in the textiles lab. And once she joined, she found her work in the lab really brought together her passion as someone who loved learning and also creativity. Like she talked about with fashion design, um, because it is really creative to be making new molecules. It's like a very creative outlet. I found that as well as because you had to be really creative to solve problems and things. So she fell in love with the job. She worked in a polymer lab, this same lab that invented synthetic fibers like nylon. And I think she also worked on spandex. And so she really found her place. And she was later quoted as saying, the only problem was that I became so enamored of the work that I totally lost interest in medical school. But don't worry, because even without medical school, she's still going to have a job that is a benefit to mankind. And it's cool all those things come together. Like the textiles interest in like the fashion interest with like these other types of fibers. It's like that was great that people were interested in that. And we're in wanting to work on that and discover like, because there's so many things that like nylon webbing stuff is so good for so many very like durable outdoor goods kind of thing. It's like amazing. I don't know what we would do without that. Right. And she actually also talked about. She was a bachelor in chemistry, but a lot of PhD chemists would work. So the women, especially because it's really like a boys club, they would work for like two years and then leave. And she just really enjoyed it. And she said she made up her mind. She was stubborn and she was not going to be picked out. And so she stayed and she was one of the only people who did that job with the bachelor's. And she was one of the only women who contributed to some of these major inventions. She's received a lot of rewards that she's one of the very few women to have ever received. Like about inventors and things like that. Wow. Yeah. So very cool. So she continued ultimately to work with DuPont for 40 years. She retired in 1986, I think. She contributed to non-ex, which is a fireproof material that's part of fighter, fighter suits and spandex. But there was a major change in her career in the mid-60s. There was a gas shortage being predicted in the United States, which I do think came to fruition in the 70s. I've like, you know, seen some stuff. You know that hockey movie about 1980. Miracle. Oh, I have seen it movie actually. I really like that movie. I have seen it weirdly enough even though I don't know much about hockey. I specifically remember being like brought to that movie with my friends family. I just was like along for the ride. It's like, I don't know what I'm walking into. But they did, they had like the gas long gas lines at the beginning of it. Yeah. I didn't remember that thing. People are like, what did that have to do with it? So I do think they're ended up being some gas shortage. And even now we've got gas troubles, you know? Yep. So there was a gas shortage being predicted in the United States. And so the specific task that came to Stephanie was to work on a new material that could replace the steel fibers in tires. Okay. And ultimately make them more efficient, right? Because it'd be more lightweight and they'd be more durable. So that would be beneficial. So she worked with some, she's working with polymers. What are polymers? They are a large molecule, made up of smaller molecules, repeating like a necklace of a lot of chains together molecules. Perfect. And the one she was working with had benzene as kind of the backbone chain. Oh, it's out of that one. Benzene is a six-membered carbon ring. So it looks like a flat hexagon, and it has three alternating double bonds, but in reality, they're not alternating those electrons that make up each bond is made up of two electrons. They're really shared all around the whole molecule and something that we call p orbitals or pi orbitals. It's just extra, like, it's just areas where electrons are likely to be, and they have some of that resonance we've talked about where they can all be kind of shared around the ring. So benzene is a really stable flat, like we call it planar molecule that's a little rigid. So that's our backbone. In general, polymers can be hard to dissolve because they're so large, it could just be hard to, like, fully get enough of your molecule to be surrounded by solvent to go into solution. So they can be really hard to dissolve, and she was having a hard time getting them to go into any solvent. These particular polymers that she was working with. But when they do dissolve, a lot of times they're thick and they're syrupy. And that thick syrup, usually clear, thick syrup, is converted to a fiber by putting it through small, like, forcing it through very thin holes, that then basically make really thin strands that spin together as fibers. Okay. And the person who did that was called a spinnerette. I don't know if they've updated that technology, but at the time that she was working, that's what they had going on. Okay. So she got one of these polymers that she was working on to dissolve, but it created this thin, like, almost watery, opalescent, like, shiny liquid. Okay. And she thought it was kind of weird, but thought it could be something. She brought it to the spinnerette. He