Chemistry

Nothing says fun to a kid like talking about carbon dioxide and nucleation sites and surfactants. Actually, that sounds really, really boring. But if you instead tell them you are going to cause a giant geyser of soda to erupt in the driveway, they will get pretty excited. Then they will ask what happens if you use different sodas, and then different candies, and suddenly a little experimental physicist or chemist is born. I'm talking about the Coke - Mentos experiment which has been a staple of science classes since...no one knows when. As is often the case with things like this, there is no…

ndergraduate maths students at the University of Leicester have risen to the challenge set for them by building company Jelson Homes to work out the precise formula for the perfect cuppa- for their builders. The second-year students were asked to apply the theory from their mathematics degree course in a practical way and find an algebra equation to help Jelson’s builders to gain the maximum flavours from their tea. Having undertaken their own independent research, ten groups of students presented their research, findings and conclusions to Jelson recently in an X-factor style competition.…

Caribou Coffee, founded in 1992, says nationwide surveys show that the number one complaint of coffee-drinkers is the way it stains. Be it coffee rings to drips on white dress shirts to stains on teeth, a cup of coffee can start your day off right or ruin it right away.  So they responded with a proprietary new coffee blend that has removed the color while, they say, retaining all the flavor. They say this entirely colorless, stain-free beverage is the result of an innovation in bean cultivation techniques and processing. They are selling the Clear Coffee beans online at…

If there is a pleasant, chemically-induced but culturally acceptable pastime, someone at U.C. Davis is probably studying it. They have one of my favorite beer scholars, Prof. Charles Bamforth, and are even setting up a coffee science group. Their nutrition department has been generously funded by Mars candy company and, no surprise, a whole 'science of chocolate' panel appeared at an AAAS meeting as a result.  In 2013, UC Davis researchers at an ACS meeting tackled Whiskey. Not Whisky. What's the difference? They are both distilled from a mash of fermented grains but America ain't…

The popular TV series "CSI" may be fiction but real-life crime scene investigators and forensic scientists have been collecting and analyze evidence to determine what happened at crime scenes almost as long as there have been crime scenes. There is evidence during the Qin dynasty that the Chinese used handprints as evidence in crimes as far back as 2,200 years ago and by the 1860s the process for lifting fingerprints from evidence was developed. As guns became more common, gunpowder residue became a way to know if a weapon was fired. When someone fires a gun, burnt particles from the bullet…

Sausage experts know that the key to perfect meat is simmering in beer first - and in Science 2.0's definitive article on outdoor cooking, The Science Of Grilling, we learned that beer has multiple uses in cuisine, and an article in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry adds to this important body of work, noting that a beer marinade helps reduce the formation of potentially harmful substances in grilled meats. There have been studies finding that grilled meat leads to colorectal cancer, which has led overzealous epidemiologists to declare that red meat causes cancer. Then they…

Some people insist that Big Oil is in control of energy because so many products, from plastic to rubber, use it. It's just the opposite, people came up with so many uses because it was there. To claim otherwise is like blaming toasters for the invention of electricity. Peak Oil is now 20 years behind schedule but eventually doomsday prophets will be right.  For that reason, researchers are investigating possibilities for using renewable raw materials to replace oil. One well-known example of this is biodiesel, which comes not from oil sources, but from fields of yellow-flowering rape.…

If you, like me, want to enjoy some science with your kids and not feel pushy about it, National Geographic has a terrific program coming out this evening. My kids can't get enough of None Of The Above which debuts at 9 PM tonight. Host Tim Shaw gets right to it and kids like that. He has the two episodes we saw moving at full-speed. The premise is simple; Tim presents a fun or clever twist on a seemingly intuitive experiment and asks people what they think will happen. He even provides them with the answer, in the form of multiple choice responses - but watch out for those choice "D: None Of…

The Walking Dead season finale is coming soon and nothing goes with zombie television like brains. In beer. No, really. Dock Street in Philadelphia is introducing a Walking Dead beer, called "Walker", I suppose, to avoid the inevitable lawsuit. It's the brain child (their pun, not mine) of head brewer Justin Low and sales rep Sasha Certo-Ware and is billed as an American Pale Stout brewed with wheat, oats, flaked barley, organic cranberry, and Smoked Goat Brains. I didn't even know there was such as thing as an American Pale Stout, much less that goat brains added a certain smokiness to…

Fuel produced from various animal fats is similar to biodiesel manufactured using ethanol from corn. But if the price of animal fat rose sharply, no one would really notice, since no one really eats animal fat. And it isn't just limited to chicken, pork or beef fat , they can use alligator too. Why would they do that? Science! The report at the latest meeting of the American Chemical Society follows up on an earlier study on the potential use of gator fat as a source of biodiesel fuel. It's cool research, but there is obviously a limited amount of alligator fat lying around. Using fat…