Baking Soda and Vinegar (volcano)

That went really dark really quickly.

The vinegar and baking soda volcano is a pretty standard elementary school science experiment or demonstration or something.

When the volcano becomes some sort of synecdoche for the world around it, that might be outside of the realm of elementary science.

Source: xkcd

The Mystery of Matter

 

Edit: I'm reposting the videos since PBS took them down. They might or might not stay posted by this account. A short clip is above. I'll put the full episodes after the jump.

How can you not love that fake nose and beard there on Dmitri Mendeleev (as played by Michael Aronov) in PBS's The Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements.

The show is a three-episode 'series' exploring seven key events and people in the discovery of the elements that make up the periodic table. In the course of those 180 minutes, the series name checks dozens of legendary chemistry - Glenn Seaborg, Marie and Pierre Curie, Henry Davy, Harry Mosley, Joseph Priestly, Antoine Lavoisier, Dmitri Mendeleev, and many, many more.

Each event is detailed in a mixture of historic recreations - including dialog taken directly from the historical writings of the scientists involved - and contemporary scientists commenting on the discoveries. The series shows high production values in the historical recreations really selling the stories brilliantly.

In moments, the series is brilliant and engaging, detailing both the human and scientific side of the stories. We hear of the sexism that required Pierre Curie to insist that Marie receive the credit she deserved, the tragedy in the death of Harry Mosley in Turkey during World War I, and the national security concerns of Glenn Seaborg during the discovery of plutonium in 1941. The totality of the series is almost too informative, however, as watching it for more than maybe half an hour at a time leads to information fatigue.

This series will be highly useful in small doses within the classroom, especially the Dmitri Mendeleev excerpt up above (lengthier than embedded above.)

All three episodes can be found on the series website.

Very Fast Death Factor

That's a brilliant name for a chemical.

It's absolutely marvelous, really.

And I want nothing to do with it...ever...

Most Dangerous Chemical?

This is one of the pretty standard questions that I'm guessing most every chemistry or chemistry teacher gets both used to and tired of answering.

I can say that my most dangerous chemical ever handled was dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) - which doesn't come any where close to being nearly as dangerous as the stuff discussed in this video.

I totally have a new respect for SO₃, a compound that I've written and of which I've drawn the bonding probably a few hundred times over the year. Turns out to be pretty nasty stuff.

After the Rainbow

Stop it, stop it, stop it...

Methanol doesn't exactly burn invisibly, but it does burn with a flame that is light blue enough that it is really hard to see in daylight.

There are lots of ways to demonstrate electron transitions without using methanol which is entirely unsafe to use.

Check out more details of the dangers as well as safe alternatives to methanol in an article on Chemical & Engineering News.

Fire tornado in slow motion 4K - The Slow Mo Guys

We're not yet to chemical reactions in the course of honors chemistry (sadly, because that's the best chapter, honestly), but this is just too cool to hold off on.

I've done a much, much smaller version of this as an in-class demo to show the effects of increased oxygen on combustion...(not my video, by the way, but about the same set-up and scale)...

I'm Atoms (Scientific Cover of Jason Mraz's I'm Yours)

I'm not a fan of Mr A-Z. I'll admit that right off the bat. He just seems too much like a parody of every fraternity guy who learns how to play the guitar just well enough.

With that being said I do actually enjoy "I'm Yours". It's a catchy song and eminently tuneful. It's a nice little earworm.

This version isn't nearly as tuneful or catchy, but it's far more scientifically accurate, and it lets me continue to be impressed with Derek Muller.

An Invisible Fire

I thought about opening this post with images of hydrofluoric acid burns but decided not to do that. If you're desperate to see gruesome images of horrible skin damages, go ahead and click for the search.

I'm happy to say that I don't have any hydrofluoric acid in my storeroom at school. I have sulfuric, nitric, benzoic, hydrochloric, acetic, malonic, and a few other powdered acids. But hydrofluoric acid scares the mess out of me.

See, I first read the article "Invisible Fire" in Discover almost twenty years ago now. The article tells the story of a renter who didn't know to use gloves with hydrofluoric acid. Within an hour, he was in the emergency room hoping not to lose the use of his right hand.

[S]ulfuric is not the acid to be most feared. That distinction belongs to hydrofluoric acid, a compound commonly used in solvents and rust removers, and so powerful that it can be used to etch images on glass. Although the burn it produces initially causes no blisters or changes in skin color, it can leave behind a scarred limb.

