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. 

What Do You Call A Left-Handed Lemon? QI

QI is a high-intelligence television show in Britain, formerly hosted by Stephen Fry and now hosted by Sandi Toksvig.

In this clip, the QI panelists are asked, 'what do you call a left-handed lemon' and subsequently learn that the molecule that produces the distinct smell of a lemon is a chiral molecule meaning that it has a mirror image that cannot be superimposed upon the original molecule and that the mirror image molecule produces the smell of an orange instead. 

Source - wikipedia

Chirality is real and present in any molecule where a central carbon atom has four unique substituent groups off of the same center. Think of the molecules as being similar like your left and right hands. They look identical but can't be rotated in any way to make them overlap identically. Instead, they would have to be 'mirrored' to allow for the overlap.

Interestingly, I read an awful Fantastic Four comic a few years back based on this idea of chirality, but I digress.

Sadly, even though limonene is, indeed, chiral with mirror images of the compound existing, those mirror images aren't really the reason for the difference in the smells of lemons and oranges. According to the American Chemical Society, that's a myth.

Actually, both oranges and lemons contain mostly (R)-limonene. Only 1-4% of the limonene in either fruit is in the (S) configuration. As for what these enantiomers actually smell like, (R)-limonene does have a pleasant, citrusy aroma, but does not smell like oranges. Instead, various other, fragrant molecules found in orange oil carry the odor. At high purity, (S)-limonene carries notes of turpentine and lemon. However, this enantiomer is barely present in lemons and is unlikely to contribute much to their aroma. As with orange odor, a number of different molecules in lemon oil contribute to lemons’ fresh scent.

Bath Bombs - Periodic Table of Videos

Bath bombs are just glorified, perfumed alka seltzer tablets. They're primarily made of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and citric acid that result in this reaction...

3 NaHCO₃ (s) + H₃C₆H₅O_{7 (s)} --> Na₃C₆H₅O_{7 (aq)} + 3 H₂O _(l) + 3 CO_{2 (g)}

The cuteness of the dissolving, reacting Mad Scientist bath bomb is fun to watch, but there isn't too much really exciting in this video other than some chemistry folks playing around with the bath bombs - adding them to water, using a thermal camera to check the endothermicity of the reaction, checking the dyes under UV light, adding concentrated sulfuric acid to the bomb (oof), and finally trying to set the poor bath bomb on fire.

Feels a bit like the Nottingham folks are reaching a bit for content here.

How do I tell my teacher the fluorine cation doesn't exist?

From reddit

See, it's funny because the teacher gave the student an F+ on his or her (possibly AI-generated) book report, but the student is claiming not to know that the F+ is meant to be a grade and not a chemical notation for a fluorine atom that has lost an electron. 

Fluorine atoms, being the most electronegative atoms on the planet, are incredibly unlikely to lose an electron rather than to gain an electron.

See, it's funny because of periodic trends!
 

What happens if you eat a silica get packet? - Vivian Jiang

Do not eat.

It's such a simple instruction that we've all read a hundred times or more on the tiny silica gel packets that come in sneaker boxes, shirts shipped from warehouses, and many more fabric and leather goods.

But why shouldn't you eat silica gel? If it's just silica, then it's the same as sand. While eating sand might be unpleasant, it's not necessarily unsafe if it's clean sand.

The increased surface area of the silica gel - one gram of silica gel has more than 700 square meters of surface area according to the video - is the issue. That surface area and its attractiveness toward polar molecules - water, ammonia, and other small molecules - cause it to absorb 40% its weight in water, making it a spectacular desiccant. 

In general, the silica gel wouldn't do too much harmful to your body unless it had a cobalt chloride coating.

Analytical chemist water

Source: reddit

Water is water is water, right?

No, as I've posted here before, not all water is equal. 

The above video distinguished among four water types found in this particular analytical chemist's lab.

First is tap water. That's the stuff that is piped into our homes and businesses from the local municipality. Generally, in the United States, it's pretty clean and safe to drink. Depending on where you are, however, it could have various dissolved ions in it because of the pipes and rocks that the water passed through on its way to the water treatment facility and onward to your house.

Second is deionized (DI) water. To produce DI water, tap water is run across resin beads what allow for ion exchange. The positive ions in the tap water are absorbed by the beads and replaced in the water with hydrogen ions (H+) and the negative ions are replaced with hydroxide ions (OH-). Eventually those beads have to be recharged as their capacity to absorb ions is finite. 

