The island of Newfoundland is the eastern most province in Canada. It was there I started my teaching career.
One day in chemistry class we were talking about ways to minimize or avoid certain chemical reactions. One example used was that of painting cars. The reason we apply paint, is to keep oxygen from reacting with the metal. If you are going to paint a car you might as well pick a colour you like.
An example I presented was that of using coloured glass for beer bottles. I explained that by colouring the glass (brown is the best one, by the way) it reduces the amount of ultraviolet light that is able to enter the bottle. UV light will react with the hops and create a new compound.
Student A: "How do you know if that reaction has occurred?"
Me: "Well, if it happens at an appreciable amount, the beer will smell skunky."
Student B: "What does that mean?"
Me: "The beer smells like a skunk."
Student B: "What does that smell like?"
At this moment I suddenly remembered that Newfoundland didn't have any skunks. It's an island, and skunks prefer not to swim; actually, there are no raccoons or porcupines either.
It also occurred to me that generations of Newfoundland children had no idea what the odour symbol meant when the skunk Pepe Le Pew (Looney Tunes cartoons) appeared on television. That humour would have been lost on them entirely.
The following year I took the school's rugby team on a playing tour of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. A number of my chemistry students were on that tour and for some of them it was their first trip off the island. I was so hoping we would come across a dead skunk (roadkill) along one of the highways. If that had happened I would have shouted, "Now there! That's what I was talking about."
Unfortunately it didn't happen; well, I suppose that was fortunate for the skunks.
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