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.

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.

Complete History of the Avogadro Number

Around 0:50 into the video, our meandering narrator mentions that he wasn't able to find a single source with correct, complete information on the history of the Avogadro Number...which makes me wish he'd provided sources for his information. Otherwise, how do we know that what he's telling us is correct?

(As an aside, I've always called it Avogadro's Number. Maybe the the and lack of possessive is a British thing. I'll admit that I don't remember how my professors at the University of Aberdeen referred to it.)

I will say that this is an amazingly thorough and likely correct history of the development of the concept and number of the moles. It goes through from Democritus through the Karlsruhe Congress and all the way to the modern measurement of Avogadro's number via a nearly perfect sphere of silicon.

I need to watch this video a few more times until I'm more familiar with all the steps in this development so I can tell the story to my students.

Why are Crazy People Called Mad as a Hatter?

I've know the broad strokes of the mercury-hatter connection for a while but not the specific details and history that are retold in today's video.

Sounds like the hatter/Danbury shakes were a very early version of lack of workplace protections. The hatters might as well have been told to lick their radium paintbrushes.

Source - vintag.es

Science in an Art Museum, Part 1: The Science (and parts 2, 3, and 4, too)

As I mentioned last week, I toured the Indianapolis Art Museum's conservation lab as part of our summer ASM materials camp a decade or so ago. It was a great tour given by Dr Gregory Smith, star of this series of videos through which he explains the process of verifying the age and pedigree of an Uzbek Coat of Many Colors.

The rest of the four-part series is after the jump.

Lunch & Learn: The Science Behind Art, with the Indianapolis Museum of Art

Give 'em a break, alright?

It was the pandemic. People were trapped in their houses. They were doing their best to create content that was interesting and that could be enjoyed remotely.

No, a video of two people talking remotely to each other while narrating a slide show isn't necessarily the most exciting of presentations, but I can vouch for Dr Smith being an entertaining guy. He gave me and our summer ASM campers a tour of the Indianapolis Museum of Art's conservation lab about ten years ago, and it is one of the more unexpectedly great tours that I've been on through those summer workshops.

Take some time and see what Dr Smith has to teach us about art conservation and forgery detection today.

Does Anything Radioactive Actually Glow Bright Green?

I was cleaning up my bookmarks this summer and found that I have a whole bunch of backed up videos and articles for my two blogs.

My first step was to post ahead one video or article per week until the end of the calendar year 2024. Now that I've gone ahead and done that and still have a ridiculous number of saved bookmarks.

The next step was to ready a second post per week (Fridays this time to balance the already-ready Mondays), and this is the first of those Friday posts.

There won't be any particularly difference focus of the Friday posts, but you'll just get twice the content from me.

This video explores why most people think that radioactive materials give off a green glow (they don't) through the history of radioactivity's discovery including the radium girls' sad story.

Thankfully the video closes by pointing out that there is actual Cherenkov radiation that causes a light blue glow from radioactive materials in water.

The Real Story of Oppenheimer

In case there's anybody out there who hasn't seen Oppenheimer at this point, I strongly recommend it.

Critics have been raving about it. It was half of a cultural event last summer. It's not 100% accurate - though it is largely factual. It isn't without criticism, but it's a great film.

With all that being said, there's so much more to the story of Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. Do yourself a favor and watch the above video from the Veritasium YouTube channel.

And, if you want to know more, move onward to Fallout by Jim Ottaviani and American Prometheus by Bird and Sherwin.

Oppenheimer was a fascinating, brilliant man whose effect on our world is almost immeasurable, and he is a compelling source for a movie, a graphic novel, or a biography.

When Pretty Colors Were Deadly - J. V. Maranto

Better living through chemistry, eh?

Lead does make some gorgeous colors, but it's awful for us.

The lore of arsenic green has been long known in chemistry, including in Scheele's Green and Napoleon's death.

It's the Fiestware, though, that always interests me the most. I'm always tempted to buy myself a sample of the old, uranium-colored Fiestaware because I have a bunch of the modern, non-radioactive Fiestaware, and I love it.

How Kodak Conspired to Keep Nuclear Testing Secret

Dr Derek opens this video visiting what I consider pretty much hallowed ground, the Trinity test site in New Mexico. It's hallowed because it's horrible, but it's one of my bucket list sites to visit. Someday...

From there, Dr Derek goes on to tell the story of how Kodak figured out that the US government had exploded a nuclear bomb in the US desert by exploring the source of radioactive contamination in strawboard used to package x-ray film that they sold and that had begun to become fogged (exposed) in spite of it having never been used.

The Kodak scientists figured out that the beta radiation being emitted by whatever was in the strawboard had to have come from cerium-141, something that the exploring scientist knew had to be from a nuclear explosion based on his experience having worked on the Manhattan Project himself.

And then Dr Derek goes on to follow some of the more significant dangers of radioactive fallout from those above-ground nuclear tests - images of which you can see in the marvelous book 100 Suns by Michael Light.

The incestuous relationship between the government and Kodak was certainly problematic, and I'm glad that Dr Derek covers that aspect of our nuclear history.

Phoenician Purple: the trade of dye helped forge an empire

Source - wikipedia.com article

Much of the history of trade is interrelated with the history of science. When someone somewhere develops a technology that isn't yet widely known, that someone somewhere has an economic advantage.

If, as today's article discusses, the Phonecians developed a method of producing a deep, long-lasting purple fabric dye that no other culture could match, they could become wealthy from producing that dye. 

Admittedly, if that fabric required - again, as the article states - the mucus from 12,000 tiny snails to produce enough dye to color the trim on a single garment, entire industries would develop around the harvesting of those snails, the labor needed to harvest that many snails, and the trade to send this dyed material around the world.

Interestingly, the exact dye used - also known as Tyrian purple - has never been synthesized commercially and efficiently even in modern times.

The Mystery of Matter

 

Edit: I'm reposting the videos since PBS took them down. They might or might not stay posted by this account. A short clip is above. I'll put the full episodes after the jump.

How can you not love that fake nose and beard there on Dmitri Mendeleev (as played by Michael Aronov) in PBS's The Mystery of Matter: Search for the Elements.

The show is a three-episode 'series' exploring seven key events and people in the discovery of the elements that make up the periodic table. In the course of those 180 minutes, the series name checks dozens of legendary chemistry - Glenn Seaborg, Marie and Pierre Curie, Henry Davy, Harry Mosley, Joseph Priestly, Antoine Lavoisier, Dmitri Mendeleev, and many, many more.

Each event is detailed in a mixture of historic recreations - including dialog taken directly from the historical writings of the scientists involved - and contemporary scientists commenting on the discoveries. The series shows high production values in the historical recreations really selling the stories brilliantly.

In moments, the series is brilliant and engaging, detailing both the human and scientific side of the stories. We hear of the sexism that required Pierre Curie to insist that Marie receive the credit she deserved, the tragedy in the death of Harry Mosley in Turkey during World War I, and the national security concerns of Glenn Seaborg during the discovery of plutonium in 1941. The totality of the series is almost too informative, however, as watching it for more than maybe half an hour at a time leads to information fatigue.

This series will be highly useful in small doses within the classroom, especially the Dmitri Mendeleev excerpt up above (lengthier than embedded above.)

All three episodes can be found on the series website.