Powdered Sugar Birthday Cake Bursts Into Flames

Powdered sugar pretty innocuous.

In fact, a pile of powdered sugar is barely flammable at all. Those candles there could probably be upturned into the surface of the cake with almost no risk of danger to anybody around.

Then comes the dispersal.

See, mom didn't think about the fact that taking that same powdered sugar and dispersing it - increasing its surface area, mixing it far more thoroughly with the oxygen in the air - would turn an non-combustable material into a potential fireball.

It's kind of like the lycopodium powder fireball.

"Elements" - Radiolab

Radiolab is an NPR show with an odd pacing, and that's saying something when I - a confirmed fan of This American Life - say that it's got an odd pacing.

Each week they tell three or so stories with a unifying theme. In this episode, the theme is the elements. There's a series of element poems, a story about lithium and its effect on the brain, a quick interview with Derek Mueller about the origin of the elements (along the line of the most astounding fact), an interesting use of carbon, and the search for subatomic particles.

The ties aren't as perfectly scientific, but they're exploring some interesting aspects of compounds, so I'll recommend it.

There's also the shorter Radiolab excerpt about Mendeleev's periodic table of the elements and Oliver Sacks's collection.

Metallium - Element Coin Series

I do not need to start collecting something else.

Thought the idea of a chemistry teacher collecting coins made of the various elements is pretty on the nose.

About sixty elements are readily - if not necessarily cheaply - available.

Color Changing Hair

There's nothing magic there in the 'color changing' hair.

It's effectively the same effect that we see in most paint stores. In the area where they have their various paint strips, letting you explore the vast rainbow of color options, there is usually a pair of dimmer sliders. One slider controls a fluorescent light, and the other controls a 'natural' light source.

For most colors, the differences in appearance between the two lights is fairly minimal. Most fluorescent lights - particularly older, long tube ballasts - produce a limited spectrum of colors whereas more 'natural' light sources (most incandescent lights and newer, better LED lights) produce a more even spectrum providing each color of light fairly evenly.

Some colors - particularly those in the blue ranges -render very differently in the two different light sources. That's why paint stores provide both light sources, so you can see what the paint will look like in an office with fluorescent lights or outside under the sunlight. For most colors, the difference is minimal, but some show significant differences.

Apparently the dye that this woman has used to color her hair is such a combination of colors.

This video shows a decent comparison of the spectra, but I've struggled to find anything showing a paint under the different qualities of light.

The most dangerous foods in the world

There certainly are some foods that you really should steer clear of.

Admittedly, I've only tried two of the 'magic' twenty-one up there: hot dogs and red kidney beans.

I've slowly been building up an immunity to both of those, and I've been wise enough to steer clear of fugu.

Fun with burning methane on a lake First Experiment

I cannot in any good conscience endorse what this dude is doing.

First off, it looks like he's pretty close to losing his eyebrows in a couple of those 'first experiments.' Secondly, the ice can't be all that thick if he's able to crack through it with the point of his knife.

Then again, I've never been in a climate where the lakes freeze that thoroughly or where those frozen lakes have bacteria pooping out methane after dining on the organic matter under the ice.

Maybe the guy knows just how thick the ice needs to be and is.

Maybe he knows he's quick enough to get out of the way of a particularly large and highly pressurized gas bubble.

Maybe...

Or maybe we'll get a different video posted when his camera gets fished out of his watery, icy grave.



If you are interested in going methane hunting, check out this ebook first.

source - Emmanuel Coupe