One of the big problems of being a nit-picker like myself is that, on occasion, I see an error so glaring that I squirm in my seat and rant at the wife and kids but I can't do a damn thing about it. This is such a story.
For a long time Exxon ran a bunch of ads that talked about what a wonderful company Exxon is, especially with respect to the environment. When I looked up Exxon ads in Google, there were a whole lot of people screaming about how hypocritical the ads were. But for me there was a bigger problem. The ads featured this lovely glass molecule rotating in space with science sounding music playing in the background and a narrator talking about Exxon's work saving the environment. The problem is, the structure of the glass molecule is all wrong. The molecule is cyclohexane. Now if you're an organic chemist or even if you were slightly exposed to organic chemistry, you know that cyclohexane is a ring of six carbon atoms with two hydrogens attached to each carbon. The other thing that you know is that the carbon ring has a distinct pucker to it. It's called a chair conformation and cyclohexane's shape even has it's own wikipedia page. Here's a screen shot from one of the ads.
You can see the ring flatness even better if you watch the ad itself. This flat abomination showed up in a lot of places including the front cover of their 2008 annual report to stockholders.
My wife used to work at Exxon Research a long time ago and I got to know a few of the organic chemists who worked there, some who are still there. This had to be driving them crazy, too. Well guess what? They fixed it. The newer ads actually have the structure of the molecule correct. Here is a screen shot,
and you can view the ad to get a better sense of the pucker. At first I thought that they had to get their glass blower to go back and make another pretty glass molecule with all the right angles but I suspect the whole thing was done with computer graphics. I did write Exxon and ask if they would tell me how they came to find out about the error and fix it. I'm haven't heard back from them yet.
Anyhow, that's one less thing in the world that I have to worry about.
2 comments:
you and i have a problem...we both are bothered by something that is minutely important in grand scheme of things..me-misspelled words...you-ad with the wrong molecule structure...
what about the environment, starving people, etc.,etc?
al
Good work! The flat cyxlohexane bothered me as well - especially since I am a chemist working for an oil company. I thought I noticed that the ring was starting to pucker in a subtle way.
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