said no. He said that, like, this opalescence is like from particles that are present in there. And it's going to clog up my machine. And it's not going to do anything good because it's all watery and weird. And she was like, I filtered that. And I know there's no particles in there, and it won't clog up the machine, but he wouldn't do it. So she just kind of moved on because she couldn't work the spinner. So then a few days later, and this interview I watched with her, she said, maybe you had a guilty conscience. I don't know. But he came back a few days later and said, fine, I'll try it. And I wonder if there's like the little bit of that, like, curiosity that's slowly ate it away and he's like, but what would it be like, you know, why was it like that? And I like, there's something I like about that that is there's something that looks like it won't work out, but like the experiment, like the chemist in you is like, well, let's just try it. I like when things happen a little bit on accident, like it didn't look good or right. It seemed like it was a screw up, but it wasn't. And it ended up obviously spoiler alert, not being a screw up. So I kind of like that. Yeah. So when he did use this, this polymer to go through the spinner, the fibers that it made were incredibly strong and definitely knew pretty immediately that they had done something different. And what they had created was Kevlar. Now weird, so especially the fact, the fact that it was kind of watery, seeming this like to be like, it's like counter-intuitiveness about the like, yeah, will this end up being a really resilient fiber once it's like, I have some theories on what was going on, what was making at least opalescent and why it maybe was not so thick. Okay. But I'll tell you what they are at the end. Okay. So a lot of polymers have, you know, a carbon backbone. And now many have benzene as a carbon backbone, not as many at that time. But because benzene has this like more rigid structure, where it's these six rings that are kind of flat, it's not going to be as bendy as if you have a bunch of like individual carbons, you know, like in an open chain, like that ring isn't really bending or moving too much. I see. It's really stable and good to be flat like that. And so I think that is something kind of unique about this backbone here. And I'll say that so benzene is the main sort of like group. It's a big hexagon, six carbons being up this hexagon basically. But then on exactly opposite sides of the hexagon, there's nitrogen with a hydrogen. And then on the other side, there's an oxygen. So it kind of makes a pattern you can think it's like nitrogen hydrogen with an oxygen, then benzene, and then another oxygen nitrogen, hydrogen benzene, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and benzene, you know, it's kind of like repeats over and over again, right? Yeah. So you have this one long chain of that repeating over and over again, okay. And then right next to it, you have another thread that's kind of got the same thing going on, oxygen, group, nitrogen, hydrogen, group, and then this benzene, right? Okay. Okay. So these long chains are stretched out next to each other. But if they come close to one another, the oxygen and the hydrogen from the nitrogen group, oxygen from, let's say, chain A, and then the hydrogen from chain B, that's on the nitrogen, hydrogen group, they can take part in something called, hydrogen shared between an oxygen and nitrogen, they can take part in something called, I'll just tell you, hydrogen bonding. Why don't I just try it? Why don't you just try it? It's an intermolecular force, a dorine, give us the great language to use called hydrogen bridging. Yes. But essentially, that is, and it's an intermolecular force, so it's attraction between two different molecules. That's why we say intermolecular, two different molecules, it's attraction between them because you might have something that's really positive and something that's really negative, you know, like our electrons aren't evenly distributed. And so the negative area on one side will be attracted to a positive area on another. And in cases of hydrogen, bonded to certain items, that negative and positive is extreme. The hydrogen is really positive and then the nitrogen that it's bonded to or the oxygen could be really negative. And so it can, the hydrogen almost, it's not quite a bond, but it's almost shared between two things because it's so positive, it'll be really attracted to something negative. We've talked about this a lot, but particularly in this case, between every single benzene is the opportunity for an oxygen to hydrogen bond to another strand and the hydrogen to bond to another strand. Okay. So it's almost like if we have, let's say the oxygen and bond A will hydrogen bond to the nitrogen hydrogen group in chain B. And then chain B also has an oxygen that can hydrogen bond to the nitrogen hydrogen group in chain C. So they're like, all these chains are able to basically bond to one another front to back in addition to being a long side. Oh, I see. And I have a really nice picture for you here. I think I'd like to, if we can remember like insert a picture right here, I can draw one if you want or we can clip one from one of our references. But I think this shows it nicely where this is the