The Periodic Table: Every Year

The discovery of the periodic law and subsequent creation and refinement of the periodic table stands beside the discovery of atoms as the be all and end all of chemistry in my eyes. 

Realizing that the material of our world corresponds to an underlying organizational principle and being able to - even if bit by bit - understand that principle is absolutely stunning to me.

Today's video looks at how what we think of as the modern periodic table came to be, from initially un-organized list of elements through to a quantum-mechanical-model-based periodic table.

Some of the changes come and go fairly quickly in the video, so be ready to pause and review the notes as the video plays.

Making of a jacketed glass chemical reactor

Source - reddit

Scientific glass blowing is just so amazing to watch.

There was an attempt...to put out an oil fire

Source - reddit

Don't use water to put out and oil/grease fire.

Ever...

See, if the oil is hot enough to catch fire, it's hot enough to boil any added water.

Boiled water means the oil being aerosolized into tiny, incredibly flammable droplets which catch fire and turn a small fire into a raging inferno incredibly quickly - as the above video shows.

Instead, smother the fire.

Put a lid on the pot.

Put a baking sheet on the pot.

This Molecule Has Saved Billions of Lives, How Do We Make It Without Killing Ourselves?

Fritz Haber was brilliant. His discovery of the Haber-Bosch process to produce ammonia from the air was a miracle, allowing for the vast production of fertilizer which lead to our ability to feed the billions of people on our planet, rightfully earning Haber an Nobel Prize.

Yet, he also produced chlorine gas and conducted experiments that eventually lead to the development of pesticide gases such as Zyklon B, used to kill millions of Jewish people in Nazi concentration camps. I'm not sure where Haber would have fallen when his soul was weighed upon his passing from this Earth, but I know we couldn't feed as many as we feed without the Haber-Bosch process.

Today's SciShow video explains how the Haber-Bosch process produces carbon dioxide and some of the alternative processes that chemists are exploring that wouldn't produce carbon dioxide along the way.

True Facts Water Walkers: Educational Edition

If you've watched any of the True Facts videos before, you might be a little leery of my posting of the videos. They have historically used some adult jokes to keep viewers interested along the way.

The newer TrueFactsEducational channel, however, keeps the jokes no worse than PG meaning that they're okay to watch - at least in a middle- or high-school setting - which is awesome because the information presented about how water striders - and spring tails - walk and move on a surface of water is excellent and entertainingly presented. 

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.

Strawberries make surprisingly GIANT bubbles (Best DIY Bubble Recipes)

I appreciate that Ben aka NightHawkInLight now shows his face in his videos. It's a little less creepy than having his videos narrated.

This video shows his findings to make the most durable, long-lasting giant bubbles out of Dawn dish soap, water, salt, baking soda, and J Lube. The titular comment about strawberries is because strawberry DNA is surprisingly easy to extract and highly prevalent within strawberry cells. 

Much of the video - from about 4:15-13:00 - is about Ben's attempts to extract the DNA from strawberries. It's a recreation of a fairly simple and common first year high school biology lab. 

From there, Ben tests his solutions with and without three different polymers - J Lube, strawberry DNA, PEO (polyethylene oxide, poly ox), and no polymer addition.

Then Ben re-tests solutions with an even larger bubble wand made of fishing poles. He does manage to make a few really gorgeous, colossal bubbles - some under lower humidity conditions and again when the humidity is approaching 100%. 

Along the way we do get a whole lot of Ben chuckles, so be prepared for that. 

If ever I want to make huge bubbles, the J Lube would be the recipe I'm looking to use.