By that time Asimov had been writing professionally for nine years and would soon write a doctoral dissertation. He feared that the experience of writing readable prose for publication might have impaired his ability to write the turgid prose typical of academic discourse, and decided to practice with a spoof article (including charts, graphs, tables, and citations of fake articles in nonexistent journals) describing experiments on a compound, thiotimoline, that was so soluble that it dissolved in water up to 1.12 seconds before the water was added.