long chain just by itself. It's like a benzene oxygen nitrogen hydrogen benzene nitrogen hydrogen oxygen benzene oxygen nitrogen hydrogen hydrogen. But then if you look at the way the chains line up, see this hydrogen is able to, it's positive enough that it's attracted to that oxygen. And then the oxygen next to it is negative enough that it's attracted to the hydrogen on one chain over. And so you kind of get this repeating pattern where the benzene's all sort of line up. Maybe at a slight diagonal. But then the nitrogen hydrogens are bonded, not exactly, but they're really strongly attracted to each other. They have these links in between every benzene. Yeah. It's kind of like a chain link fence basically where it's like you have these, all these diagonals that are creating links to each other left and right and then to the row above. Exactly. Well, I guess depending on some chain link fences, they kind of run diagonal. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard to get a good analogy. [BLANK_AUDIO] something I was thinking about is this is almost like Legos where you like have one Lego and it's one piece and you have really long pieces and they have these grooves that fit perfectly into each other. But then there's another element that we haven't even been able to talk about yet, which is that so these are able to connect with each other but because benzene's pretty flat and there's not that many of these chains are mostly flat there's not a lot of like what we'd call 3D shapes I mean like all atoms are 3D anyway but they're just like in kind of a plane that then you get a long almost sheet of these all bonded to each other well you can stack another sheet on top and so then the benzene rings on one level are kind of able to then interact vertically. So you get this connection left to right that is a true bond that is a polymer yes like truly bonded and then front to back you have these strong connections that are not quite bonds but they're the strongest forces between molecules that can exist that are not bonds right right and then you have a whole sheet of that and then on top of that you can lay a whole another sheet that's doing the same thing and when that sheet lays on top of it sometimes you can get something that is kind of a complicated phenomenon but it's called pie pie stacking so if you have benzene rings have those pie bonds that I talked about where the electrons are those orbitals where electrons are they'll start to share with each other. So then you get attraction side to side that's like a true bond front to back that's a little bit weaker than a true bond but still very strong and then there's also some attraction to the next layer like top to bottom. So there's all these connections happening that are really make this nice orderly material and in addition to it being nice orderly material you know it's pretty rigid it's not flexible it's like pretty much in a straight line someone compared like some polymers are kind of like cooked spaghetti where they're kind of they're like a mass together but it's kind of like a crazy mass and other polymer chains are more like you fuse together a bunch of uncooked spaghetti and this is more like fused together uncooked spaghetti there's like all these strands that are super rigid then we've stuck together and then spun into a fabric after making them into fiber. Does that make sense? Yes I think so I mean like the fact that you get these in every dimension sort of the X the Y and then the Z there's something about even though they they vary in their like the strength of it there's still like the strong preference and attachment to be oriented the way that they are in a way that works like symmetrically in a pattern or exactly that seems rare I mean it's just doesn't seem like there's most things that are like that in that way right in a repeating just like but almost infinite right as much of it as we have or whatever so that's crazy things that do act that way tend to be like salts and maybe like metals where they line up in these repeating patterns they're like 3d patterns and really good examples like minecraft pixels you know like the little squares on minecraft you know somebody gave us that examples like if you imagine at every one of those corners where they intersect that's where the atoms are they make these lattices that go on forever this is similar to that which makes sense because then now Kevlar when you you know make a thread out of this polymer and you weave it into material it is stronger than steel it often it doesn't like catch fire or melt it starts to just degrade which is similar to how salts work they don't often melt they'll just like break down basically they just like start to it'll go into the liquid state they just like degrade it to their individual pieces and so it takes on some of these properties that are unlike any other you know carbon materials really but because it is made of lighter weight carbons nitrogens hydrogens it's lighter per pat not per pound lighter per amount than steel would be your other metals because they're made of heavier atoms yeah and so it has this unique properties that make it almost in a shape like metals you know and therefore a similar strength to metals but a much lighter material for that strength so it's very strong but it's very