When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe

I am consistently amazed that we have had so many nuclear / radioactive material accidents in such a little time since we discovered how to harness it in the mid 20th century.

There are a bunch of nuclear weapons that we've lost, aka broken arrows, some of which we've never found...

...close calls where we've almost set off nuclear weapons...

...military accidents that lead to near criticality or releases of radioactive material...

...civilian accidents that released radioactive material...

...and one solo civilian who nearly joined the nuclear fraternity himself...

That doesn't even include the time John Lithgow almost killed us all by letting a high school kid build a nuclear bomb for his science project.

The above video details how an accidental replacement of one letter in somebody's hand-written notes - 
"use inorganic absorbent" changed into "use an organic absorbent" - lead to a release of radioactive material from a storage facility in New Mexico.

I'm starting to think that nuclear power and weapons might not be worth the risk.

The Bombardier Beetle And Its Crazy Chemical Cannon | Deep Look

Biology is freaky weird.

The bombardier beetle is terrifying. It's got three chemicals that are kept separate within its body until it mixes them which releases a ton of energy, heating and pressurizing the mixture into a boiling liquid that the beetle can squirt out of its...um...probably not its butt, but I'm not an entomologist 

Sodium Citrate Mac & Cheese — Silky Smooth

Yes, I've been watching a bunch of food science videos - mostly from Adam Ragusea - recently.

Food science is fascinating. In fact, it was my second choice for a new high-interest, low-homework science class back when Princeton was making a set of new, at-the-time-semester-long science classes about twenty years ago. First choice was material science because I'd just taken the first year workshop from ASM and was geeked about how cool it was.

By the way, they have student camps, too.

XKCD 3144: Phase Changes

Source: XKCD.com

See, it's funny because ice spikes are frickin' weird.

Sometimes, water freezes and makes ice spikes. It's more likely with distilled water than with tap and more likely if your freezer is just barely below the freezing point of water.

Nature doesn't care about your simple theories of how materials work. 

All of our laws about the world are descriptive not prescriptive.

There are more things on heaven and Earth, as it were.

How and why sauces 'break' (or don't)

Last week I posted a video from Adam Ragusea showing that garlic and egg yolks both contain compounds that can emulsify sauces. Linked from that video via YouTube was this video who contains a little more background on emulsions in the kitchen.

XKCD 3242: The Aperiodic Table of the Elements

 

Source: XKCD.com

I want this on my walls.

Hey, students, if you happen to have access to a large-format printer and can turn this image (the highest-res version I can find) into a vector file so it won't lose resolution when it's blown up, I want this on my walls.

See, it's funny (and awesome) because it shows the periodic table in an aperiodic arrangement.

That's funny to us chemistry folks.

How garlic can emulsify sauces (aioli, alioli, allioli, aïoli, toum, etc)

That's a whole lot of garlic there, Adam.

My wife is firmly opposed to mayonnaise in just about any form or dish, so that stuff only crosses our threshold when I buy it - usually in a premade potato salad from Jungle Jim's.

But I'm fascinated by the emulsifying abilities of both egg yolk and garlic, and Adam does a great job of explaining the inherent science in both in this video.