This morning I logged in on my lab computer to check on my latest calculations, only to discover (much to my horror and dismay) that the hydrogen atoms on my water molecules had charges of +400 or so.1

My labmate from China leaned over my terminal and she laughed, “that’s a real sexy hydrogen!”

I didn’t get it.

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Footnotes
  1. If you’re rusty on chemistry, recall that hydrogen has only one electron, and removing that electron gives a charge of +1, so it’s physically impossible to have a charge greater than that.↩