From: omnisnert@gmail.com   
      
   I've just finished reading Alan Bradley's mystery novel _The Sweetness   
   at the Bottom of the Pie_. The narrator is an 11-year-old girl who's a   
   prodigy in chemistry with a passion for poisons, as she describes   
   herself, and for the most part the chemistry in the book seems to be   
   correct.   
      
   One exception caught my eye. At one point, the narrator comments that   
   "There were thirteen carbon atoms in tridecyl, whose hydride was marsh   
   gas." The only "marsh gas" I'm aware of is primarily methane, with some   
   other minor components also of low MW. The only tridecyl I'm aware of   
   would be the C13H27- group, whose hydride would be tridecane, C13H28. My   
   on-line searches aren't turning up any other options. Is this an error   
   on the part of the narrator and/or author?   
      
   Another bit of chemistry that I'm not able to figure out is a   
   description of the late uncle who left behind the laboratory in which   
   the narrator does her work.  "It was rumored that he had been studying   
   the first-order decomposition of nitrogen pentoxide. If that was true,   
   it was the first recorded research into a reaction which was to lead   
   eventually to the development of the A-bomb." What's the connection   
   between N2O5 and atomic bombs?   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)