lightweight it's resistant to catching on fire so it just got lots of amazing properties that's so interesting it is so interesting so now these were all chemistry lessons that we've talked about before but if this is your first time joining us I guess maybe I should have said this at the top but I got so excited about the story I'll say that we have a whole episode where we first introduced polymers there large molecules made up of these repeating small units or small molecules and we also have talked a lot about intermolecular forces intermolecular forces are just those attractive forces between two molecules and that's something we talk a lot about in general chemistry and organic chemistry that's like a common thing that comes up in chemistry so I think those are the big chemistry lessons for today okay okay so now we've talked about these nice strong organizational structure I suspect that that ability to make these nice crystal in units is part of why the solution the watery solution looked kind of cloudy and like it had particles is a lot of polymers will just be like willingly like the loose spaghetti but this was like lining up neatly more like water and starting to take on almost a crystalline shape which would have an opalescent look to it so that's my theory I don't know for sure okay so that's kind of just the story of how Kevlar was discovered it took them a while to commercialize it I think until the 70s until they actually were able to like turn it into build a proof of best and someone else had the idea for that they were like oh we want to try this material and see if it'll work but she was the one who invented the fiber wow and she didn't have a PhD in chemistry but she was able she was I think her name was on the patent for it and I just love this story because it kind of shows that one you don't have to go to medical school to help people and that's something we talk about a lot I talk about a lot with my students and then on bonus episodes this comes up a lot but you can have good meaningful impactful jobs that are not being in medicine yeah and you might even be missing out on something that you could find a lot of value in and really enjoy if you're so focused on that so to have an open mind as you're going through your training in undergrad even grad school about maybe really where your strengths are and what you might be feeling called to do as if she hadn't been like oh actually I really like this she never would have had this opportunity and maybe we wouldn't have bullet proof vest which have saved thousands and thousands of lives yeah and it's crazy to like think about the iterating that happens where like that's a huge breakthrough but it takes a bit to recognize the application of a bullet Invest you know you can see why that might take a while it's like a fabric that would be an inherent to a bullet proof thing I think is a kid I thought bullet professor would just be like literally like like chainmailed like that you know and then when I first like interacted with Kevlar at some point I remember me like whoa wait it's just like this very specific feels unique but it's it is woven a woven thing yeah and they do have layers and layers of it too yeah right but it's one of the things where it just is not what I would have thought of as a non yeah not not somebody who's actually working on this stuff and those are talking about bitch thinking like oh you need metal you need some you need to just wear a heavy metal thing and I think it might even be better than metal because it does have some flexibility to it more so than metal right and so something I was watching said basically it was like an interview with her and they were trying to explain some of the like the chemistry behind it as well but I I was mostly watching it for the interview of her but they in that video which is linked in our references they talked about the benefit that it has some flexibility as a woven material because it can spread the impact out and so it's not like you know if metal if you have like a bullet pushed into it I think it could even if it didn't get through, it would like stab into. - Oh, yes. - But the force of it is more spread because it can absorb some of the impact. - It gets diffused in a way that yeah, I totally see what you mean. Wow, that would be probably not great to have something so rigid and like pass along the like momentum of the thing through it. - Exactly, yeah. - Wow. - Very cool. And like that, how many people also have to be on board to something else she talked about was, she was like, I was really lucky that I had advisors who were men who were interested in what they were doing so they didn't care a lot about what I was doing. So I had a lot of freedom to do what I wanted and they trusted me in the lab. And so I was just able to do that. And then an audio interview with her that I listened to, she also talked about how she did have some technicians that worked for her, but they were new and she was still training them. So she was really involved maybe more than she might have been otherwise. And even if the spinnerette was like, did I tell you that's what they're called spinnerettes? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Okay, good. He even was, if he had not come back around than that would have been that, you know? So there's all these little pieces that had to fall into place. - Yeah, wow, that is so cool. - Yeah, I also like it because again, I think it shows not only that can you have an impact outside of medical school, like who knows if she would have been able to save thousands of lives if she'd gone to be a doctor, but also I think it shows that you can take a detour and it's not a failure. - Yeah. - Like if you think, oh, this is what I wanna do, but then something shifts or, yeah, maybe you can't afford it or your grades don't exactly line up for me. I was in an organic chemistry lab and I enjoyed the work, but I found that the overall lifestyle was just depressing for me. - Right. - It was wasn't good for my mental health and then I switched gears and that's how I found education research and it's made me so much better at being an instructor. - Yeah, yeah. - So I think it's like, hey, maybe the thing that you're doing while you're trying to get to somewhere else is the right thing you should be doing. So I just really like that. - Yeah. - I also wanted to share other applications of Kevlar. - Okay. - So this is a quote from Chemistry World, which is a magazine put out by the Royal Society of Chemistry. So it's a good resource. So I'm just gonna read a direct quote. - Okay. - Kevlar has indeed proven to be useful in toughening up both car and bicycle tires as it was originally intended, but is also used in composites of carbon fiber bicycle frames and composites used in boats and even boat sales. Kevlar reinforces high pressure hoses and undersea cables and is used as a protective sheath for delicate fiber optic cables. Its relative stability at high temperatures means it finds use in personal protective equipment for firefighters as well as in fire resistant mattresses. It's even possible to have a hurricane-resistant storm room built into your home, which uses Kevlar barriers to protect occupants. However, although Kevlar is physically strong, it does carry a chemical weakness. As with many polymers, ultraviolet radiation causes the polymer chain to degrade and so Kevlar must be protected from sunlight when used outdoors. And then another site I found, this is Compound Kim. They do a lot of little infographics. They often work with chemistry, Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Society of Chemistry listed a few other uses. They're used for the back casings of some mobile phones. Kevlar is used in ping-pong paddles to increase bounce and reduce weight. It's used for the bodywork and petrol or gas tanks in Formula One cars. And it's often used in protective gloves and in the manufacturing of panels and wings for fighter jets. - Downing. There's a ton of uses of Kevlar. - Wow. Yeah, that's interesting. - And Stephanie has now passed away, but she retired from DuPont in 1986 and when asked in one interview, how it feels to be a kind of mythical, major female inventor, she answered, it hasn't really made any difference for me except that it's made me more busy. Sometimes I feel sort of embarrassed by the whole thing. (laughing) So I thought that was fun. - That's great. - And that is the story of how Kevlar came to be and the little bit of the chemistry behind it. - That is awesome. Most awesome again, Stephanie. - Stephanie Polack. I think it's how you pronounce it. K-W-O-L-E-K. Kinda reminds me of my husband last time. - Yeah, quite well. - Yeah. So yeah, Stephanie Polack. - That's awesome. - Yeah, very cool. - Very, very, very cool. - And we sometimes end with categories. So I thought a, oh, sorry, hit my mic. I thought a fun category would be, what is the time you thought you made a mistake? Like this liquid, a lot of people thought it wasn't gonna work well. But I ended up being a good thing. - Huh, that's a very good question. You might have to go first if you have one already. Did you? - Probably my biggest example is when I thought, maybe I had gone under the wrong field for organic chemistry and I was really sad. I wasn't really seeing eye to eye with my advisor. And I went back and forth on if I wanted to quit. And then he and I got into an argument and it was kind of like, okay, it's time for you to go. - Yeah, dang. - And I thought like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. This is what am I gonna do? You know, I made a huge mistake. But then, and I had invested three and a half years already and that, and so I was worried that I had wasted my time, but it turns out that the field I went into chemistry education research, you really need an expertise in an area. And that time I spent in that lab, I was able to develop my understanding of organic chemistry past what I would have been able to if I hadn't been in such an intense program. You know, I took all my qualifying exams to prove like, oh yeah, I know enough and understand organic chemistry to be a PhD in this field. So I think that's something that was like, it seemed bad on the outside. Like, oh, you quit your PhD program halfway through like that is considered a failure. But for me, it was the best thing that could have happened. So I think that was the one that came to my mind pretty immediately of like, oh yeah, that was great. - Yeah, the one I can think of is in a similar vein except that I probably, we're not quite perfectly aligning with your question. That's what