Alternative hobbies that appeal to those with interest in chemistry

Though I barely get to play chemist anymore, it is useful at times. Still have everything of course. Second kid on the way, so I'm busy with life all the time. Work and fam, top priorities always. But of course a guy's gotta have hobbies.

-electronics; as WGTR says, I find this quite fulfilling. Complex problems, intricate tasks, layout, openly accepted and all kinds of room for style! What's not to love. It has been fun to get back into this hobby, and seemingly safer as long as the iron gets unplugged learning to fix toys for the kiddo is money saver too.

-metal working; super fun and you can do interesting things with few tools at low cost. Of course the real fun opens up with more expensive tools, but you can actually make some money in the process. Several of my friends go to community center or each others shops weekly. They have all made trinkets, etc to cover the costs of the class time too.

-Gem and mineral society; lots of fun. Another place that has a ton of tools there to use, usually a great price on raw stone there if you have nothing of your own. Nice and peaceful too

-General fabrication, aka busy hands doing/building/making; just like working with your hands? Me too! Everything from art to home repair here applies. Refinishing wood, carving, painting, fixing, etc. Learning new stuff to make things happen can be the kind of thing that sets one apart from competition if equal trade related skills are had for the job at hand. I like to make function things that aren't ugly, but aren't just art tool maintenance is deffinitely included here.

Those are the four things that keep this guy going. They all Cary a certain level of creativity, problem solving, intricate work, complex thinking and I wouldn't have it any other way. Standard is just so boring.

Ohhh and gardening...

I'm with WGTR. Electronics is one of my [many] beloved hobbies. In fact, electronics and metalworking is what opened the door for me to learn a little bit of chemistry. It was the desire to make a better flux for soldering and brazing! I've acquired quite a good bit of glassware over the years and enjoyed a hands-on approach to learning chemistry (in a limited capacity).

IMO, if you make a career out of a beloved hobby, you end up despising it. If I'd taken a career in EE right out of school, I imagine it would be one of the last things I'd want to do at home.

On the flip side, too many hobbies and not enough hours in the day or years in a lifetime...

Quote: Originally posted by Cou

I still hold to the fact that cooking is the best alternative if you enjoy the hands-on mixing/playing part of chemistry more than the math/science studying part.

Quote: Originally posted by Deathunter88

Quote: Originally posted by Cou   I still hold to the fact that cooking is the best alternative if you enjoy the hands-on mixing/playing part of chemistry more than the math/science studying part. I would argue that cooking doesn't offer enough depth for those of us who like to pursue things at depth.

I feel like cooking is accurate but baking in particular suits a chemist; you'd be amazed at how technical it is to bake bread or prepare classic pastries.

Homebrewing, wine or other alcohol tasting, and mixology are all things I'm starting to get into. Again there's the science and detail involved, plus I've noticed people in my field like to drink a lot

I tend to occupy a pretty soft part of the chemistry sphere where I'm free to use my senses a lot and there's not a crazy amount of hard science, so maybe these only make sense to me. Some other hobbies of mine are drawing/painting, competitive gaming, hiking, running, and climbing. But I don't really see how the rest have much to do with being a chemist.

[Edited on 4-20-2017 by Amos]

One of my other interests is astronomy. When we go camping at a public place (such as a state park), I like to take my telescope and motorized tracking mount/tripod if the weather permits. Before long, I have a group of people who are curious about what we're up to or want to have a look. Young and old alike are attracted to the telescope. West Texas affords some amazing views of the night sky even without a telescope. One of my favorite clusters is the Pleiades. If there happens to be a full moon, I'll time a satellite transit across the lunar FOV and let one of the spectators see it through the telescope. "Don't blink or you'll miss it!"

If it's not the telescope when camping, sometimes I'll set up a long wire antenna, tuner and HF rig and make contacts around the world or just tune around and listen in on traffic. This also tends to amaze people. The long wire antenna is for portability more than anything. A lot of my gear is homemade.

I love competing in BBQ cook-offs (does that count as 'cooking'?) We basically hang around with a bunch of laid-back people, drink beer and peek in on the brisket (or whatever happens to be smoking) every half hour or so. I build my own smokers and pits for fun and take them to the competitions. Brisket is a challenging hunk of meat to get just right -- it takes many hours to smoke and consequently, many beers for endurance.

