I love chemistry.  I fell in love with chemistry in Mr. Rydarowicz's class at Leetonia High School, twenty years ago.  (I also discovered another life-long love in that class...one of my lab partners was a cute brunette who, six years later, became my wife.  Back then, though, she was dating someone else...but that's a different story.)

Anyway.  Chemistry.  I majored in chemistry at Eastern Mennonite College, and later obtained my master's degree in chemistry from Lehigh University.  I've worked as an analytical chemist for fourteen years.  I've always enjoyed the mathematical simplicity of chemical equations - one molecule of something, plus one molecule of something else, equals a totally different compound!

For my 35th birthday this past January, I received a wonderful book - "The Elements", by Theodore Gray.  It contains beautiful pictures of each element of the periodic table, in order by atomic number.  This book re-ignited a desire which I've long had, to collect a sample of each element of the periodic table.  Since many elements, in their pure state, are dangerous - either extremely reactive, toxic, or radioactive - my wife (tolerant, but practical) told me that I wasn't about to store my collection at home.  I still have aspirations of compiling an element collection, or at least the elements I can keep safely.

I also love to bake.  The act of combining simple ingredients - butter, sugar, eggs, flour - to create a sweet, delicious goodie contains a magic similar to the wonders of a good chemical experiment.  In fact, a lot of baking is chemistry - the emulsifying properties of eggs, the browning of sugar cookies when they are "done", and the leavening action of baking soda are all due to the chemistry of the molecules involved.  I'm always trying out new cookie and biscotti recipes, with varying degrees of success.

Since I also love to create totally unnecessary tables and spreadsheets, I decided to combine chemistry with baking and create a periodic table of cookies.  Each element on the periodic table has a symbol - one or two letters which are usually (but not always) an abbreviation of the element's name.  For each symbol, I tried to come up with an ingredient.  For example, H (for Hydrogen) can also stand for Heath Bits.  Every week (more or less), I'm going to bake a cookie or biscotti recipe which uses an ingredient on my table, and write up my findings on this blog.  Since there are over 100 elements, this totally pointless project will take some time.  But hey, it's safer than bringing home samples of arsenic and uranium!