Blockbuster

 

Source - Three Panel Soul

See, it's funny because there was a movie called The Emoji Movie that was roundly and thoroughly panned by critics and still ended up being profitable. 

So, if studios can build a movie around 'something kind of abstract and pretend it's a neoliberal bureaucracy,' and make money from it, it makes as much sense to make a Molecules movie as it does an Emoji Movie. 

I am bothered, however, at the monatomic molecules, a clear oxymoron.

I do appreciate that Ian and Matt included the, 'one atom wants to get radical' joke...because radicals are atoms or molecules with an unpaired electron, making them highly reactive. The joke is nerdly funny.

Phoenician Purple: the trade of dye helped forge an empire

Source - wikipedia.com article

Much of the history of trade is interrelated with the history of science. When someone somewhere develops a technology that isn't yet widely known, that someone somewhere has an economic advantage.

If, as today's article discusses, the Phonecians developed a method of producing a deep, long-lasting purple fabric dye that no other culture could match, they could become wealthy from producing that dye. 

Admittedly, if that fabric required - again, as the article states - the mucus from 12,000 tiny snails to produce enough dye to color the trim on a single garment, entire industries would develop around the harvesting of those snails, the labor needed to harvest that many snails, and the trade to send this dyed material around the world.

Interestingly, the exact dye used - also known as Tyrian purple - has never been synthesized commercially and efficiently even in modern times.

Flexplay: The Disposable DVD that Failed (Thankfully)

I only tried Flexplay once. 

In the era of Flexplay being sold at Staples, I found them on a drastic discount and bought a few of them, experimenting with storing them opened and unopened at various temperatures. I don't remember what my far-from-scientific experimental results were because it's been probably fifteen years.

I do remember the disc eventually turning almost totally black, however, and the DVD not working after some amount of time no matter how cool I stored it (thinking the colder temperature would slow the kinetics of whatever reactions caused the DVD to become unplayable) or how sealed (in Ziploc bags, admittedly far from airtight).

As far as what that Flexplay chemistry is, it's pretty much what I assumed it was - an oxidation reaction that adjusts the color via pH change. The Wikipedia article linked above does explain that the reaction is technically reversable - as we know most reactions technically are, but the process doesn't look like a great, cheap option.

The chemistry of pyrotechnics (loooong)

Today you get four long videos about fireworks. The above is an episode of Nova from PBS on the history and chemistry of fireworks. I fully assume that I'll have to refind it eventually because Nova tends to be pretty good about deleting their episodes from YouTube when they're posted whole like this.

SPOILER: Spider-man's bad science

Update: Original video disappeared. I replaced it as of 1/9/22...and again 1/16/22.

Today's video - assuming it's still on YouTube when you get around to seeing this post - has a significant spoiler for Spider-Man: No Way Home, so I'm going to put the full post and video after the jump.