Chemistry meets Socrates. A homework problem for the ages.

Well, I couldn't wait to share this with my 5364 colleagues. In perusing the end-of-chapter problems for the General Chemistry textbook used in my lecture course, I came across the following acid-base problem:

The actual chemistry problem (calculate the pH of a 0.500 M solution of coniine) takes only a few lines, but the description of a 'real-world' scenario of this substance occupies three paragraphs and includes a picture! Yes, the death of Socrates is in my General Chemistry textbook. I was sure to include snippets of other end-of-chapter problems so that you could see that no other warranted the same amount of space on the page. I think it exemplifies my blog title in many ways. Aristotle (Rhetoric) and Lavoisier (Chemistry).

I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

p.s.-yes, of course we did this problem in class along with the corresponding narrative:)