If chemists don't dream of sushi, then what do they dream of?

If you've got $300 and 15 minutes to spare, then there may be no better place to use both up at the same time than Jiro Ono's restaurant in downtown Tokyo. It's omakase, which means chef's choice and is roughly equivalent to prix fixe. Sukiyabashi Jiro is known for ultra-high-quality ingredients and perfect execution of sushi. Jiro's plating is also fast. (The 10 seats at the bar are said to turn over every 15 minutes though I haven't had a chance to confirm it. The twenty "courses" definitely come lightning quick.) The movie, "Jiro Dreams of Sushi," didn't quite emphasize such cold precision in romanticizing his artistry and drive for excellence. Nevertheless, I see all such traits in most successful chemists. Sadly, I have not been to Sukiyabashi Jiro. But I do know quite a few awesome chemists, and have had a chance to see them practice their craft with similar creative precision. 

I wonder what other chemists dream about if not Jiro's sushi? The shape of a nano crystal, the reorganization of atoms through synthetic steps, the dance of symbols in mathematical equations, teasing out the composition of an unknown object, or something else entirely. I dream about how each part of a molecule or a material makes the whole while still remaining a part. Each element is a building block and yet its action is modified by the atoms it is attached to. Putting many molecules together gives rise to so-called emergent behavior in which the collection of molecules together acts entirely differently than any one molecule within. The problem is predicting how it will act (its function.) Their motion and the equations that orchestrate them is what I dream about. 

But I also dream about eating perfectly selected and constructed sushi. Perhaps, I'll have a chance to eat at Sushi Nakayama in NYC? Its eponymous chef was Jiro's apprentice. At the very least he can make tamago as good as what you get at Jiro's. Trouble is that Nakayama's 10 bar seats are about as hard to get as Jiro's. So I'll have to stick to hanging out with chemists.  

Emergence and Campai

I was asked to make the final remarks at the end of the banquet of the recent 14th RIES-Hokudai Symposium.* Quite an honor, but also a lot of pressure. One thing I've learned over the years is that humor rarely translates, and it's easy to accidentally offend in a foreign language. My only saving grace was that the expectations were low. The symposium theme is "mou" —meaning networks— and that presumably had to be weaved in too.  So what to say?

I started by saying "Minasan Konichiwa." That got a round of applause. Proof that the expectations really were low. But here's the kicker: I asked Professors Tsuda, Nakagaki and Ohta, in turn, to say "campai." Each did so but at a sound level that was barely audible. I then asked all three to say "campai." The volume of sound was not the sum of the three earlier statements which would have remained barely audible. Rather, it was loud enough for all to hear easily. This little experiment involving a social network with sound as the observable is indicative of a non-additive (nonlinear) emergent phenomenon. I did not tell my three participants that I planned to ask them to do this. So I really got lucky that the experiment worked as planned. In so doing, though, I was able to provide an example of emergent function arising from collective (network) behavior in a way that most of the audience was able to appreciate and toast to. It also served as a basis for the seminar I delivered the following day on the emergence of structure from Janus and striped particles. Campai!

*Check out my recent post on the 14th RIES-Hokudai Symposium here. RIES is the Research Institute for Electronic Science at Hokkaido University.