Mentos & coke - in oil?

I'm skeptical as to the veracity of this video short.

The video purports to show the mentos and (diet) coke experiment but performed underneath a layer of oil.

I feel like that's far less reaction that I would expect to see from the reaction - even under a vegetable oil 'cap' layer.

So I went hunting and found a few more videos.

This one fits more with what I would expect to see - at least it does at about 0:50. The freshly opened 2L of Coke has Mentos dropped straight into it moments before the 2L is lowered into the oil. You can see a similarly - if slightly less violent - reaction at 2:50 when multiple Mentos are dropped into a full layer of Coke at the bottom of the aquarium. Both are more vigorous than the video up top.

What exactly is the goop inside a lava lamp?

Unless the lamp has broken, the 'lava' is inside the glass, so shouldn't they be 'magma' lamps?

Hah, see, that's funny.

And some lava lamps have an important use in internet security, but what's inside them?

I'll say that I appreciate the presenter's sense of humor. YRMV

Clearly...

To the seriousness, the recipe is, as the presenter admits, rather finicky. Add a little of this, add a little of that, try adding a little more of a third thing. Repeat until it works. 

For a classroom activity, I would want a much more precise so my students could get a higher rate of success. I'm guessing that they might not be as persistent as the presenter. We've talked about the students needing a bit more grit and perseverance, but I'll admit that I would likely get frustrated with trying the method that the presenter presents.

I am curious about the IMFs in the braklean (still available as tetrachloroethylene (with CO₂ propellant, by the way) and how well it mixes into the paraffin. 

Curious...might be a fun summer project, but I'm happy to just buy a lava lamp.

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.