Periodic table webcomics

I have seen all of these. Feel free to send me any more that aren't there.

Blame Zach Weiner(smith)

Today's comic comes to you from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal's very own Zach Weiner(smith). Blame him if you need to.

In all honesty, though, there are lots of examples of 'rocks' that would get spontaneously warmer than the surroundings via chemical reactions. Yeah, if there's not a chemical reaction involved (or radioactive decay, I guess,) then sure the 'Jesus' character is violating one of the major principles of thermodynamics.

The science behind the mesmerizing color-changing tea

Behold: The *magic,* color-changing tea you absolutely need to try. Read about it in our profile link.

A video posted by bonappetitmag (@bonappetitmag) on Jan 31, 2016 at 8:50am PST

There's magic in them thar tea leaves.

Actually, there's probably anthocyanin.

The video up there comes from a Bon Appetit post about butterfly pea flower tea and the cocktails made from it. The article doesn't go into the science because it's a cooking mag after all.

The science, however, is pretty frickin' fascinating. Anthocyanins can hit a half dozen different colors - red, yellow, green, blue, pink, purple - depending on the pH of the solution.

Ekspolsiv trappevask (explosive stair)

Ikke gjør dette hjemme

With a name like that - loosely translated as "Don't Try This At Home" or "Never Do This At Home" - a show is allowed to take a few liberties.

In this clip, the hosts have found a creative way to clean the stairwell quickly. They combine hydrogen peroxide (assumedly 30%) with potassium iodide (a catalyst promoting the quick decomposition into water and oxygen gas) in a soapy solution. To that they add a bit of (as seen in the original video - skip to about 24:25) n-heptane (though the translated captions call it 'gasoline') making for an explosive, highly theoretical dry finish to the 'clean-up.'

I'm thinking that the process goes about as well as they had expected it to.

For bonuses, I'll embed a video of the same folks showing how quickly an improperly-handled grease fire can get out of hand.

Liquid Ping Pong in Space

Worst ping pong game...ever...

Then again, it's in space, so that makes it pretty much the best ping pong game ever.

There's a whole bunch of science in there, what with water being held together with hydrogen bonds, dipole dipole forces, and London dispersion forces that are surprisingly strong considering the size of the molecules.

Plus there's a whole bunch of science in there because they managed to get the water into space.

Dust explosions

This is demonstration that I've done in class dozens of times. It's great because it's hugely impressive - fireballs and all that - but actually involves pretty low risk if you know what you're doing.

The lycopodium powder is flammable, but in piles it's very tough to catch on fire. There's just not enough oxygen to get to each of the tiny grains of powder.

When the same powder, however, is suspended in the air, the oxygen can very quickly get to each of the grains, resulting in an instant and thorough reaction.

Good stuff - and highly relevant when you see stuff like the video at the bottom, of a grain elevator explosion in Evendale, OH, about three miles from my school.