There's a lot of things I'd like to try my hand at like woodworking if I had the money and time to do so, but anyways some of my hobbies include
Running,
Cycling,
Playing music,
Cooking, as others have mentioned
Also I'm surprised no one has mentioned putting together model airplanes (unless I missed it). Did that a lot when I in highschool. It's a fun hobby, it takes a decent amount of skill and knowing special techniques to make realistic looking airplane models. Also once you get into it you get a good collection of solvents so you still get the enjoyment out of huffing organic solvents as you would doing chemistry

Quote: Originally posted by gluon47

My main other hobby is lucid dreaming/oneironautics

Same here

Cool! Nice to know there's another dreamer around on the forum.

Cool parallels in hobbies, for sure.

For me, definitely chemistry, rock-hounding, botany/gardening, music (piano mainly, also trombone), cooking, and electronics and programming to a lesser degree, usually having to do with other hobbies.

I feel like I would get into cooking, winery/meadery, and perhaps riflery in later years. I feel like I already have a lifetime of hobbies to eat away at my time though, so I'll probably just buy a Mosin Nagant and make mead every so often

For me, it is:

-botany, a lot more besides gardening, special interest in their chemistry and parasitic and aquatic/marine plant life
-reading novels, a whole lot, mostly the "hard" variety of science-fiction
-brewing fruit wines
-growing mushrooms
-cooking of course too, nearly every chemist is a dedicated cook too, surprisingly

I find it very interesting people mention lucid dreaming as their hobby, that is very cool and I appreciate it a lot.
My own experiments with lucid dreaming didn´t turned out so satisfying, it is interesting, but hard to achieve and generally, one has to know what to get out of it. I don´t. Although flying and having the weirdest sex ever is a cool thing to do, besides that the lucid kind of dreams are just useful tools for abortion of bad dreams for me.

I reckon I'd be lost without chem/bio/pharmacology as a hobby. I do play videogames, and occasionally read fiction, but its not nearly so satisfying as cooking up something interesting, studying it, working on refining techniques, to nail down all the little fine details in getting a synthesis working perfectly, optimizing for yield etc.

And there is something else I'd definitely miss, when new reagent stocks and glassware/other equipment are coming in the mail its like being a little kid waiting for xmas again

Building DIY chem equipment, does that count?

Or if bored and there is nothing to do, then browsing pubmed, etc. until an interesting paper is found, or even wikipedia as a start point for new ideas and using sci-hub to crack the paywalls and build up my journal reference library.

Think this year might just be the time to get further on with my ergot project, wild-type Claviceps sclerotia (C.purpurea, have been on the lookout for C.paspali but have never managed to find any, and that, I'd dare not order from a strain library. Have seen C.fusiformis growing but until I get to the point where genetic experiments would be called for, C.fusiformis is not of much use, since it has evolved a loss-of-function mutation in the ergot alkaloid biosynthetic pathway which results in its producing only clavine alkaloids. That said, it may be useful for culture for use in feeding xenobiotic clavines to C.purpurea, in order to boost alkaloid production of the ergopeptides and simple lysergamide type alkaloids.

Seen some rather...odd..looking sclerotia, in one particular location also, which are narrow, elongated and triangular, with a deep groove down the faces, unlike any other C.purpurea sclerotia I've ever seen (and I've seen quite a lot of them), suspect possibly C.sulcata. Got myself a hardcopy edition of Kren and Kvac's 'The Genus Claviceps', a bargain at about $38-39, thought I'd have to be stuck with a pirated online copy in .PDF format there, since it often sells for over £/$100, and I could only work if I can find something located nearby, as I can't drive (seizures) and after a crippling injury in childhood, made worse by a pack of shitheads stamping on my knee, face and other places I don't even want to think about, can't walk far without a lot of pain. Not that easy to get a job either since nobody since school leaving age ever gave me a chance, and without a work history people are even less willing. How does one GET a work history, when you need a work history to get a job? cyclic pain in the arse. Also I now often have to wear an eyepatch, after being nearly blinded, after LE tampered with something in the lab, and there was an ugly accident with alkali metal amides, superheated steam and caustic, was wearing goggles at the time, but the result hit me in the face at just the wrong angle, and with sufficient force after building up a lot of pressure inside a vessel to near enough knock them off my head.

Although the other day I did have a couple of women sorta hit on me because they liked the look, it does at least look stylish with a black leather trench and big goth boots or combat boots. (although autie girls are more my type though, generally speaking)

For a time, went to a kinda group meetup thing of that nature, thinking of going back, ended up dating two girls from there, one autistic/MR the other autistic, and damned, two of the best relationships I've ever had. The latter of the two, I almost ended up marrying. Wish to this day I had. Actually thats part, a large part, of the reason I intend on rejoining the group, to see if that particular girl is still there. Haven't seen her since she was about 14, many, many years ago, but she made quite the impression. Ever meet somebody you just can't forget? didn't believe in love at first sight until I met lady C (to give her some privacy, won't give her full name out online of course), but this girl was something special. Have spent the rest of my life feeling as though missing a limb. Just..one of, of anyone I've ever been with, the two most amazing people I've ever known. The other being, of all people, a stalker, again, autistic, this time, 49-50, looks about 30, damned smart and absolutely stunning. She is the only other person I've ever known, who has actually known about it, that I'd have wanted to grow old with.

