{"id":3959,"date":"2026-04-22T09:16:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T16:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/riffin_griffin\/?p=3959"},"modified":"2026-04-21T11:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T18:41:09","slug":"7th-annual-nitrogen-day-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/riffin_griffin\/2026\/04\/7th-annual-nitrogen-day-again\/","title":{"rendered":"7th Annual Nitrogen Day, Again!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Wednesday, April 22, 2026 marks Reed’s 7th Annual Nitrogen Day, put on by Reed’s American Chemical Society and American Nuclear Society! Enjoy liquid nitrogen ice cream, hot dogs, and fun science demos! In Nitrogen we Trust! See the below article written by Raymond Rendleman \u201906<\/a> for the May 2009 Reed Magazine<\/a>, or this Grail article from 2018<\/a>, or the Quest article from this year about it<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

You can\u2019t see it. You can\u2019t smell it. You can\u2019t taste it. It doesn\u2019t burn, explode, alter consciousness or make you talk funny. It is anything but rare\u2014in fact, it makes up the greater part of the atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is, of course, nitrogen, and it is the apotheosis of dull.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except at Reed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once a year, Reedies fling aside all pretense of neutrality and plunge into communal worship of the seventh element. The nitro-veneration takes form in everything from the freezing of ice cream and everyday objects with liquid nitrogen (ever seen a sock snap in half?) to the recitation of elaborate pro-nitrogen odes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nitrogen Day, which usually falls on the Thursday eight days before Renn Fayre, has become one of the most popular traditions on campus, enduring for more than 15 years. Yet illuminating its origins is no easy task.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Longtime chemistry professor Alan Shusterman<\/a> has no idea how it started. Biology professor David Dalton<\/a>, who has affixed his career to unraveling the mysteries of certain plants\u2019 ability to self-fertilize, and who argues that the ability to fix nitrogen industrially was the most important discovery of the 20th century, is similarly baffled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key to unlocking the elusive origins of N-Day came from emeritus professor of chemistry Tom Dunne<\/a>, who remembers with pride the impassioned nitrogen-related speeches delivered by science majors in the quad. Dunne says he may have delivered a speech or two himself. \u201cIt was always a lighthearted thing,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dunne suggested we contact physics major Rob Mack \u201993, who confessed to being one of the instigators, although he stressed that it was a group effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Posing as the \u201cCommittee to Sustain Mysticism, Spirituality, and Awe While Deconstructing and Rationalizing the World Around Us,\u201d the organizers staged the first N-Day on April 23, 1992. Starting at 4 p.m., the festivities began with a brass-band parade from the library lobby. On the Student Union porch, religion major David Weinstock \u201992<\/a> presided over a ceremony titled \u201cIn Nitrogen We Trust,\u201d according to Mack\u2019s original Quest article. Hotdogs cooked over burning charcoal, the Just Say N to O Band provided a musical interlude, and the celebration concluded with an \u201cOde to nitrogen and its triple bond.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
From Reed College Quest Vol 158 No 11 Apr 21 1992<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Biology major Nick Kaplinsky \u201993<\/a>, who helped with the first N-Day, calls it another one of those Reed events that popped out of a \u201cwouldn’t it be great if\u2019 conversation among friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The event was so successful it was repeated the next year. \u201cThe most amazing part was how quickly it caught on,\u201d says bio major Al Kun \u201995<\/a>, another principal organizer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1994, political science major Francisco Toro \u201997<\/a> wrote N-Day\u2019s annual Quest advertisement, saying that seeing the inaugural event as a prospie was \u201cone of the main reasons\u201d he chose Reed. From the student handbook to admission office literature, the event\u2014invariably described as the \u2018Seventh Annual\u201d in a nod to its place in the periodic table\u2014has become a quintessential demonstration of Reed culture. Last year, the first known extramural N-Day celebration was held at the house of chem major Steve Carlson \u201993<\/a> in California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides the addition of tofu dogs to the barbeque, little has changed of N-Day traditions. The craziest thing typical of the celebration is a nitrogen-infused beer garden. (Professor Dalton regards the smaller bubbles of dissolved nitrogen in ale as the 20th century\u2019s second-greatest discovery. )<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why nitrogen? Theories abound. \u201cIt was fun to say, \u2018I will make you love something you didn\u2019t know anything about,\u201d Mack recalls. Nitrogen\u2019s tendency to be overshadowed by flashy elements such as oxygen also appealed to Reedies. \u201cPeople feel they must root for the underdog,\u201d recalls physics major Ben Brau \u201993<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If one were to remain neutral on the subject, one could argue that other elements are as interesting and as important. Oxygen supports combustion; carbon is essential to all known forms of life; helium makes you sound like Donald Duck. Among Reedies gathered in the Quad for N-Day, however, any suggestion that another element might make a superior object of veneration will elicit a chorus of boos. Whatever the reason, Reed and nitrogen share a unique and powerful bond. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday, April 22, 2026 marks Reed’s 7th Annual Nitrogen Day, put on by Reed’s American Chemical Society and American Nuclear Society! Enjoy liquid nitrogen ice cream, hot dogs, and fun science demos! In Nitrogen we Trust! See the below article written by Raymond Rendleman \u201906 for the May 2009 Reed Magazine, or this Grail article … Continue reading 7th Annual Nitrogen Day, Again!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2891,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,186,190],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oldereed","category-traditions","category-studentlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/riffin_griffin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/riffin_griffin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/riffin_griffin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/riffin_griffin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2891"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/riffin_griffin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/riffin_griffin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3962,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/riffin_griffin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3959\/revisions\/3962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/riffin_griffin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/riffin_griffin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/riffin_griffin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}