I don't believe it exists...

So I am going to talk about chemistry today, so bear with me for those of you who don't find this interesting. I'll try to make it relevant. One thing that annoys me about doing chemistry is doing things on small scale. I mean, it saves me from burning through material and makes purification somewhat easier, but really small scale reactions are a pain to set up. Imagine building a small scale model of a building, but having to use little bits of toothpicks to build the model. A bad analogy I know. The point is that when you do small scale reactions that are catalytic in something, you end up having to weigh out masses on the order of 0.3 mg or dispense volumes of 10 microliters. Now the volume issue is only a real issue if you have to use dry solvents and things that can catch fire when they come in contact with air. Technology has advanced to the point of measuring out those volumes relatively painless. However, weighing out 0.3 mg on a balance is a pain in the you know what. I personally believe that those kinds of masses don't exist. Now, I know that's wrong. They obviously exist, but I think that I'm not measuring those kinds of weights using the balances I have. So you add in these amounts to your reaction not really knowing if you're adding 0.3 mg or 0.7 mg. Not a big deal until you scale up and realize the reaction isn't going as fast because you were supposed to add 70 mg of catalyst instead of 30 mg of catalyst.

But I digress. This is only a real issue because technology has advanced to the point to allow one to do things on such a small scale. Like I said, doing small scale reactions has its benefits. You use less material, generate less waste, and can try out more conditions. Now if I could just get a Smurf to work in my hood and do these small scale reactions. To them these small scale reactions are probably large scale. For that matter, it would be cool just to have smurfs running around and helping me out. How far do you think you could punt Brainy? I'm saying a good 40 or 50 yards. Who's with me?