Assignments for Week Five

1. Inert gas of the week

My inert gas of the week is helium.  Helium’s chemical symbol is He, atomic number is 2  and atomic weight is 4.  Helium is the second lightest element and is the second most abundant element in the universe.  It is colorless odorless tasteless non-toxic.  It is also the lightest of all the inert gases.  Its boiling and melting points are the the lowest among the elements.    

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium)

2. Color of foods in your own kitchen

Sharing living space with my sister and my TCM supervisor has add an abundance of colors to my kitchen.  As all three of us are vegetarians and work in the field of health we are aware that we need to replace nutrients from meat with various vegetarian alternatives.  Starting with nuts we have almond, walnut, pecan, cashew, pistachio, macadamia, peanut, hazelnut, pine nut and others.  All these nuts have a combination of color brown, yellow and white in them.  However each has its own unique shades of colors and textures.  

As to legumes we also have a variety of them with an abundance of colors.  The azuki beans are dark red; mung beans are green; soybeans are milky yellow; black-eyed peas are yellow and black, chickpeas are white and green.    

We also have a variety of sea weeds in our kitchen such as kelp, nori, kombu, wakame.  Their colors range from light green, dark green, indigo, violet to black.   

My sister and I also go to the farmer’s market to get fresh veggies fruits and mushrooms of various colors. Veggies usually have cooler greenish/blueish colors and fruits have warmer reddish/orangish/yellowish colors.  Mushrooms usually have more earthly colors of brown and yellow.

In addition a variety of spices in our kitchen cabinet adds many different colors as well. For example cinnamon, pepper, garlic, thyme, basil each has its own unique color.    

Even oils and vinegars have unique colors of their own.  Olive oil has a more translucent green/yellow color while sesame and flax seed oil has shining dark brown colors.  Balsamic, apple, and rice vinegars all have unique colors of their own and each contributes to our health in its unique ways.

3. Thought on the class’s discussions

I enjoy our class discussion on color spectrums of food and different ideas of healthy eating.   It shows that nutrition is such a vast field as it is intimately related to subjects such as chemistry and physics (color spectrums). Learning its relations to chemistry makes learning chemistry more interesting and relevant to us as TCM practitioners.