I don't know about this. It's a page of science-themed cookies, and although I like the sentiment, and they certainly are pretty, little alarm bells go off in my head when I see cookies decorated up like gels. I've had to tell students not to eat the acrylamide, it's toxic. And the cookies that look like streaked petri dishes…oh, horrors! Don't eat the random colonies of bacteria, either!
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More articles by PZ Myers can be found on Freethoughtblogs at the new Pharyngula!
Science cookies
Category: Weirdness
Posted on: December 8, 2009 6:26 PM, by PZ Myers
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Comments
Posted by: AdamK
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December 8, 2009 6:35 PM
But should I eat the deceased lab mouse?
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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December 8, 2009 6:35 PM
They look like the ultimate in junk food--diseases isolated in the lab.
Cute, in a Gary Larson sort of way.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage
|
December 8, 2009 6:37 PM
Damn, PZ, you're no fun at all.
Posted by: LtStorm | December 8, 2009 6:42 PM
Seeing they have Bohr Atom cookies tempts me to attempt to make Orbital Hybridization cookies.
Something like this for iced sugar cookies;
http://www.grandinetti.org/Teaching/Chem121/Lectures/Hybridization/assets/sp2.gif
I think it'd work well!
Posted by: Brownian, Most Vicious & Petty of Pharyngulites
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December 8, 2009 6:42 PM
Really? And to think you never had me as a student.
Posted by: David Estlund | December 8, 2009 6:51 PM
I wouldn't worry about the toxicity of acrylamide. Cookies are delicious and toxins can be fixed with a few weeks of chelation/footpad/lemonade therapy.
Posted by: The Science Pundit
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December 8, 2009 6:56 PM
I like the periodic table cookies. I can see kids fighting over their favorite elements. Now all they need is Schrödinger's Cat cookies.
Posted by: jshiv | December 8, 2009 6:57 PM
I am certainly uncertain of what Heisenberg Uncertainty cookies would look like.
Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | December 8, 2009 6:58 PM
Agarose gels on the other hand are delicious, if a little expensive to eat.
Posted by: OurDeadSelves | December 8, 2009 7:03 PM
The gingerbread scientists absolutely kill me.
The lab coats! Too freaking cute!
Posted by: gillt | December 8, 2009 7:31 PM
From the acrylamide to the Ethidium bromide, nothing about that cookie sounds appetizing.
Posted by: Rosie Redfield | December 8, 2009 8:03 PM
@ Antiochus: I doubt that you're speaking from experience, but I can. An agarose gel accidentally made up in water rather than TAE gel buffer tastes very flat (like water). Agarose gels made up correctly taste a bit more salty, but still have no real flavour.
(The first gel wouldn't run (voltage but no current). Suspecting that I had forgotten the 10x TAE, I made a new gel that ran fine. Then I tasted the leftover agarose from both gels.)
Posted by: Jon Anderson | December 8, 2009 8:16 PM
Trilobite Cookies:
http://www.georgehart.com/trilobites/trilobite.html
Posted by: Yubal
|
December 8, 2009 8:46 PM
Random colonies? R A N D O M ??
I do not know about the colonies on the plates in other peoples labs, but those on my plates are purposefully composed and almost 100% homogeneous.
Coincidence or intelligent design?
Posted by: Anon | December 8, 2009 8:49 PM
More than once, this Experimental Psychologist has suffered Lab Equipment Envy. These cookies rock. I have a tough time coming up with anything at all that psychology might have to compete.
-Ishihara pseudoisochromatic plates (those circles with lots of blobs of color where normal people see "5" but colorblind people see "3", or similar)
-Rorschach inkblot tests (screw reliability and validity, these are cookies!)
-a nice Hermann grid (actually, that would be cool)
-pie charts (representing survey data. lame, but hey,...)
-brain sections (can't let the biologists have *all* the fun)
Sorry, the gels are cooler than anything I got. Kudos!
Posted by: Epikt | December 8, 2009 9:36 PM
Pauli cookies, where you can only put two at a time on the same plate, and one of them has to be upside down.
Posted by: helvella | December 8, 2009 10:03 PM
Seriously, people tried to eat acrylamide gels???
O.M.G. It's not like the smells of autoclaving media and BME wafting about the lab whet the appetite!
