Catalytic converters are simple, but getting them to work is not

I've never known what the inside of a catalytic converter looked like before. Admittedly, I had to replace my converter at one point and told the mechanic that I wanted to old one to take in to school and show my students - with some idea that I'd ask the old technology (shop) department to cut it in half for me long, long ago - but I eventually just threw the thing out without doing anything with it.

The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray when confronted with laziness, eh?

Clearly, the catalytic converter isn't lazy at all, however, and the technology used to keep the catalytic converter converting is insanely complicated. 

The simple version is that the catalytic converter combusts any unburned hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide byproducts from the combustion happening within the pistons every second of a car's functioning. 

...but to make that secondary combustion take place efficiently requires a whole lot of oxygen sensing to and adjusting along the way of that car functioning.

The Most Misunderstood Concept in Physics

I've posted about entropy before in videos from Steve Mould and Alpha Phoenix. Here Dr Derek takes his turn at tilting at the same windmill: entropy.

The video is a bit long at nearly half an hour, but it's a nice mixture of historical development of the theory of entropy and modern, statistical understanding of entropy's effect on the direction of time in our universe. 

I kind of like Steve's video a bit more, but Dr Derek's video is good, as well.

The Big Idea Behind Avogadro's Number (That Most People Miss)

This video steps backward to begin the story of Avogadro's number back in ancient Greece, similarly to how I teach the atomic history in my chemistry class at Princeton.

The development of relative masses of the elements, though, is something that I tend to skim over fairly quickly, though I might start putting a bit more emphasis on this concept in the past.

I do, however, mention - partially thanks to Steve Mould's explanation of moles - define the moles as the conversion factor between one gram and one atomic mass unit. 

I didn't know, however, that the value for Secret Number N was discovered in 1909. Now I guess I need to find out how that value was discovered more than 100 years ago.

Have We Found All The Elements?

This video surveys the work being done to create superheavy elements - from the Glenn Seaborg era through today. It's a good start toward understanding how new elements are created, though I would also recommend the book Superheavy - a copy of which I have on my shelves at school.

How to make Coca Cola

This sounds like a much more expensive, labor-intensive method of producing homemade Coca Cola.

...but it would give you big hipster, crunchy nuts and berries vibes, though, and it would be really cool to do if you have the time, money, and soda water.

How the Demon Core Killed a Man in 9 Days

The demon core is a legendary sphere of plutonium gallium alloy that was designed to be - when encased in neutron reflectors like beryllium or tungsten - just a hair away from achieving critical mass and releasing massive amounts of radiation.

That idea of making something that is just a tiny accident away from releasing deadly anything was - in retrospect - perhaps a mistake. 

The demon core became known as such because of two deadly incidents, the second of which is retold in the above video, fictionalized in the below clip from the movie Fat Man and Little Boy, and more thoroughly examined in the third video from Kyle Hill.

Check all the videos out and maybe remember not to build a gun that shoots bullets out in every direction while giving it a hair trigger, eh?

The Unknow Phase of Matter

God lord but Steve Mould is a brilliant communicator of science.

I've never really understood super critical fluids - even though I've posted about them before, but today's video - especially the part from about 10:20 through 14:20 or so - makes for a brilliant explanation of why fluids go supercritical at higher temperatures.

The use of the entropy and potential energy graphs in combination lays out the argument for supercriticality brilliantly.

Thanks, Steve...thteve.