Hydrofluoric acid can severely damage the deep tissues of the body yet leave little trace of damage on the skin surface. It can even kill. People have died after a patch of skin no bigger than the sole of the foot was exposed to the substance.

I am totally fine not ever having to worry about one of my students spilling that on their skin.

Things I Won't Work With

Man, the number of times I've been asked a variation on 'what's the most deadly [whatever]' over my twenty years of teaching has to be incalculable.

I, honestly, have absolutely know idea what the worst acid is (hydrofluoric scares the pee out of me, admittedly). I don't know what chemical I have that's the most flammable (maybe methanol). I don't care which chemical is the most deadly in my stockroom.

I do know, however, that anything that scares a professional scientist - especially one with the respected pedigree of Derek Lowe - scares me.

But I do like reading about dangerous stuff, so I'm glad that Dr Lowe's In the Pipeline blog (now on Science magazine's site) has a tag called "Things I Won't Work With."

I particularly recommend his articles on peroxide peroxides ("Colloquially, I would imagine that the compound is known as “Oh, @#&!”, substituted with the most heartfelt word available when you realize that you’ve actually made the stuff") and azidoazide azides ("Never forget, the biggest accomplishment in such work is not blowing out the lab windows.").

Honestly, though, all of the posts are enlightening and hilarious.

What is Fire?

Fire is awesome.

That's a simple enough answer, isn't it?

This video - with its oddly-voiced, slightly-speech-impedimented (or maybe just a British accent), and weird narrator - explains a bit of the history of elements and then goes through the parts that really make up the fire: fuel, gas, light, heat.

In the end, the answer to the video's titular question is this: Fire is actually the visible side effect of what happens when matter undergoes a change of state by means of a chemical reaction. (at 1:15 in the video)

Lethal Seas - NOVA

Climate change is real and will likely be the biggest single issue for the next century - most of which I probably won't be around to see. So many of our other issues - food scarcity, weather-related natural disasters, political instability - will be influenced by the changing climate that it will become tough to tell whether an issue is caused by climate change or by something else, though, because climate change will simply be an accepted and obvious thing when our current (soapbox warning) crop of ignorant, private-industry-bought-and-paid politicians pass from the halls of Congress.

This program - from PBS's Nova - goes through the effects of increased carbon dioxide levels on the oceans and the life therein. Oyster larvae are dissolving in the more acidic ocean water. Coral reefs are dying in the acidified water. Terapods - a first level consumer and base food in the ocean pyramid - aren't growing. Fish are swimming toward predators after growing up in an acidified ocean.

There's a great animation of the calcium carbonate building at 9:40 and of the formation of carbonic acid at 10:05 after that. The rest of the video is great, too.

Look Around You!

The Look Around You programme was produced in 2002 and 2005 by the BBC and makes a brilliant mockery of self-teaching programs from the early to mid-1980s, the sorts of programs that were shown here in the US on PBS stations and required you to send away for a workbook through which you would follow along as the program ran.

The first season had eight ten-minute episodes, and the second season had six thirty-minute episodes. The episodes ranged in topic from water, calcium, maths, brain, and computers. The humor is bone dry but certainly present, and the science is atrociously wrong throughout.

In this premier episode, I particularly recommend skipping to...

• 6:17 - calcium molecule (including triple helix) and the dread Helvetica Scenario
• 8:00 - the refining of calcium from 6 tonnes of teeth per day
• 9:22 - the return of the Helvetica Scenario
• 10:10 - a very weird thing (whose name I can't figure out) on a pillow
• 12:20 - the nonsensical reaction between calcium and sodium chloride to form Thompson's oil
• 13:10 - calcium oxide vapor's paralytic properties
• 13:30 - the effects of helium gas upon calcium - using a ping pong ball to demonstrate that the calcium pile hasn't really disappeared after the helium exposure at 2.5 quorums per second - showing calcic image misplacement
• 16:20 - the differences between calcium and intelligent calcium
• 20:42 - some advice about calcium

It's tough to get full episodes online, but DVDs can be purchased.

Most of the clips on YouTube are much shorter than the one I've embedded above....check them out after the jump...

Fundamentals of Science: Heat versus Temperature

Heat and temperature are not the same thing.

