via Martin Kaloshi

Martin Kaloshi

Co-Managing Editor

Some weeks ago, my Organic Chemistry teacher started class off with the topic of resonance. Imploded my worldview, in short.

See, before this class, I held the common conviction that electrons lie on atoms. They might shift from one atom to another, or even from one compound (multiple atoms together) to another, but at any stable moment in time, electrons are positioned on a single atom of their choice.

It turns out, electrons only sometimes belong to one atom.

The model for electrons being spread over multiple atoms at once is resonance. But, because it is impossible to draw multiple electron arrangements at once, chemists instead draw the resonance contributors: fictional depictions of one arrangement of the electrons in space. Together, the ensemble of these (untrue) contributors aims to represent the (true) compound. Take the resonance contributors of NO₃^–:

via Martin Kaloshi

Alone, these configurations are fake. While the double bond and negative charges appear to change locations from one configuration to another, the truth is a blend: a compound with three oxygens of 1 ⅓ bonds and -⅔ charge each.

The fact that NO₃^–’s electrons are delocalized is actually a good thing. It makes the compound much more stable: delocalization energy being the name for this phenomenon. Being all over the place is NO₃^–’s greatest strength. And yet, all we can muster are its contributors.

This summer, I spent my Tuesday nights trying cider and playing trivia with my cider-and-trivia-savvy friend group. These people, mostly all in Liberal Arts and admittedly far smarter and artsier than me, took on the theatre, history, and music trivia questions with ease. It was only when questions about the volume of clouds came up that the pressure of maintaining the flow of free cider turned to me, the only Science kid in the room.

Among my Arts friends, my own artistic knowledge became shallow and unremarkable. In this setting, it was my identity as a cloud volume connoisseur (roughly one cubic kilometre) that instead sprung out most, all other facets of me rendered, contextually, not as interesting. In other words, I got to wear the Science hat.

But when I told my Science friends last winter that I was joining The Plant, that I enjoyed writing as a hobby, and that I continually got better grades in my English and humanities classes, my Science persona went dormant. In front of these physics wizzes, my cloud volume knowledge was commonplace and ignorable. It was now my good grammar and love of literature that best framed my identity. Welcome to: the Arts hat.

Back in late May, when I told some of my hardest-working peers at Dawson that I’d spent my Tuesday night in the company of ciders and trivia in NDG (during exam season), I was met with mild disapproval. I’d stack the reckless hat to my collection.

But when I revealed to those same people the truth– that I’d only gone out once during exams, and even then returned home early to spare myself from Calculus doom– I (like to think I) subbed the reckless hat with the radically cool school-life balancer hat. Then when I retell almost throwing up from pre-exam nerves, it’s onto the anxious hat. And when I ultimately did alright, back to the decent student hat.

The thing is, I almost never wear hats. They mess up my hair, and make me look terribly unflattering. My hats–sciency, artsy, reckless, cool, decent at school–are mere resonance contributors of my personality: palatable arrangements of my current interests that are, ultimately, entirely illusory on their own.

Labels, like resonance contributors, are necessary and incredibly effective at what they do. Sciency represents me better than no representation at all: just as one configuration of NO₃^– reflects NO₃^– better than no configuration at all. But blend three configurations, and NO₃^– will come alive.

We need resonance, when we’re only given contributors. And though we may never fully picture what a complete person looks like, just as we may never fully picture what a complete NO₃^– looks like, we can always start by drawing more than one contributor.