When Scott K. Bur, a chemistry professor at Gustavus Adolphus College, in Saint Peter, Minn.,
returned from his summer vacation in July,
he knew from past experience that he’d
have something interesting waiting for him.
Since 2004, Bur’s first year at Gustavus,
his students have decorated his office
while he’s away. In the first summer, the
theme was pirates. They have also labeled
everything—“And I mean everything,” Bur
says—with a label gun and have decorated
the office in a princess theme. But this year,
the students outdid themselves by individually wrapping the contents of Bur’s office
in ALUMINUM FOIL.
Had this been any other summer, that
might be the end of the story. Bur would go
about his business, unwrapping his office as
needed. But this summer was different. In a
greenhouse down the hall from Bur’s office,
Brian O’Brien, another Gustavus chemistry
professor, was experiencing a remarkable
tacted by CBS’s
‘Inside Edition.’ I did
two live interviews
with BBC Radio 5 and
got a phone call from a TV station in
New Delhi. A soldier in the Army Corps of
Engineers stationed in Afghanistan sent me
two copies of the Stars & Stripes that had
the picture in it,” he recounts.
By day, Javelin Chi is a research technologist at Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of
Northwestern University. By night, she furi-
ously CROCHETS MOLECULES to supply
a growing demand. Chi creates amigurumi
(Japanese for crocheted stuffed toy) mol-
ecules—pictured on this page are
Mr. Methane and Mr. Ethanol—and
sells them in her Etsy store, Prim
& Plush ( etsy.com/shop/primand
plush), and at craft fairs.
Chi began crocheting molecules
to relieve stress from long days at
work. “I made animals of all kinds,”
she tells Newscripts, but “I guess
it was difficult for me to stay away
from science, even in my crafting.”
In May 2009, Chi opened Prim
& Plush. Sales picked up after
several customers raved about her
molecules online. “I realized that
I probably just hit an untapped
market,” she says.
Chi says she sells a lot of
molecules to people looking for
gifts for scientists. Recently, she
sold several to grad students
at the University of Michigan,
where they have become
companions on their
benchtops. “I have fol-
lowed in their footsteps
and brought a molecule to
work,” she says. “Whenever someone is hav-
ing a hard time with their experiments, they
get the molecule. It’s comforting to have a
small plush molecule staring back at you.”
SCOT T BUR
urveys
event: In 1993, he planted several seeds
of Amorphophallus titanum, also known
as the “corpse flower” because of the
bloom’s unpleasant odor. The same
week that Bur’s students foiled his
office, Perry the Corpse Flower
bloomed for the second time in its
life. As thousands of people streamed
into the greenhouse to catch a glimpse
and a whiff of 7-foot-tall Perry, several
couldn’t help but notice the glow emanating
from the office down the hall.
One reporter, a camera, and the magic
of the Internet later, Bur’s office was an
international phenomenon. “It was a good
prank,” Bur says. But “the attention is prob-
ably more surreal than the prank itself.”
“I did two radio talk shows. I was con-
KIMBERLY R. T WAMBLY wrote this week’s
column. Please send comments and suggestions
to newscripts@acs.org.