Man, if I could get 100% of my students to understand that distinction, I would feel like my themochemistry units were fairly successful.

Yeah, there are other details here and there, but really, that's a pretty big idea right there. Heat and temperature are not the same thing.

Serious Eats just put out a cookbook under their The Food Lab label, and one of the introductory chapters - specifically the one dealing with this heat/temperature distinction - is available for free online.

They, of course, focus on what that distinction means for cooking...

The article goes through the methods of heat transfer: radiation, convection, and conduction.

They also discuss some differences in cooking vessel material, specific heat and heat capacity, and relevant reference temps (for freezing, boiling, and germ killing). Plus they describe an experiment to show the difference in energy transfer rates between water convection (a pot of cold water heating to boiling) and air convection (a 200 Fahrenheit oven), both of which are tested with your hand and a thermometer.

From the article's finale...

To sum up:

• At a given temperature, denser materials generally contain more energy, and so heavier pans will cook food faster. (Conversely, it takes more energy to raise denser materials to a certain temperature.)
• At a given temperature, materials with a higher specific heat capacity will contain more energy. (Conversely, the higher the specific heat capacity of a material, the more energy it takes to bring it to a certain temperature.)

Rainbow Fire Halloween Jack-O-Lantern

You know where you shouldn't get your science advice? Pintrest...and Facebook...and I'll add in Tumblr, too.

Yes, a pumpkin flaming with green fire would be pretty stunningly cool. The thing would terrify every little kid passing by...which is the goal of every Halloween, of course.

But the pumpkin would require the use of methanol.

Methanol is, as I have said a number of times before, bad...dangerous...deadly...

No good can come from attempting this demonstration, folks. I'm especially worried about the notes at 1:50 that says 'The colored flames last several minutes. If you want to keep it going, you'll need to add more alcohol.' DON'T DO THAT. Even if the flames look like they're out... Even if the pumpkin is still hot, it can catch the methanol fumes on fire as you go to refill your flaming, autumnal ball of death.

You might not die, but you might wish you had.

15 mindblowingly awesome chemistry gifs

Yeah, an article like '15 Mindblowingly Awesome Chemistry GIFs' is going to be rampant clickbait, but when the clickbait is this pretty, it's tough to avoid clicking through.

Like the 'melting metal with magnets'...

That's just cool...

Crash course - chemistry

The Green boys are outstanding.

There's almost nothing else to be said about them - between the novels, the magazine, and the various YouTube channels, they've offered up a lifetime of intelligent entertainment already and show no signs of stopping.

And their Crash Course series (in chemistry and fourteen other topics) are wonderful introductions (if sometimes a little quickly spoken) to the topics, and the graphic style and illustrations help to augment their explanations.

Well worth your time, but I will warn you that they present their information thoroughly and rapidly. Be prepared to watch through a couple of times if you're not already somewhat familiar with the topic about which they are elucidating.

Valentine's Candy Science - Cool Science Experiment

What a waste of perfectly good candy...especially the Not-Quite-Everlasting Gobstoppers.

Steve Spangler has a few hundred videos from his various YouTube channels, all of which are between cute and very cool.

This one is worth looking through if only for the still photo chosen for the above video and the ease with which that image can be recreated.

To Scale: The Solar System

To Scale: The Solar System from Wylie Overstreet on Vimeo.

I am trapped on terra firma, unable to rise above and see the world from a perspective that makes me anything other than an intimately connected resident of the Earth.

I can calculate the amount of emptiness in the solar system and even in the galaxy and universe, but I still can't actually conceive of that level of nothing.

This video helps...a little.

And it's just gorgeous and brilliantly planned out.

My favorite chemistry quote

Any visible lump of matter - even the merest speck - contains more atoms than there are stars in our galaxy. When we lift an apple we feel the total weight of a colossal number of almost weightless atoms. When we hear the ripple of water we are hearing shockwaves as a myriad of almost imperceptible molecules crash down and collide with other molecules. When we dress we pull across our bodies a great web spun from the infinitesimal dots and held together by the forces acting between them. When we see a flame we are seeing the release of an almost negligible droplet of energy, but in such a Niagara that the heat sears and consumes. - PW Atkins, Molecules (page link)

I love that quote. Love it more than any other quote I have ever heard about chemistry.