Posted by: Carlie | December 8, 2009 10:21 PM
Oh, I was beaten to the trilobite cookie link!
Also there are fractal cookies and cupcakes, which are mathy.
Posted by: funda62 | December 8, 2009 10:24 PM
That is so cool! Perfect for homeschool parties. When I was an undergrad I worked in a salmonella lab doing gels so I particularly like those. Thanks for making my holidays brighter!
Posted by: rawnaeris
|
December 8, 2009 11:47 PM
Our Chemistry Club made a Periodic Table of Cupcakes for Mole Day this year.
..I haven't upload a pic anywhere yet, though...
Posted by: Sarah | December 8, 2009 11:49 PM
Hehe...at my institute for Halloween we had syringes filled with red gelatin (and alcohol of course), and petri dishes with gelatin and something that looked suspiciously like yeast and bacterial colonies. I didn't quite dare eat those, but they were edible.
There were some other wacky tasty lab humor but those were the best. No gels though. These cookies are awesome!
Posted by: Katie V. | December 8, 2009 11:55 PM
Best chem club bake sale included a Periodic table of brownies. Yes I will dig for a dollar in change in the bottom of my bag for that kind of effort
Posted by: tensity1 | December 9, 2009 1:23 AM
There's now a yummy-looking calimari cookie.
Posted by: Staphylococcus | December 9, 2009 1:48 AM
Don't be silly PZ, that's not acrylamide, it's just agarose with ethidium bromide. Nothing to worry about at all... ;)
Posted by: Perpy | December 9, 2009 1:53 AM
If you look at the site now, PZ, I think you'll notice another fine example of this art.
It sure looks yummy.
Posted by: abb3w
|
December 9, 2009 4:18 AM
PZ: Don't eat the random colonies of bacteria, either!
But they're such a natural selection....
Posted by: h.e.n.m. | December 9, 2009 5:24 AM
The blog's cookie maker created a cephalopod cookie to thank PZ and the Pharyngulites for the page visits. http://notsohumblepie.blogspot.com/2009/12/tuesday-cephalopod-cookie.html
Posted by: Anonymous | December 9, 2009 6:02 AM
If students eat things they're not supposed to and die, after you warn them, it's time to invoke Darwin and call it a day.
Posted by: Carlie | December 9, 2009 8:03 AM
Oh wow - the shading and depth on the cephalopod cookie is fabulous!
Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline.
|
December 9, 2009 9:01 AM
Now I have do that damn degree, just so that I can serve a periodic table of cookies at my thesisdefence bash.
I'm trying to think of a good way to do crystallography cakes.
Posted by: Desert Son, OM
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December 9, 2009 12:43 PM
The cephalopod cookie is excellent, and I also like the periodic table cookies, and the atom cookies (older models though they are). Fun stuff.
Still learning,
Robert
Posted by: patnkatng
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December 9, 2009 2:14 PM
Here's another holiday gift idea:
http://lonelydinosaur.com/apparel/evolution-of-man.html
Posted by: Peter Ashby
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December 9, 2009 3:35 PM
It was always my understanding that polymerised acrylamide is not particularly toxic. The problem is always that no gel is ever 100% polymerised, so it's a bit like culinary Russian roulette. I'm sure if you soaked the gel for long enough . . .
Anyway I thought the gel cookies looked much more like agarose gels, which only leaves the problem of the Ethydium Bromide as someone mentioned earlier.
I did particularly like the method for the fractal cookies Carlie linked to, they really are fractal which I think is seriously cool even if I am a humble biologist.
Posted by: Kagato
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December 9, 2009 6:36 PM
Now all they need is Schrödinger's Cat cookies.
I had a box of Schrödinger's Cookies... but then some bastard went and opened the packet, and now I don't.
Posted by: Yunomi
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December 9, 2009 6:43 PM
The cephalopod cookie at Not So Humble Pie is the most beautiful cookie ever!
Posted by: Kagato
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December 9, 2009 6:43 PM
(blockquote fail)
Posted by: Keenacat
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December 10, 2009 12:14 PM
Ohmydog, this is so far beyond cool!! Sadly, I already did my chtulhumas cookies this year, but I'm so going to drag a friend of mine (who is extremely fond of both sweets and science) to the kitchen and try some of this! Yay!