Solar System Model

 

Rollover joke - The Earth is, on average, located in the habitable zone, but at any given time it has a certain probability of being outside it, which is why life exists on Earth but is mortal. (Source - XKCD)

See, it's funny because most of the time, the atom - particularly the Bohr model of the atom - is likened to the solar system with electrons following 'orbital' paths around the nucleus the way that planets follow similar paths around the sun.

As a chemistry teacher, I can say that it's much, much harder to come up with a similarly easily understood analogy for how electrons exist in the quantum mechanical model of the atom. There just isn't any sort of macroscopic thing that is anything like the quantum mechanical model of the atom.

And if the planets did move like electrons, that would be somewhat terrifying - especially as electrons can teleport from region to region a la an electron in a box.

Though I do have some evidence that the planets have a measurable spin, so there is that, at least.

Nonstick is prob safe - the factories aren't (PFAS contamination)

During my senior year at Wabash College I wrote a column for our student newspaper, The Bachelor. In one of the columns, I put forth my thoughts about the damage we were doing to the environment. I can sum my thoughts up then as 'in the short run, we're clearly destroying our environment...in the long enough run, the planet won't even remember we were here.' 

Amazingly, my thoughts on that haven't much changed in the two and a half decades since I wrote that column, though my thoughts as to how we're poisoning our environment have been informed by a bit more learning about science since then. I'm pretty sure it's the polymers that will be our undoing. We're making remarkably stable molecules that are inherently hostile to all living things at the moment - at least until something evolves to consume them, which will hopefully happen eventually - and we're doing so in remarkable volume.

If there's one thing we need to do to save the life on our planet, it's to stop mucking about with polymers. Stop making them. Stop burning them. Stop refining them.

Weird metal that's also a glass is insanely bouncy

I've been looking for an amorphous metal demonstrator off and on for a few years but with no success.

There are some samples of amorphous metals available on ebay, but I really don't have any idea of what those metals actually are, whether they're really the zirconium-beryllium-titanium-copper-nickel alloy that Steve describes at 7:10 in this above video.

This video sees Steve explore how to optimize the bounces - which material should the ball bearing be made from, how big should the ball bearing be, how can you measure the number of bounces most easily - which is cute, but the big payoff in the video comes after around 10:00 when Steve explains how materials plastically deform and why amorphous metals don't easily deform plastically.

That's absolutely fascinating, and I even more desperately want one of these atomic trampoline demonstrators.

Feel free to hunt one down and buy me one for Christmas. I'll happily give you my address if you do get ahold of one.

Now I'm curious how an amorphous metal would respond to a hardness test. Would it be much tougher to create a traditional 'dent' from a hardness tester?

(In hunting down more info on amorphous metals, I might've found a preliminary answer to that one on the LiquidMetal website, scroll down partway to find hardness data.)

Here's more info about amorphous metals and a video from Grand Illusions, from whom Steve borrowed his atomic trampoline demonstrator.

• MRSEC at UWisconsin - amorphous metal page
• LiquidMetal - the trade name under which the amorphous metal is available
• A white paper about the Atomic Trampoline from UWisconsin & Arthur Ellis
• LiquidMetal's wikipedia article
• "The Case for Bulk Metallic Glass" paper from Science Direct
• A white paper from Taylor Edge electronics about metallic glasses and the atomic trampoline demonstrator
• Information about vitreloy, a different commercial name under which metallic glass has been available

Homochirality: Why Nature Never Makes Mirror Molecules

Chirality is incredibly simple on the surface, but the effects of chirality are incredibly complicated and important in the biological world.

Our world - our universe - favors one handed-ness over the other, and we sometimes get in big trouble when we interact with the wrong version of a molecule.

If you want to know more about just how right- or left-handed molecules rotate light waves, check out more from Steve Mould.

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.

The Indianapolis Museum of Art's conservation lab

A few years back - when I was helping teach an ASM materials science camp at Southport High School in Indianapolis - I got to tour the Indianapolis Museum of Art's conservation lab. It was a fascinating tour as we got to see their pigment collection, how they scanned paintings and other artworks, and were able to see the science that goes into both conservation and authentication of artworks. 

It's really wonderful to be able to see that there are do many non-traditional science jobs out there, particularly when those science jobs overlap with other areas of interest. I would imagine that an art-lover with a science bent would be thrilled to know about this as an option in the career field.

Big thanks to Gregory Smith - you can see him a few videos below this - for providing that spectacular tour for our camp group.

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.