Color magic barbie

It's weird how frequently interesting chemistry can be found when you're open to finding it in the wild. Take, for example, this post from Katydid, a former student of mine. The color-changing nature immediately made me think of acid-base indicators, and the note toward the end of the ad copy, "make new solutions with vinegar or baking soda" pretty well locked down my assumptions.

I'm not sure what non-toxic, color-safe indicators are being used (pink to yellow, blue to pink, other color combos), but I'm feeling safe with my indicator assumption.

Litvinenko poisoning: polonium explained

It's not necessarily a happy thing that we often use interesting deaths as scientific opportunities to learn about the human body, but it's true.

Alexander Litvinenko's death due to polonium-210 taught scientists about death due to alpha radiation poisoning. Luckily, Litvinenko, a former agent for the Russian and Soviet spy agencies, was dosed - twice, it seems - with polonium-210. After the second dosing, Litvinenko died three weeks to the day after his ingestion of the polonium-210 on November 1, 2006.

The science of how we found out it was polonium-210 and of what happened to Litvinenko are fascination.

Melting Styrofoam with Acetone

What did that smiley face ever do to deserve that kind of treatment?

From about.com

Styrofoam is made up of polystyrene foam. When the polystyrene dissolves in the acetone, the air in the foam is released, causing it to look like you're dissolving this massive quantity of material into a small volume of liquid. You can see a less-dramatic version of the same effect by dissolving other polystyrene items in acetone.

...and a similar explanation but with nicer molecular structures drawn out.

So, if you missed it, here's the deal. Polystyrene foam is a solid with a while bunch of air surrounded by 'bubbles' of polystyrene. Think of a pile of soap bubbles.

The acetone breaks each of those bubbles as the polystyrene dissolves into the liquid. Effectively, the acetone 'pops' those bubbles. The gas inside - mostly air - goes away (you can see bubbles at the surface of the acetone in the above video. The polystyrene is still there - just like the bubble solution is there even after the bubbles pop. It's just the air inside the polystyrene bubbles (like soap bubbles when they pop) that is gone.

Still, though, it looks like magic.

Astronomy Picture of the Day - Where your elements come from

I've posted about "The Most Astounding Fact" before, and this comes back to that.

Everything - and I mean everything - was made in a star somewhere. Every atom in you. Every atom in your cheeseburger. Every atom in the tofu that makes up your fake cheeseburger.

We are stardust. We are golden.

Source - NASA