Friday Fun: 'Average' Chemistry Work Week?

Looking through the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation document, I came across an interesting paragraph describing "average" work weeks for American employees (emphasis mine):

The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was
unchanged in June at 34.5 hours. In manufacturing, the workweek
increased by 0.1 hour to 40.9 hours, and overtime was unchanged at 3.3
hours. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory
employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 33.7 hours.

Now, I understand that these totals may be skewed down by a variety of factors (furloughs, part-time work, medical leave, etc), but don't those totals still seem low to anyone? Especially viewed through the lens of a lab scientist - I'm pretty sure we fit under "private nonfarm," but most of us don't work those hours!

The three totals average out to ~36 hours / week.

Let's Play a Game: Write in, and tell me when you finish your "average" work week. For context, please provide a general job description and industry. For example:

See Arr Oh - Ph.D. chemist at a small biotech company. Thursday morning.

(That's my generic position, industry, and the point in the work week where I reach 36 hours.)

I'm very curious to see how the totals change among jobs* and between industries. Looking forward to your submissions!

Happy (?) Friday,
SAO

*Educated Guess: Betcha most grad students get to 36 hours by Wednesday. (sigh)

Chemistry Words, with Friends

A recent discussion on Twitter brought some salient sci-comm discussion: Why aren't more chemical terms acceptable for play in the smartphone app Words with Friends?

(Not Really)
Source: Fake Science Tumblr

Unfamiliar with the game? Words, much like Scrabble, prompts players to place lettered tiles to form words on a 15 x 15 grid. The game rewards you for playing unusual letters (Q, Z, each worth 10 points) and for building words across certain labeled spaces, which confer extra points to certain letters and longer words (In fact, critics and fans both remark that WWF seems to be more like a "math game" than erudite word selection).

So, you'd think that WWF would allow submission of any legal word, right? Well, since language constantly evolves, the designers limited choices to a public-domain word list, ENABLE, containing ~173,000 words. Quite a lot, really, until you compare that to SOWPODS, the tournament Scrabble players' list, weighing in at 267,000 (and counting!).

The ENABLE list, ranging from "aa" (lava) to "zyzzyvas" (a weevil), represents scientific fields from anthropology to zoology. Large 'blocks' of terms deal with nuclear energy, geology, physics, and biology. So, what about chemistry?

I spent a few minutes trawling the list, then picking the brains of my colleagues. With this (very) minor effort, we found just a handful of terms missing: ipso, meso, fluorous, and chiron. [Words we guessed might not be there, but were, included: carbocycle, solute, solvent, catalyst, nucleophile, polydisperse, synclinal, catechol, aglycon, zincate, chiral, orbital, glycine, alkali, ketone, and bromide.]

All in all, more chemical variety than I had expected. Readers, I've obviously not covered the gamut of chemical terms, so if you find ENABLE lacking, let me know in the comments. Or, better yet, let Zynga know!