Friday, July 16, 2010

Aromantic comedy

Hey folks!
Lots of finished stuff still to post, but am excited about a project I'm planning just now, so I want to talk about that.

So, 'aromantic' is a term used in asexual circles to describe people who find they are not attracted towards romantic relationships of any kind. The theory goes that while a person can be not attracted towards any sexual relationship (asexual), they are often attracted to romantic, non-sexual relationships of various kinds, so 'aromantic' is a sub-classification of people who also aren't interested in this.

And benzene. Benzene is an organic molecule made up of six carbon atoms forming a ring, each attached to a hydrogen atom. An early proposed structure for this molecule had alternating single and double bonds between the carbon atoms:


This has the right number of bonds, so it would make sense, but X-ray diffraction observations show that all of the bond lengths were identical, which rules out this possibility.
In fact, rather than forming pairwise bonds between atoms, the valence electrons form a more complicated orbital between all the atoms, forming a de-localised electron ring, denoted by:


So, it's a pretty awesome molecule. And organic molecules which include a benzene ring, such as phenol and TNT, are referred to as 'aromatic'... you can probably see where this is going.

So naturally I want to combine the two things. The plan is to make a hat design based on the symbol for a benzene ring, but with the central ring replaced by a heart shape. There will probably be six smaller hearts around the edge, where the hydrogen atoms would be, too.
Practically, this will be a more elaborate version of the radial heart-hat I made a while back, although it will take some fiddly modifying to make it work out.

It's going to be *awesome*.
Hugh :o)

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