The simple notion that everything we are...everything we see...everything we can ever touch, see, hear, taste, or feel is made up of dots of nothing so miniscule as to almost not exist singly...that the combined might of these imperceptible bits of nothingness can crush, deafen, poison, blind, or stun you with their beauty and grandeur...is amazing to me.

And I won't ever be able to say it more eloquently than did Atkin in Molecules (Though I am partial to the original volume, the one I have on the shelves in my classroom.

Khan Academy - chemistry

I remember a few years back hearing that Khan Academy was going to revolutionize education.

Then I took a look at some of the videos and realized this wasn't so much a revolution as an evolution. Salman Khan's videos are just those of a guy recording his voice while drawing on an electronic screen. At their core, that's all they are. They're just lectures.

They are, however, well constructed lectures. Khan puts a lot of thought and preparation into his lectures, ensuring that he has his patter down...well...pat and has every graphic he might need immediately at hand.

His website (the link above, Khan Academy) has expanded to include self-check questions that accompany his lectures, so that is a bit of an improvement, admittedly, from a simple lecture that you watch.

And his videos are available whenever you want them, ready to be watched again and again, slowed down or sped up until you have the content down perfectly.

His chemistry videos (all 104 of them), by the way, are admittedly outstanding.

Wet Washcloth in Space | Outrageous Acts of Science

There isn't much that isn't stunning when done in space.

Wring out a wet washrag on Earth, and nobody gives a crap. Wring out a wet washcloth in space, and the sight of the water hugging the outside of the rag but not letting go is stunning.

Check out the original for less explanation but more playing around by Astronaut Chris.

The Elements by Theodore Grey

Turn your passion into a career.

That's just what Theodore Grey did when he took his collection of element samples - entertainingly displayed at PeriodicTableTable.com - and turned it into a mini-empire.

Grey's first project was, I think, Elements, the book (or maybe it was the periodic table then the book). The book is an outstanding and gorgeous tome with a two- (or for a few elements, four-) page spread on black background. There's a main photo - taken in gorgeous focus and presented brilliantly - along with element data and a one-page essay about the element along with more photos of uses of the element.

The large photos are then repurposed into a periodic table that is available in a dozen different formats, one of which I have hanging in my classroom.

Then came the app for iPads clocking in at $13.99 but worth every penny because of the gorgeous photography, especially if you spring for the extra couple of bucks to get the 3d glasses.

Now there are quilts, a second book (Molecules - which I own but admittedly haven't read), two books of experiments, a column in Popular Science.

Theo has done just fine for himself.

Invisible Racecar Fire?

Methanol is terrifying.

In the above video, we see - or rather don't see - fire engulf Rick Mears and his mechanic, but it's a fire that nobody can see. Methanol and its invisible fire strikes again.

Don't use methanol.

Methanol fire and explosion-awesome.flv

I've mentioned methanol as being horrifically flammable, terribly dangerous, and not to be used in a classroom (or at home either, in case you had any ideas there).

Check out this video showing infrared video of a fire on a methanol tanker...and the explosion that eventually results.

Children among 13 injured from Reno Science Museum explosion

There isn't anything funny to say about the methanol explosion from above.

Methanol is a fairly small, organic molecule with one carbon, three hydrogens, and a hydoxyl group (CH₃OH.) Because of its small size, methanol has weak intermolecular forces and is highly volatile meaning any liquid supply evaporates very quickly and easily. That combines with its high reactivity with oxygen makes for a marvelously flammable - hence incredibly dangerous - compound.

And it burns almost totally clearly in daylight - as you can see in the below video. This combination - highly flammable, nearly invisible fire - makes it a natural choice for demonstrations involving chemicals that change the color of this 'invisible' fire, flame tests with compounds like boric acid, lithium chloride, potassium chloride, sodium nitrate, etc.

It also makes it a horrible choice for those demonstrations because any open flame hits the methanol vapors which then explode terrifically.

I'll state this. Just about anytime you hear about a lab accident - in a high school or college chemistry class - I'll give you ten to one odds that it's a methanol explosion. Yes, there are other explosive chemicals, but methanol is the common, bad one.

I don't use methanol with fire at all. Nope...not with any open flame in the room in the least.

Elements - experiments in character design

I'm not sure as to the utility of the individual element character cards over at Elements - Experiments in Character Design, but I like a lot of the designs. Here are a few of my favorites, and I warn you that after element 95, they become increasingly boring.

