How To Separate Alcohol And Water

I have the bottle on which this video is based in my classroom. It's a product available from Educational Innovations (a subsidiary of Flinn Scientific).

I've posted about the bottle before, but this video's from the Action Lab and does a neat extension involving the ink from a permanent marker. I've done something similar using faceted acrylic beads that have a pigment that dissolves off of the beads and into the alcohol-rich phase of the bottle, leaving the beads white (and after a time, inconveniently distorted, sticky, and gushy). That addition is thanks to Bernoli Baello, with whom I was lucky enough to teach our summer camp once.

Coke Just Revolutionized Coke

Last week's video looked at whether Mexican Coke contained any glucose or sucrose or fructose. 

This week's video follows up on that with a whole lot more accuracy and precision in a college chemistry research lab at Shippensburg University.

The lab student then tested a much fresher, sucrose-sweetened Sarsaparilla soft drink from a local, Pennsylvania bottler.

then...Then...THEN, they test an American Coke flavored by cane sugar, something the video host said he didn't think existed in the past bunch of decades.

...and visited NPR studios.

Everyone is Wrong About Mexican Coke (Even ‪@johnnyharris‬)

It's been a whole lot of years since I've done a Benedicts Test, so I'm going to trust that our YouTube host from Reactions (a channel from the American Chemical Society - ACS).

Luckily he used a second test, a glucose monitor, to back up the results.

Fascinatingly, the video goes on to possibly debunk the idea that Mexican Coke doesn't contain any actual sucrose - which it should if it was made with cane sugar as it claims to be.

See, the video started with trying to recreate those results - that Mexican Coke doesn't contain any sucrose - from a journal article, but the video ends with a deeper understanding: that sucrose undergoes an "acid-catalyzed sucrose inversion to free fructose and glucor...in the low-pH environment of most carbonated beverages."

So the presence of glucose in the Mexican Coke doesn't mean that Coke is lying to us but perhaps that it's just more complicated.

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.