DI water is not the same as distilled water, though both are 'cleaner' than tap water alone. I have used both distilled and DI water in college and summer camp chemistry labs. Both are certainly good enough for the chemistry work that we do on a high school level.

Third is MillQ water, produced by a three-stage process which is already light years beyond anything I've ever used in a lab. The video voice describes it as 18.2 megaohm[·cm] which measures the water's resistance to current. The more dissolved ions (electrolytes) water has, the lower its resistance.

Fourth, she mentions LCMS-grade water means Liquid Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometry water. I'm already out of my depths to explain why this water is purer than the previous water much less the final water she mentions - Optima LC/MS water.

However, as the comments on the video mention, all of this is problematic because of how the various waters are stored - dissolved silicium from glass bottles or CO2 or plasticizers if stored in polymer bottles.

How the World's Most Expensive Color is Made

This video definitely doesn't make me sad, though I would understand why you might end up a bit blue after learning about the manufacturing process of lapis lazuli-based paints.

The Cennini method described here is understandably expensive - because it's insanely labor-intensive.

Understandably, Mohammed has a less labor-intensive method that he developed, but he's not sharing that with us in the video.

From about 6:40 onward, the video shifts from following the production method to looking into the mining of lapis lazuli in Afghanistan, a more political discussion than the initial portion of the video. Then they come back to Mohammed as he explains why natural, lapis-based paints are 'better' than its synthetic replacements.

Units meme...

 Yeah, that's about right...I've said almost that exact phrase to my students probably a million times.

Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED

I was watching a YouTube video from a Scottish YouTuber recently and heard him refer to a light as being a LED bulb. He, however, pronounced LED as if it were the element lead. I, an American, pronounce those bulbs as their three separate letters El Ee Dee, like an acronym. 

Neither, of course, is correct, nor is it at all relevant to this video.

This video, just over half an hour long and produced by Dr Derek of Veritasium, goes through the quantum mechanic explanation of how semiconductors conduct at room temperature which also explains how LEDs produce light and - eventually in the video - how LEDs can be tuned to produce different colors.

This video is also a great exploration of how doped semiconductors conduct electricity. 

I'm really happy that I don't have to teach this concept in my chemistry - or material science - classes because this really pushes my understanding of quantum mechanics and electronics. I didn't thoroughly understand it when I first heard about it back in 1993 or 1994, and I don't entirely understand it now. I do, however, fully accept that there are people who do understand these concepts and that we owe those people a massive debt because the widespread use of LEDs has been a huge revolution in energy savings for our world.

Plus it lets people wrap their cars in Christmas lights.

Why Airport Security Suddenly Got Better

I'm far from a frequent flier, typically taking one or two round trips a year for our summer camps - and I'll admit to a fair skepticism of the security theater that we have at airport, but...

I find the science that we're using at airports kind of fascinating.

In the future, though, I'll be aiming for the dual-energy CT scanners that this video covers. 

The video - once the three-minute intro about travel wraps up - explains how X-rays are absorbed by various materials of various thicknesses. 

Oh, warning the Brian does say, "pain in the a**" at about 9:59.

Tattoo Removal Is Insane

I can't imagine what sort of tattoo I would've gotten when I was 20 or so.

U2? Queen? Wabash College? University of Aberdeen? Lambda Chi Alpha?

No matter what I would have chosen, I'm pretty sure it's not something I would have wanted to be an identifying feature on my body now thirty years further down the line.

So I'd've had to invest time, money, and some pain to get that tattoo removed.

Today's video goes through the science and process of getting tattoos removed.

Tl;dr - it doesn't sound fun.

The Hidden Danger Inside Every Candle

This is this third time I've posted a video about this demonstration, one I still haven't done in my own classroom.

I don't know that the action lab does a better job explaining things, but he certainly does a better job filming the flaming cloud from up close.

The Penicillin Myth

That video above isn't the real thing I'm posting today, and this isn't really a chemistry post at all. It's a general scientific method post.

That video tells the popularly-understood and oft retold story of how Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1929.

The actual link I'm sharing today - from Asimov Press - is titled "The Penicillin Myth" looks at Fleming's story of the discovery and posits "maybe he didn't."

See, the article details some flaws in the discovery story - namely that a plate initially inoculated with staphylococci and subsequently contaminated with penicillium would not actually kill the staph bacteria since penicillin only affects growing - not mature - colonies.

In the article, Kevin Blake recounts two other theories of how Fleming might have actually discovered the effectiveness of penicillin with slight differences from Fleming's story.