Each card contains a single fact about that element - what it's used for, what it's named after, where it was discovered - not useful but at least trivially entertaining.

Pictures from an organic chemistry laboratory

I know so very, very little organic chemistry. Yes, I took a year of organic chemistry at Wabash, but organic and I weren't exactly close friends.

So, in reading through the Pictures from an Organic Chemistry Lab tumblrhttp://labphoto.tumblr.com/, I found a heck of a lot of stuff that was over my head.

But I understood enough to get the idea of what the gorgeous photos were describing.

Atomic Bonding Song

Are those just big light covers from Pier One or something that they're wearing?

If so, they're fairly well turned into atom costumes.

Honestly, if my students understood everything that these two folks were singing about by the end of our bonding chapters, I would be pretty happy.

I don't get, though, how at 4:10 chlorine lets go of an electron.

Gaviscon Worms - Cool Science Experiment

I've never tried the gummi worm procedure that Steve shows off at the beginning, but I really want to. Wonder if sodium alginate is available in a glowy solution like he uses...probably from his website.

The formation of the 'worms' is curious. In looking Gaviscon up at Wikipedia, here's what I found...

The formulation of Gaviscon varies by manufacturer. The three active ingredients in Reckitt Benckiser's version are sodium alginate, a bicarbonate (either sodium or potassium in variants) and an antacid (calcium carbonate). The GlaxoSmithKline variant lists only antacids as its active ingredients (aluminum hydroxide and either magnesium carbonate or magnesium trisilicate). Alginic acid and sodium bicarbonate are listed as inactive ingredients. The combination of alginic acid and a bicarbonate forms a layer on the contents of the stomach, which prevents stomach acid from refluxing up into the esophagus. If reflux does occur the protective barrier is the first to contact the esophageal mucosa, instead of gastric contents.

What will science think of next?

Your periodic table is probably WRONG

The periodic table is the awesomeist tool in all of chemistry.

It's based on the periodic law, the single most important discovery in the history of chemistry (other than maybe the law of conservation of mass).

And it's even cooler that the periodic table is constantly in flux.

This one's working in the smaller margins of the organization, admittedly, but that's still pretty important stuff in terms of the pattern.

"What we're interested in is how nature is like not how easy it is to draw it."

QuizUp

QuizUp is an app that allows you to play seven-question, multiple choice trivia games against real (and sometimes, admittedly computer-generated) opponents in the subjects of your choosing.

The image above is from the web version, but the smart phone version doesn't look all that different.

I'll offer up three community points for each of the following achievements...

• levels 10 or 20 in chemistry
• levels 10 or 20 in periodic table
• levels 10 or 20 in name the elements
• levels 10 or 20 in high school chemistry

The name the element category is a really nice way to learn the elements. You will have to know this, though.

Rainbow Colored Flame(thrower) Science Experiment!

If ever you hear about a high school chemistry lab burning down, it's by way of methanol.

Seriously, pretty much every lab experiment that has a big, fiery death (or injuries) came from methanol. It's a lot of dangerous than this video makes it out to be - particularly because it's highly volatile and has a low flash point. The vapors are nasty and travel way further than you would think.

Of course, methanol does produce way better results in flame tests than would ethanol's yellow flame.

And it burns almost invisibly which can be really, really bad.

Be careful out there, folks, even if you're just blowing the methanol up all over your backyard.

SMBC - Superman freezes the Gulf

There was an episode of Batman: the Animated Series in which the villains dump two barrels of stuff into a lake. The barrels rupture (as they are designed to do), and the lake freezes solidly...instantly... the waves are frozen, even.

All I could think when I was in college and rewatched that episode was that the heat of reaction of those chemicals must be hugely endothermic. That's the level of science dorky that I was...clearly was...not is...was.

And then, along comes Zach Weinersmith with his geeky Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal which is a webcome largely devoid of math but with definite educational overtones.

Check out, for example this comic dealing with the heat of vaporization of water.

And laugh all the way to popularity.

Candy Corn in Space

I will watch just about any video labeled, "in space."

I would watch blobs of water floating in space, shoes drifting away from astronauts, candy corn with a few drops of water.

This video rocks explaining hydrophobic, hydrophillic, surfactants, soap, and mycells.

And they do it all "in space."

