Science: A Closer Look at Gluten

That final image, the balloon of bread gluten is so gross.

I know a heck of a lot more about gluten than I ever knew before, though. Very cool...

Oh, and all that stuff about gluten in This is the End is wrong. I would link to the scene, but it's full of school-inappropriate language.

Acid-base indicator charts

Thought I'd take a moment and collect some of the best acid-base indicator color charts

This one, from Flinn Scientific, is a poster that they sell. It suggests that the indicators have very distinct color changes rather than fading one color into the other - something that isn't quite perfectly true.

chemed 2013 diy chemistry

There is just so much in this Prezi. Cool chemistry abounds.

Heck, I'm willing to set aside my utter and total distaste for Prezis. It's that cool.

Let's start with the key chains. Cutting of the top off of the 2L bottles seems easy enough. Then there's heating and reshaping the bottle tops with - I assume - boiling water and pliers.It seems a lot like the toothbrush bracelet project over on the MatSciWit blog. Could be fun to play around with.

Next up is the amateur inflation of preforms. I've done that using a process developed by Summit Country Day's Ed Escudaro. It takes a 2L cap fitted with a bicycle tire valve stem, a tire pump, and a source of heat. Ed's method uses an MRE heater wrapped around the preform and held in place with rubber bands.

Carving a can s pretty straight forward. I think they're using acid to get rid of the exposed aluminum. That's not too far removed from something we do in the material science course.

The hydrophobic toys are really cool. That looks like something we could certainly make in the classroom. The use of soot as a hydrophobic coating is fascinating, and I love the idea of using it to guide the water drop along.

The PET bottle molecules, though, is the project that I desperately want to try. Those huge molecular models look outstanding, and I'm thinking that the project doesn't look all that difficult to make. Yes, getting the angles correct is going to be a little tough as is getting my hands on a pop rivet tool, but I'm guessing both of those are achievable hurdles.

I just wish each project came with a little more explanation of what's going on. There is an associated pdf, but not nearly everything is on there, and I can find a video of him performing the bottle top/keychain experiment.

SuperHydroPhobic NanoTechnology Coating Chemical Manufacturer by Printing Paris Barcelona

The first minute or so of the above video isn't anything special. We get views of magic sand being played with under water, chocolate syrup rolling off of a pristine shoe, a cell phone being lowered under water, and a really useless kleenex.

After that, though, there's a nice animation of industrial coating of a cellphone with superhydrophobic material using a plasma at low pressures. Well worth a watch.

Hydrophobic water?

Sure, because I have a whole bunch of aerogel just lying around doing nothing. I'm just going to smear it around on paper so I can see what colored water will do.

Honestly, though, I'm curious whether HDPE powder will have similar effects. The water drops rolling next to each other in the videos down below seem to look about the same. Check out the various videos from InnovativeMaterials.

The sight of water drops nearly invisibly coated so that they won't do what water droplets do - glom together and form a single, larger, uber-drop Katamari-style - is a little creepy, though.