Posts tagged chemistry
Where the colors of fireworks come from
Happy 4th of July, American friends! Here’s a little chemistry lesson on where the colors in fireworks come from.
Is that not enough for your sponge of a brain? Then here’s a more detailed video on explosive chemistry from Byte Size Science!
(↬ Boing Boing)
Quasicrystals!
Interesting to see the Nobel Prize for Chemistry going to a person whose research was so overwhelmingly disputed - and then proven to be correct. Essentially any crystal structure can be split into multiple grains/unit cells which are, in the case of substances like table salt, normally ordered and periodic. The different with quasicrystals is that, whilst being ordered, it is not periodic. This uneven structure means that it is a lot harder to break compared to normal crystalline structures, and they also make for excellent electrical conductors, the reasons for which are still being investigated.
Organic Chemistry (Detail) by Brian Dettmer on Flickr.