Fire and Ice: a heat of fusion demonstration

Heat of fusion isn't a terrifically exciting concept to demonstrate. Usually it involves melting or freezing of water. Oooh....ahhhhh....zzzzz

But the use of the heat of fusion (or latent heat of fusion, maybe) to start a fire is pretty outstanding.

To explain the concepts...

• paraffin absorbs energy from the blowtorch or Bunsen burner 
• paraffin melts and starts to boil, releasing paraffin vapors (highly flammable, paraffin vapors)
• the ice water beaker is lifted to quickly cool and solidify the paraffin wax
• the paraffin wax had absorbed energy in the process of melting (heat of fusion)
• that energy is released when it solidifies again (reverse of heat of fusion)
• that released energy is enough to set the paraffin vapors on fire

How frickin' cool is that?

And messy, too...how frickin' messy is that?

Check out another version of the same demonstration...

The Genius of Mendeleev's Periodic Table - Lou Serico

The single greatest discovery in chemistry is that of the periodic law.

Before the discovery of the periodic lab (and subsequent creation of the periodic table), chemistry was a collection of random, unorganized facts about the stuff around us.

Sure, there were some elements that reacted sort of similarly, but a few connections doesn't make a system of knowledge.

Then, along came Dmitri Mendellev and his dream.

Check out the video if you don't understand how awesome the periodic table is and how phenomenal its creation was.

Eight Beautiful Chemical Reactions

Pretty simple and direct title, eh?

I've done some of those reactions (not the dancing fluorescent droplets - is that really a reaction - or the stuff with the flower - fascinating), but I've certainly never photographed or filmed them nearly that well. Man...

Check out more work from the same folks at Beautiful Reactions.

Symphony of Science

Admittedly, this one might not be for everybody out there.

It's a series of autotuned 'songs' created from music and quotes from famous and inspirational scientists. It's from a musician (?) called Symphony of Science, and the songs are available for download for a name your price model.

Personally, I think the best tune is the first one embedded up there.

The Most Astounding Fact

I have nothing to add that isn't better said by NdGT in this video.

The fact that every atom in my body - perhaps save for a few hydrogen atoms - was born in a distant star and that anything heavier than iron was born when a star went superova is just astounding.

As NdGT's scientific predecessor said, "we are made of star stuff."

Just how small is an atom? - Jonathan Bergmann

You know how tiny an atom is?

No, you don't. It's smaller than that.

No matter how small you think an atom is, it's a million billion times smaller than that.

And the nucleus is way smaller than that.

How small? Check out this video to find out.

Create Your Own Biggest Bang

How cool is that?

This BBC video is like a choose-your-own-adventure video for chemical reactions. They have eight chemicals to mix...

• hydrogen
• sodium
• sulfure
• chlorine
• oxygen
• iodine
• aluminum
• nitrogen

...and filmed all of the possible combinations (lemme do the math 7+6+5+4+3+2+1...carry the four...integrate the divisor...28 possibilities) for YouTube videos.

And you can explore them all...

How to reveal subatomic particles at home | NOVA

Holy crap that's awesome.

Dry ice is a little tough to scrounge up in those chunks. Meijer and Graeters both sell dry ice. I know Meijer sells theirs in blocks about six or eight inches on a side and maybe two inches thick. I'm not sure in what shape Graeters sells theirs.

I also know that - in Cincinnati - Continental Carbonics sells pellets with (from the last time I was there in maybe 2012 or 2013) a ten pound minimum.

The name of the blog

In case you were curious as to where the title of the blog comes from, check the above video at 0:19.

Semisonic also put out an interesting poster of glassware along with that album.

The Rio Celeste - not a reaction

Atlas Obscura says it ever so simply and vaguely...

The river gets its coloration from a mixture of sulfur and calcium carbonate which are seeded into the water from the nearby volcano.

So does Neatorama...

large quantities of sulfur and calcium carbonate, which gives the river a beautiful blue tint

...and The Soul is Bone...

a vivid blue colour, the result of the chemical reaction( the result of sulphur and calcium carbonate mixing) generated by a mixture of minerals present in the volcanic massif

Of course, that chemical reaction isn't very well explained there, so I went a looking for some more detail. Here's what I found on Wikipedia...

