Super absorbent polymers

From Reactions. These kinds of polymers are used for all sorts of things, not just diapers. Fake snow, medical applications, soil moisture retention, and weird chemistry demos are just a small sampling of all the different uses. #chemistry #polymer #shorts

What *IS* Meat? Impossible… Beyond… Mammoth?

From Reactions. Beyond “burgers.” Impossible “meat.” A huge meatball (supposedly) made from wooly mammoth. Chemistry is changing how we think about meat, and as technology advances, things are only going to get more confusing… #Mammoth #BeyondMeat #ImpossibleFoods You might also like other Reactions videos: Why the Maillard Reaction Makes Everything Delicious: https://youtu.be/rs1JLYXROVU What Science Says…

where’s the emergency oxygen on planes?

From Reactions. These chemical oxygen generators are perfectly safe, as long as they’re handled properly. If they’re not handled properly, though, they can cause serious problems. In 1996 improperly stored chemical oxygen generators actually caused the crash of ValuJet flight 592 in the Everglades. For more about this story and how the oxygen generators work,…

EU’s Ban On Tattoo Ink: Breaking Down the Chemistry

From Reactions. Recently, a handful of tattoo inks have been banned by the European Union for safety reasons. Blue 15:3 and Green 7 made its way onto the banned list and tattoo artists are having a difficult time finding replacements for these two colors. Here’s what chemistry has to say about these precarious pigments. #tattoos…

Why Are Electric Vehicle Fires So Hard To Put Out?

From Reactions. Can we solve electric vehicle fires before we fully understand what’s happening inside them? #lithium #EV #fire You might also like other Reactions videos: How Do Lithium-Ion Batteries Work? https://youtu.be/zUlbHMDCosI How Do Hydrogen Fuel Cells Work? https://youtu.be/R6AdX-bdDaw What Makes Smartphones Explode? https://youtu.be/pY-kzHn9kvo The World’s Biggest Batteries Aren’t What You Think: https://youtu.be/TIWIXzCwC8g How Do…

How a Chemist Makes the Softest Bread You’ll Ever Eat

From Reactions. Want to make the fluffiest bread possible? Then you need the technique called starch gelatinization. Based on the Chinese tangzhong and Japanese yudane methods, this involves breaking down starch’s symmetry, pushing water between amylose and amylopectin molecules, and using high temperature to gelatinize the starch before making it into dough. But don’t just…

74,963 Kinds of Ice

From Reactions. Correction: 6:33 Dipole moments are typically represented going positive to negative, rather than negative to positive. There are somewhere between 20 and 74,963 kinds of ice. Water can do all kinds of weird stuff when it freezes. So far scientists have experimentally shown crystal structures for 19 kinds of ice. Or maybe 20,…

Time to Strike Antifreeze Off Your List of Usable Poisons

From Reactions. Correction: 1:43 The left side of the graph should be labeled as Celsius, and the right side should be labeled as Fahrenheit. Ethylene glycol is the most common ingredient in automotive antifreeze. But for years it was used in homicidal poisonings. What made this household chemical so dangerous? And why is it no…

The Dark Side of Sugar-Free Gummies: Exploring the Laxative Effect

From Reactions. Sugar free gummies are delicious, low on calories, and… technically laxatives? Reactions producer Andrew dives into the science to figure out how he can make delicious sugar free gummies without the uncomfortable side effects. #saccharin #aspartame #foodchemistry Tiny Matters Podcast: https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/tiny-matters.html Sugar: The addiction debate and an ancient DNA mutation that’s killing us…

Is DNA the Future of Data Storage?

From Reactions. Could the future of data storage be DNA? It’s the original format after all, storing the information needed to build every living thing. and it has a handful of qualities that would make it perfect to store all the digital information in our world. With recent advances in DNA sequencing and DNA printing,…