I have today. I'll probably think of a better one later. But because you just talked about in this, like a kind of career path, kind of a deal. When I worked for the humanitarian ministry for five years after I finished my degree. And then I felt like this growing sense of needing to leave as I got close to the five year mark. And so tough talking about that sometimes because I'm like, well, I can't really point to a specific single thing, you know what I mean? - Right, yeah. - It wasn't like a, I don't like this work 'cause I loved it. I was getting burnt out, but you know like, there's a lot of other solutions to that. You don't have to just have to lose something to get your burning out. You know what I mean, like change your work life balance, that kind of stuff. And so I do what most career people say not to do, which is I just left, I had like a two month off ramp. So it wasn't like, I just was like, see ya. But and I had recruited a guy to like, what I would really think he was like, be on my team with you, but he kind of ended up just being my replacement in the end after working together for a little bit. But in some ways felt like a mistake, except at the same time it felt like, was what I was supposed to do, you know what I mean? But in the like standard career wisdom, it wasn't. - Especially as a film person. You have a steady job as a film person and you're gonna give that up. - Yes, and there are lots of things about it that wouldn't be people's cup of tea, but I liked most of those things, you know? - Yeah. - And, but I was having a growing sense of like, can I do this forever? What about when we have kids? - Yeah. - I was commuting from Denton to Plano, which for people who aren't around here, it's like a, you know, 50 minutes to an hour commute. - Oh, yeah. - Things like that that were starting to be like, oh, I have, this has been fine. But could it be forever? - Yeah. - And so then I was freelancing for a year and a half, doing like marketing and video and that kind of stuff. And it really was like a bit of an, there was a bit of aimlessness. I had like things I was doing, I had clients and stuff. But even that was like, it's just what I wanted to do, you know? - Right, yeah, you're like, is this any better than what I was doing before? - It was like, okay, I have some flexibility. We had our first kid during that time. Well, I was freelancing, so it was a lot of like, okay, I'll take time off and not work on stuff and even when I go back to work, I can. make my schedule as I'd like it to be. So I can be with our kid. And so that all that was great, but it was still like, is this what I wanted to do, or you know what I mean? - Yeah. - And then after a year and a half of that was when I got the job I have now. And so it was one of those were like in the end, I'm like, okay, yeah, it wasn't like good career. Like, you wouldn't give us advice to everybody. Just be like, yeah, just leave your job. - Yeah. - If you have, you don't have no ideas lined up. But there is a feeling of like, it worked out. Just find actually a lot better than I expected. - Yeah. - But I, there was quite a bit of time of not knowing that how it would go. And thinking like, man, should I just go get a job? - Yeah, so I try to go back. - Yeah. There's something similar I was already doing. Like backtrack a little bit or whatever. And just, you know, those kinds of things remind me so much about like, it's so hard to see the bigger picture. And it's a long life. We get a lot of time to figure stuff out or whatever. But it does, it's crazy how often those things feel like mistakes. - Yes. - And yeah, you can't, you can't really know if it is. - Yeah, I remember. - I called my mom after, you know, like everything went down and I was, it became clear. I was not gonna be staying in organic chemistry. And I said, I feel like I should feel sad or bad or mad, but I just feel so relieved. I was like, then I guess you should just keep feeling that way. - Yes. - That must be a sign that this is the right thing. But it felt like, you know, initially I'm like, oh, I'm quitting, that's bad, right? Like should I feel bad, you know? But it ended up being the right thing, you know. - Yeah. - Just like Kevlar. It looked weird. She was like, I don't know if this is gonna work. 'Cause it's been around. I was like, no, I'm not gonna do this. And then it ended up being the right thing. - Yeah. Just like hashtag find your Kevlar, you know. (laughs) - I don't think that's gonna take off. It does not pull off the tongue. - Oh, okay, I don't know. Plus like people are really not doing hashtags. - No. - You know, it's funny how crazy, like that was such a big thing. And then even though all these platforms still support it, people turn doing it. It's just not necessary. - Yeah. - So I guess we'll have to start a different kind of random thing, we're not gonna get to start our own hashtag that takes the world by storm. - Yeah, sorry. - Yep. - You remember wedding hashtags? Yeah, to have like specific, yeah. Did you have one? - We did. ours was Meet the Robinson 2015. - Oh, that's good. - Yeah, it was like, obviously couldn't just meet the Robinson's. But it was memorable as people were walking around taking pictures 'cause it's like the name of that movie. - Yeah. - And the year. - We could've done, here's to you Mrs. Robinson. - Yes, we could've done that. - You know, that would've been more your style, I would think. - Yeah, I do love Seven of Garfunkel. But I grew up with people saying that about Mom all the time. - Oh. - And it's just one of those where like, it was like, we like that song, we like Seven of Garfunkel. The joke itself has been done so much that it doesn't feel novel. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. But my mom would get that all the time and you know, Swiss family Robinson and Robinson crew. So, I like that. - Man, I never had that problem. Colleeny's not really a name. - Yeah. - That happens with, today your children asked me what my name was, what was my last name? - Oh yeah, yeah. - And I was like, this is a weird, heartless name name. Like, you just hear it through a different lens when you're saying it to, you know, like a four-year-old that was like, Colleeny. - Yeah, yeah. - Like, ooh, yeah, it's weird. - Sorry. - You can probably get them to like, it'd probably stick in their minds if you said like, it's like the word clean, within e at the end. - Yeah, yeah, cleaning. - Even though it kind of misses that first syllable. - Yeah. - 'Cause really it would be like, Colleeny. But I feel like they'd get it mostly right. - Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. All right, well, we're off topic. So we should probably wrap up here. - What do you mean we're off topic? (laughing) - I hope you enjoyed that little light chemistry lesson but also let chemistry history start. - Yeah, that was awesome. - I love story time. So whenever Melissa was trying to tell me what to name the folder, you know, as you know, if you've listened before, if you haven't, then you didn't. But I don't know the episodes. - That's right. - But I just have to obviously make folders for the recordings and stuff like that. So usually Melissa tries to think of something very vague to title it so I can know what to label the folder and stuff. This was just story time. - Yep, this is story time. - But that immediately got me excited because it's yeah, cool to hear chemistry stories. - It's fun. - Yep, well thank you for teaching us. Thanks for telling that story to us. If you have a question, thought, idea for an episode, follow up from this one or another episode, let us know, reach out to us on our website at chemforyourlife.com. That's chemfarryourlife.com shares, that's not ideas, questions with us. Did I help us keep our show going and contribute to cover the cost and making it? You can join our super cool chem community at patreon.com/chemforyourlife. It's patreon.com/chemforyourlife. You get an ad free food of the show, extra bonus episode every month, just for you all. And some of the little perks and behind the scenes stuff and some chatting and whatnot. But most importantly, you keep the show going, keep it free for everybody else. And so we are just so grateful for you doing that. But if you're not able to do that, you can actually just grab some merch a one time way to support the show that you get to just kind of wear it indefinitely as long as it lasts. Earl and Mara Flask hat, we still have some of those. Made the internet like the forces to be with you. Very relevant. We were talking about internet like the forces moments ago. And guess what, what is supposed to come out? - This episode comes out on May 7th. - Oh, just after May the 4th, we have been talking about this here because people getting ahead of May the 4th a bit, really you can wear this all year round. But it is really great to have a chemistry-related shirt if you're a Star Wars fan and a chemistry fan. Like what a perfect shirt for my dad. - My dad has a shirt, so. - Nice. You can do that. KemferreLife.com/store supports the show and you get something sweet in it to wear. There's stickers, there's hats, there's dirt sweatshirts, all that kind of stuff. But if you can't do either of those things, you can still just help us by subscribing and if you're a podcast app, rating, writing, review, and Apple Podcasts, Spotify, whatever app you use, subscribing to us on YouTube, leaving a comment over there saying hello, those things help people find our podcast and help the chemistry of their everyday life be explained to them, which is what we're all about here. - This episode of Chemistry for Life was created by me, Melissa Kalini and him, James Robinson. If you'd like to learn more about our references, you can check out our show notes or you can look on our website where we have all of our references links that we're used to create today's episode. And we really appreciate our communities so much that we like to give every single one of them a shout out to Top Off, to Top Off, our episode, wrap it up in a little bow every week. And so we want to thank especially our new member, Kelly D, and our returning friend, Bri M, and also Hunter R, Chris and Claire S, Stephen B, Timothy P, Katrina B, Scott B, Vince W, Kyle M, Bri M, Brian K, Latila, Rachel Elizabeth, John T, Jesse R, Doreen Heather, Ash, Kelly, Avashai, Chelsea, Christina, Jacob, Venus, Suzanne, Erica, Colin, Janette, autoclave, Julie, Justine, Amanda, Summer, and Emily. Thank you all so much for all that you do. Make chemistry for your life happen. And yay chemistry. - Yay chemistry. - Yay Camlar. (upbeat music)