I believe most chemists are familiar with the “periodic videos” from the University of Nottingham, covering all the known chemical elements. The series features professor Martyn Poliakoff who’s grey hair is really worthy of a professor! They have now covered the complete periodic table of elements, and have even started to update some of their previously posted videos. There are also thematic videos as well as videos covering specific molecules appearing now. As a chemist I think the videos are great fun to watch since they show a number of exotic experiments I’ve never seen before combined with plenty of nice-to-know facts. I certainly recommend all these videos (for an overview, check out their website), but the reason I chose to blog about this is that I was delighted to find a number of more or less food related videos! These are definitely not going to make you a better cook. But some of them are quite amusing to watch, and you may even learn some chemistry as you go. But most of the food related videos are really just for fun 🙂
Cheeseburger in hydrochloric acid
Do ice cubes made with heavy water float or sink?
Exotic ways to cut through butter
Spectacular ways of destroying pumpkins for Halloween
Tea chemistry
See Martyn Poliakoff boil an egg
(Martyn mentions that the yellow color of egg yolks is due to a sulfur containing compound, but I’m not really convinced he’s right about that. The yellow color is mainly due to a group of chemical compounds called xanthophylls which have long conjugated double bond systems that absorb light. And BTW – if you want to dissolve the egg shell in your own kitchen: skip the hydrochloric acid and use vinegar instead.)
Baking a cake in the lab with akward equipment…
… and then figuring out what to do with the cake
(it wasn’t eaten since it was made in a chemical lab)
Mirror images: Carraway and spearmint
Fun chemistry with Crispy creme eggs
Chocolate and roses for Valentines day
As the name suggests, the TGIF posts are a little less serious than what I otherwise post here at Khymos. I hope you enjoy it 🙂
Iron, sinks into melt iron. That’s usual.
Water is the unique substance that float in its own liquid phase.
Ice specific weigh is lower than water specific weigh, and that allows to living being continue living under the North Pole, for instance.
If ice sunk, and freeze again and sunk again, then, there was not liquid water under North Pole or glaziations.
Thus, floating ice in water is what is really incredible!