Still keep in contact with her though, even after the relationship was not to be (complicated situation, downright ugly one, involving a lodger coming between us. Not in a relationship sense, I am no cheater, rather, she was, and without a doubt still is, a psychopath/sociopath, borderline hell-bitch whos only conceivable use to mankind would be to be impaled on a long metal spike and attached to a church roof should they ever need a replacement lightening conductor. A real nasty piece of work, thief, psycho, nightmare festering gorgon-whore from the blackest abyss in tartarus, who, in the end, attempted to gut me with a katana, at which point, I sent her packing, or rather, just threw her out of the door whilst I searched her stuff, and found out she'd been, in between fouling up a relationship with one of the most wonderful women I've ever had the honor of knowing, probably being a vengeful, attention-seeking little bitch, and spending her time making certainly one, and probably two (not that I knew it at the time of course) false rape claims against other guys. Claimed one of them had drugged and raped her, when she had planned to fuck the guy from before he even ARRIVED here, and I'd watched her cook the pot brownies.Possibly tried to poison me with amatoxins (luckily for me, I'm decidedly thorough when it comes to another hobby of mine, mycology.)

Actually, mycology, along with botany, is where I started out ending up with chemistry and bio as a hobby. I'm told by the living side of my grandparents, that I was 3 at the time I picked up a mycology textbook and started teaching them about what was good to eat and what species are toxic, how and why. Maybe 4 actually, but 3-4, using an old microscope of my father's, big clunky old brass job that must be an antique, interest in the reagent tests for field use in making IDs, as well as (and this puzzled me until the time I eventually got access to the net, and wikipedia) wanting to know the chemistry behind blueing in an Amanita muscaria-based intoxicant brew I'd been preparing. No, you heard right, blueing in an Amanita preparation, not in live or freshly picked Psilocybe species or other tryptamine-bearing fungi.

Turns out that the species hyperaccumulates vanadium, and Amanita muscaria forms a novel octacoordinate vanadium coordination complex, where a central V atom is coordinated to six oxygen atoms and a pair of nitogens, thought possibly to serve as a peroxidase, and the anion of which is a deep cobalt glass blue color. I've been meaning to store up and dry out the stem tissue of the mushrooms for the next few years' harvests, since I go out yearly several times, and build up as large a store of dried caps as I can, although the gill and stem tissue I normally throw out as worthless in the latter case, or with the gills there is a lot of water content that comes out and makes the mushrooms difficult to cure (to decarboxylate the toxic ibotenic acid to muscimol, never tried to use them fresh, but its well known to sicken people rather than intoxicate, although that isn't my primary use for them, rather, I either brew a medicinal tea out of them, that helps inure to cold, against aches and fatigue, or use them along with a parasitic mushroom that associates with the mycelial network of the Amanita, a species related to the genus Boletus, Chalciporus piperatus, the peppery bolete. The pair of them together, once the fly agarics are given a gentle slow heat-curing and dried out, give a wonderful kick to meat dishes, particularly beef. I always add a couple of spoonfuls of dried, powdered fly agaric, and the dried boletes, whizzed up in a spice grinder to a pot of chili con carne, along with a few other weird and wonderful spices, also to sprinkle on a piece of steak being fried (the steak spice, for other cooks, is a mixture of cubeb [piper cubeba] szechuan pepper, which has the most peculiar numbing effect on the mouth and allows for the use of far fierier chilli peppers than would otherwise be tolerable], various chillies, black pepper, water pepper (a Polygonum species, related to bistort), pink peppercorns (Schinus, a species of sumac, IIRC), the amanita and peppery boletes, the contents of a few cardamom pods, pounded in a mortar, and then used to mix a marinade of the above in about equal proportions of habanero tabasco sauce, worcestershire sauce and dark, aged soy sauce and a pounded garlic clove, or part of one, depending on the tastes of the consumer, as well as being dried and sprinkled over the top of the steaks before brushing with oil, searing either side then slow-frying until the meat just falls to bits in the mouth.

Absolutely delicious.
This year though I'm going to start dessicating and keeping what would otherwise be dross, to see if I can extract and crystallize the vanadium complex.