The source of the river's distinctive turquoise color is not a due to a chemical species but to a physical phenomenon known as Mie scattering.^[3] Celeste River is fed by two colorless rivers, the Buenavista River and Sour Creek. Buenavista River carries a large concentration of aluminosilicate particles with a small diameter. Sour Creek, as its name implies, has a high acidity due to volcanic activity. When these two streams mix to form Celeste River, the drop in pH causes the aluminosilicate particles to aggregate and enlarge to a diameter of about 566 nm. These suspended particles produce Mie scattering which gives the river a strong turquoise color.

I clicked through citation #3 and found an article on PLOS One, the Public Library of Science, that has a heck of a lot more math and SEM images than I wanted to read through.

No matter what those data said, it's still a good reminder that it's a good choice to dig a little deeper when the explanation seems a bit too simple.

Otherwise, you may find yourself in murky waters.

Pretty, but murky waters...

Carbon Engineering - industrial-scale capture of CO2 from ambient air

I'm really, really curious to know the specific chemistry of the carbon dioxide sequestration at 2:55. I guess it could be a solution of calcium oxide (that would react with the carbon dioxide to make calcium carbonate, though I don't think calcium oxide is highly soluble), I guess.

Yes, we need to get the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, but there has to be a lot of energy input to get the solution made, the metals refined, the fans churning, and the polymer liner made. We're going to have to take a whole lot of carbon dioixde out of the atmosphere to balance all that out.

Fake Science

Fake Science - the name says it all right there, doesn't it? Fake science.

As in not real science...like science that is funny and chucklesome but not true at all.

See, there is no wool in sheep blood, even if the blood gets transmitted to humans via mosquitos.

And the number of tree rings doesn't really line up with the how many trees the tree slept with...

...nothing is really better than ice cream...

...thought I will say that chemists do need a bunch of atoms. That's not hype!

WebElements

A chemist - or a chemistry student - needs a good periodic table.

In fact, it's my belief that a good chemistry teacher, in fact, needs a whole bunch of periodic tables.

My favorite site for periodic table data is WebElements from the University of Sheffield out of the UK. Every element has a number of pages of data - elemental, radioisotope, historical, and much more data on every one.

Plus they have a bunch of cool stuff for sale on their store (I already have the Chinese periodic table but would love the periodic table magnets, the orbital poster, a door poster of periodic tables, 

Compound Interest

I have a great appreciation for good design, particularly for good design with a purpose. Compound Interest is such a site, full of chemistry infographics with a pretty design sense, all produced by a British chemistry teacher (or instructor or lecturer or dustbin - whatever the British call chemistry teachers over there).

At the top of this post, we get a timeline of the element discoveries with flags so you can see where the element were discovered.

There's also this post of colours (again, British natch) that are visible during metal ion flame tests...

...and this one of the major chemicals found in herbs and spices...

...and a hundred other infographics. Supposedly there's going to be a book coming in the fall, but it hasn't gotten to the pre-order stage just yet.

Reactions: everyday chemistry

The American Chemical Society has a YouTube channel of videos focusing on the chemistry of everyday topics, like how you could ever find an atom...or a whole bunch of chemistry jokes



How blue jeans get blue...



...how salt melts ice...

Veritasium

Dr Derek Muller is Veritasium, a brilliant and quasi-Australian YouTube channel. On Veritasium Muller does a whole lot of on-the-street science, questioning people who wander by and teaching them some science along the way.

He also gets around the world and makes videos along the way, including at the Salton Sea in California, a lake that exists at the moment but hasn't always...



...a video from Pripyat, the city outside Chernobyl in Russia...



...or making a levitating barbeque...

Smarter Every Day

There are very few videos that I can watch as joyously - whether it's the thousandth or first time through - as that video above about Prince Rupert's Drops. The exhilaration of watching the glass explode in slow motion - and then of watching it reassemble itself, too, always gets me.

That's one of the many outstanding videos that Destin of Smarter Every Day has put together. He's a rocket scientist in the southern US (Atlanta, I think) who records these videos to make a little extra money for his kids' college funds.

His job apparently gives him a decent bunch of opportunities to travel, so some of his videos are from pretty far-flung locales, but some of them are right in his metaphorical backyard with his kids (to see why helium balloons don't do what you would expect when you hit the gas on the minivan)...



Or on his home office desk (looking at the creation of color depending only on structure of the scales)...



...or at a tattoo parlor.



He has more than a hundred outstanding videos on his channel.

Goggle up, because science is gonna happen.