The article is a great exploration of the scientific method - of the importance of record keeping, the ability of other scientists to replicate experiments, and what effect historical inaccuracies in how a discovery was made have on the importance of the discovery itself.

How to Make a Warning Last 10,000 Years

Alan Wiseman's The World Without Us has a chapter titled "Hot Legacy" that explores our efforts to create warnings that will last at least 10,000 years into the future and will tell future archeologists that the interesting stuff they've found at some of our nuclear waste repositories should not be explored.

Much of the research is being done at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project is New Mexico, USA, and it's that work that SciShow details in today's video.

I remember that the Wiseman chapter also mentioned the placement of various magnets around the site as a warning that something was at least weird in this location. The video doesn't mention that, and I'm surprised because I found that one of the more interesting ideas.

These Rings Absorb Light and Glow in the Dark

I've found something new that I want to own...

These would be a great demonstration for when we're talking about electron transitions in chemistry class. I do wish, however, that I knew what the glow powder chemistry was so I could at least talk about the various colors and which compounds were making which colors.

For now, though, check out the ring manufacturer's website where the rings are selling for $59 (with a black Friday discount as I'm typing this)

Cesium

 

Source - https://xkcd.com/3131/

See, it's funny because...honestly, I'm not sure that it really is all that funny.

Yes, there was an actual 2025 incident in which a shipments of frozen shrimp was found to contain cesium-137 contamination.

I read through the Wikipedia and explainxkcd articles about the incident, and I can't really figure out how the contamination of the Cikanda Modern Industrial Area got into the shrimp.

I do know, however, that the novelty of new ways to screwing up can be both interesting and a bit of terrifying.

Perfect Boiled Eggs | Kenji's Cooking Show

J Kenji Lopez-Alt is a chef who leans into the science side of things (check out his The Food Lab if you want to find some science-based recipes).

In this video - one I'm presenting as a companion piece to yesterday's Adam Ragusea's video - Kenji presents a method of cooking eggs that are easiest to peel and a chart that shows the exact cooking time necessary for whatever quality of egg yolk you want. 

Source - boingboing

A novel method for boiling eggs (and a talk about egg prices & public science)

At some point the tediousness of a cooking method outweighs the value of the cooking method.

A thirty-two minute egg that involves mostly thirty-two minutes of active cooking seems to push that tediousness too far for my tastes, especially since I'm not desperate to eat 'perfectly' cooked eggs.

Along the way, however, Adam Raguesea uses some of that thirty-two minutes to explain why egg prices spiked within the last couple of years and the value and decreased funding of public science under the Trump administration.

I don't know Adam's political viewpoints, but I'm pretty sure his views on the values of science align with mine.

His views on egg cooking also seem to agree with mine, because he's not sure all this egg time is worth the trouble.

Catalytic converters are simple, but getting them to work is not

I've never known what the inside of a catalytic converter looked like before. Admittedly, I had to replace my converter at one point and told the mechanic that I wanted to old one to take in to school and show my students - with some idea that I'd ask the old technology (shop) department to cut it in half for me long, long ago - but I eventually just threw the thing out without doing anything with it.

The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray when confronted with laziness, eh?

Clearly, the catalytic converter isn't lazy at all, however, and the technology used to keep the catalytic converter converting is insanely complicated. 

The simple version is that the catalytic converter combusts any unburned hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide byproducts from the combustion happening within the pistons every second of a car's functioning. 

...but to make that secondary combustion take place efficiently requires a whole lot of oxygen sensing to and adjusting along the way of that car functioning.

The Most Misunderstood Concept in Physics

I've posted about entropy before in videos from Steve Mould and Alpha Phoenix. Here Dr Derek takes his turn at tilting at the same windmill: entropy.

The video is a bit long at nearly half an hour, but it's a nice mixture of historical development of the theory of entropy and modern, statistical understanding of entropy's effect on the direction of time in our universe. 

I kind of like Steve's video a bit more, but Dr Derek's video is good, as well.

The Big Idea Behind Avogadro's Number (That Most People Miss)

This video steps backward to begin the story of Avogadro's number back in ancient Greece, similarly to how I teach the atomic history in my chemistry class at Princeton.

The development of relative masses of the elements, though, is something that I tend to skim over fairly quickly, though I might start putting a bit more emphasis on this concept in the past.

I do, however, mention - partially thanks to Steve Mould's explanation of moles - define the moles as the conversion factor between one gram and one atomic mass unit. 

I didn't know, however, that the value for Secret Number N was discovered in 1909. Now I guess I need to find out how that value was discovered more than 100 years ago.