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.

Karen Lise Krabbe: Gelled Glass

That's absolutely fascinating.

I've seen the reverse spherification technique of using sodium alginate and calcium chloride solutions to produce edible, gelled products (Kool Aid worms, gelled drink spheres, cocktail pods). Sometimes the calcium chloride is swapped out for calcium lactate because it's really the calcium ions that are necessary for the process.

But using that process to make gelled glass which can be shaped in ways that glass normally couldn't be shaped is pretty amazing. All respect to Karen Lise Krabbe for developing this technique. If you want to learn more, you can check out her ebook on the technique.