A man and his wife

Florence Flask was ... dressing for the opera when she turned to her husband and screamed, "Erlenmeyer! My joules! Someone has stolen my joules!"

"Now, now, my dear," replied her husband, "keep your balance and reflux a moment. Perhaps they're mislead."

"No, I know they're stolen," cried Florence. "I remember putting them in my burette ... We must call a copper."

Erlenmeyer did so, and the flatfoot who turned up, one Sherlock Ohms, said the outrage looked like the work of an arch-criminal by the name of Lawrence Ium.

"We must be careful -- he's a free radical, ultraviolet, and dangerous. His girlfriend is a chlorine at the Palladium. Maybe I can catch him there." With that, he jumped on his carbon cycle in an activated state and sped off along the reaction pathway ...

-- Daniel B. Murphy, "Precipitations"