Does Anything Radioactive Actually Glow Bright Green?

I was cleaning up my bookmarks this summer and found that I have a whole bunch of backed up videos and articles for my two blogs.

My first step was to post ahead one video or article per week until the end of the calendar year 2024. Now that I've gone ahead and done that and still have a ridiculous number of saved bookmarks.

The next step was to ready a second post per week (Fridays this time to balance the already-ready Mondays), and this is the first of those Friday posts.

There won't be any particularly difference focus of the Friday posts, but you'll just get twice the content from me.

This video explores why most people think that radioactive materials give off a green glow (they don't) through the history of radioactivity's discovery including the radium girls' sad story.

Thankfully the video closes by pointing out that there is actual Cherenkov radiation that causes a light blue glow from radioactive materials in water.

Why American Cheese Makes the Best (and Easiest) Mac and Cheese | What's Eating Dan?

American cheese is sort of cheese. 

Well, it's cheese with some sodium citrate added to it, anyway, stabilizing the emulsion of fat and water that normally breaks when any aged cheese is heated and melted.

And it's tasty and heck, so shut up.

(I'm tempted to buy that sweatshirt that Dan's wearing - but more likely in maroon than in yellow.)

Making American cheese to debunk a conspiracy

Ah, NileRed eating and 'cooking' in lab again...

American cheese cannot legally be called cheese. Cheese is legally defined as...

The fresh or matured product obtained by draining after coagulation of milk, cream, skimmed, or partly skimmed milk or a combination of some or all of these products and including any cheese that conforms to the requirements of the Food and Drug Administration for cheeses and related cheese products

...and American cheese contains ingredients added to that to encourage emulsification of the fat and water so that the cheese won't break when it melts, meaning the fat and the water won't separate and create the oily puddles that you get from melting cheese.

So American cheese is technically a processed cheese product.

...which NileRed explains and demonstrates in today's video.

Iron? Like iron?

Maybe maybe maybe
byu/Make-this-popular inmaybemaybemaybe

Yes, like iron.

I'm reminded of a question that one of my former students asked me quite a few years ago. We were two thirds of the way through the year of honors chemistry, and she said that she had been reading the ingredients on her toothpaste the day before and found sodium fluoride. She asked if that was the same sodium and the same fluorine that we'd been talking about all year.

"Yes," I said, "it's the same elements."

She followed up, "so, are there other things in my house that are made of elements?"

"Yeah," I answered, "everything in your house - and the house itself - is made of elements."

"Like, the same elements on the periodic table?"

Clearly, Sarah (or maybe it was Sara - it's been a while since this conversation) was one of the lucky ten thousand that day.

I've done the iron demonstration below in class before - though I used a blender to get even more iron particles out of the cereal by chopping it finer.

The video at the top, of course, also shows one of the lucky ten thousand today.

Hell...and a miscommunication...

Source - Cyanide & Happiness

See, it's funny because Joe doesn't seem to understand that warm gases expand, lowering their density and causing them to rise to higher levels. So I guess the first - assumedly top level from the diagram that the devil points at - would be the hottest level just like how the upper stories of a building are usually warmer than the lower stories.

Then again, the circles of hell as described by Dante Alighieri in his Inferno suggest that the lower levels are for the greater sinners where greater punishment is meted out, and that image seems to have permeated the popular consciousness, so Joe's thinking seems to be reasonable.

Maybe this is another example of two people both being correct but simply not communicating with each other.

Just talk it out, Devil and Joe.

Then again, if we assume that hell is somewhere underground - maybe under Turkmenistan, maybe somewhere else - then the geothermal gradient should likely be considered.

The Real Story of Oppenheimer

In case there's anybody out there who hasn't seen Oppenheimer at this point, I strongly recommend it.

Critics have been raving about it. It was half of a cultural event last summer. It's not 100% accurate - though it is largely factual. It isn't without criticism, but it's a great film.

With all that being said, there's so much more to the story of Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. Do yourself a favor and watch the above video from the Veritasium YouTube channel.

And, if you want to know more, move onward to Fallout by Jim Ottaviani and American Prometheus by Bird and Sherwin.

Oppenheimer was a fascinating, brilliant man whose effect on our world is almost immeasurable, and he is a compelling source for a movie, a graphic novel, or a biography.

Great use of spaces on a building

 

Source - Reddit

I would 100% study in that building. 

It took me a while, but I was able to find that it's at UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) in Mexico City. Here's a Google Map link.

And I appreciate that it's up to date.

No idea what they'll do when the eighth period has to be populated, though.