How Do Color Changing Oreos Work (Spider-Man & Captain America)

I'm a sucker for novelty flavors - particularly novelty flavors of Oreos.

So I bought the Doctor Doom, color-changing Oreos and didn't notice any color change happening.

Admittedly, I wasn't dunking the cookies in milk. I was just eating them and noticed maybe a slight greenness to my teeth and tongue, but the green was dominated by the standard brown of Oreo crumbs and the dark brown, 'toasted marshmallow' cream.

So I went hunting and found that the color change is accomplished by encapsulated dye within water-soluble capsules. When the capsules come into contact with water (or milk which is, of course, water-based), the capsules release their dye.

Thankfully the cream is primarily oil-based, so the capsule don't dissolve until they're in milk...or water...or saliva.

Why our sewers are plagued by fatbergs

Don't pour grease and oil down the drain...pretty much ever.

See, sewage is washed down the pipes by the way of water. 

Water takes along with it things that are soluble in water...like salt...food coloring...the eventual product of goldfish 'sent back to the sea'...

...but not things that are NOT soluble in water...like oil...grease...

But it's even worse (as Hank Green tells us in the above video) because of the hydrogen sulfide created by bacteria in human waste. The hydrogen sulfide eventually turns to sulfuric acid which reacts with lime in concrete (which most of our sewers are made of) which eventually crumbles the concrete and releases calcium sulfate. The calcium sulfate then reacts with fatty acids (oils, grease) and turns them into soaps (a la Fight Club).

And whatever non-waste stuff you're flushing down the toilet ('flushable' wipes, tampons, whatever) is just making that stuff stick to the walls even worse.

Sewage stuff is gross, man...gross.

So, don't pour oil and fat down the drain.

Don't flush anything but poop, pee, and toilet paper.

You're part of the precipitate.

See, it's funny because the word solution here means a mixture of a solute (the blue, solid material) and a solvent (the clear or white liquid, assumedly and frequently water). Solution can also mean a resolution to some problem.

See, so making a solution was the solution.

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.