Caffeine

Sep 12 2020 09:03

from The Role of Caffeine in Pain Management: A Brief Literature Review

I bought a T-shirt from $6 tees bearing a caffeine molecule in orange on heather blue. After staring at it upside down and mirror-reversed for a day I decided I ought to memorize the structure. I’ve always thought of myself as more visually oriented than word oriented, but after several unsuccessful attempts to remember the shape, I was successful by memorizing a description: “a ring of six connected to a ring of five; the ring of six with alternating nitrogens and double-bonded oxygen, the nitrogens bonded to methane; the shared edge of the rings a double bond; and in the ring of five two nitrogens not next to each other, one double bonded and one with a methane.”

My other favorite drink is Retsina. My wife laughed that I needed a “Retsina-molecule” Tee. Wikipedia says Retsina is flavored with the resin of the Aleppo pine Pinus halepensis, 97.9% of the total collective oil of which, says a paper from the US National Library of Medicine of the NIH, comprises 49 compounds, 65.5% of which are various monoterpenes. Structures vary widely and though all monoterpenes are basically C10H16, so are other compounds, so that formula is both too vague and too boring for a T-shirt.

I suppose I could make her one with Theobromine.