Chapter 10
The infrared spectroscope was in another part of the building, connected to our department through a glass corridor from which we could see the parking lot. Dr. Mc Murrich was stepping out of her car just then. High heels, black suit, died hair tied back tight, she was impeccable as usual. Mc Murrich was the director of our research division at FoodTech labs. She was the one who would buy us pizza today, for the social lunch. She had been a top notch researcher back then, before becoming a manager. She didn’t have the appearance of a researcher anymore, but that is perhaps inevitable if you climb up the food chain. Mc Murrich was good at doing what she did, we could tell because we always had money to play our games in the lab. We produced the work and she sold it for big bucks to international brands in the food industry, so that they could make even bigger bucks. We all had our share of joy. You’d call this a win-win deal. Wouldn’t you?
“She’ll be excited, what do you say?”, I said.
“You bet she will, this is the breakthrough of the century”, Brad replied.
Brad had a large lanky frame, longish hair and big black-rimmed glasses screening his blue gaze, usually somewhat absent. But now his eyes were electrified as he looked at the jars. We began scanning a sample of pudding with no polymer in it and the spectrum appeared on the screen, with peaks and valleys, each one the signature for a chemical bond. All expected bonds were there.
“Ok, no surprises so far”, I said, “and now let’s have a look at what Mr. Polymer did to the pudding”.
Brad and I sat close to the screen as the spectrum appeared.
“What are these peak here?”, I said.
“I don’t know”, Brad replied. “And look, the peak that was here before is gone now”, he said pointing at the screen, “It’s amazing that the polymer could break chemical bonds and form new ones”.
“Well, we should use some other techniques here. There’s too much guessing involved in reading this spectrum”, I said.
“We should try to get Mike to have a look at this first”, Brad told me.
Rough manners, long nails and beard, same thick sweater and spectacles worn year-round, strong body smell: that was Mike, the spectroscopy guru. Mike was the most senior member in our team, and we all liked him. Mike’s shell was ugly, but he knew his business and he’d share his knowledge generously if you brushed him the right way.
When we knocked on Mike’s door it took him a few minutes to answer. “Yes”, we heard at last.
“Mike, it’s Iris and Brad, do you have a moment?”, I said through the door.
No reply for a minute. Then the door opened, and Mike’s displeased face appeared. He walked back to his desk and brought his face close to the screen, without saying anything. Brad and I looked at each other. Not a good day, we thought.
“Mike”, I began, “we saw something very interesting today. I mean, very interesting”.
Mike turned around slowly.
“Iris added a polymer to the pudding and it swelled by at least ten times”, explained Brad. “The structure we saw under the microscopy was completely different from the original one. We went to look at the infrared spectrum of the pudding and it’s not the same anymore, the chemical bonding seems to be affected by the polymer”.
“Changes in the chemical bonding don’t happen just because you add a polymer in the food”, Mike said drily.
“That’s what we think too, but we cannot understand the spectrum”, I said, in an attempt to get around Mike’s bad temper.
“I can have a look at the spectrum”, Mike conceded at last “but I am swamped. Mc Murrich asked me to summarize the work we have done in the lab in the last ten years, so she can talk about it in one of her conferences”.
So that was it. Mike hated the industrial conferences where Mc Murrich advertised the golden standards of our labs.
“The empty nonsense of industrial politics”, Mike grumbled angrily between his teeth, walking with Brad and me to the infrared spectroscopy room.
He dragged a chair close to the computer. The spectra were on the screen, one beside the other. Mike looked at them in silence, rubbing his chin. We stood still behind him, waiting for his oracle.
“I don’t understand this”, Mike said after a long while.
Brad and I looked at each other in disbelief. If Mike didn’t know, nobody else would.
Mike kept looking at the screen, and now his nose was almost touching it. “The bonds between the carbon atoms have changed”, he started, “But something happened to the nitrogen too. Based on this spectrum one would say that the proteins in the pudding aren’t the same anymore, as if they have been broken down in some way”.
“I tell you, the pudding looked very strange under the microscope”, Brad reiterated
“This is incredible”, said Mike shaking his head, almost talking to himself, “So what is the structure of your polymer?”.
“I started off with a standard azo compound, polymerized it with hydrocarbon and organofluorine compounds to get longer chains and then cross-linked them at 40degC. I wasn’t sure what I was doing and what I would get, I didn’t expect this at all”.
“Ehm…”, Mike hummed, “we should run some nuclear magnetic resonance tests on the samples”.
“But we can’t do nuclear magnetic resonance here”, I said.
“They have it at the research center for cancer. Remember we were there some time ago?”, Brad reminded me.
Brad and I had been there a couple years earlier to use their electron transmission microscope, but there hadn’t been much collaboration going on with their research center after that.
“I have a friend working there. I’ll give him a call a see what he can do for us”, Mike told us. Then, looking at his watch, “I’ll try to catch him later, he’s probably gone for lunch now”.
That reminded me of the social lunch. It had slipped my mind completely, what we were seeing was much too intriguing for me to care about something else now.
“I suppose we are due for lunch…”, I snorted.
Brad shrugged, “I suppose so”.
“Enjoy”, said Mike ironically, “and come see me after lunch”.