Web Videos Show Off the Wonders of Chemistry

Timmy writes "Wired Science has picked ten of the best videos from YouTube and their own show on PBS to highlight the wonderful things chemistry can do. Only four of them involve fire or explosions. The rest range from music videos about the polymerase chain reaction to reactions that repeatedly change color. One shows how to pour sodium acetate stalagmites. Another shows Chris Hardwick giving instructions for building a glow stick while making absurd comments."

I love how it...

[Datamonstar]

.... tells you right out how many include fire and/or explosions. That's the sort of data a geek REALLY needs.

Re:not easy to get some of this stuff

[gnick]

Most things are accessible if you're creative enough. The benign stuff you can just buy outright from a chemical supply store. Now that the interwebs are available to the unwashed masses, the nasty stuff can be improvised.

My friends' 10-year old daughter was complaining recently about inaccessible chemicals interfering with her science fair project. (She wanted sulphuric acid - Her mom insisted on lemon juice because she "didn't want to be put on a list"). Her mom complained (half-heartedly - mostly in fun) after I told the girl that hydrochloric acid could be purchased without ID under the name muriatic acid and that sulphuric acid was readily available from car batteries and could be concentrated by boiling it until white smoke appeared. I even took the extra precaution of pointing out the need for proper ventilation.

I'm straying off-topic, but when on a roll...

Seems to me that using dangerous chemicals along with kids is preferable to what I did as a youth - Swiping them off-hours from the school chem-locker, stashing them in the closet, and experimenting unsupervised. On a related note, the first time I tried to swipe gasoline by storing it in a Styrofoam Sonic cup was messy, but an open door into a whole new kind of fun.

chemistry

[davidknippers]

Chemistry isn't as nearly as 'cool' as these pretty make-fire videos lead one to believe. Every explosion a young chemist commits brings them closer and closer the sad reality of their career later in life, performing volumetric titrations day in day out in labs with limited ventilation and no capacity to do dumb shit with metal sodium. Chemists are nothing more than glorified, poor cooks who use class 'A' glassware.

So...

[Aegis Runestone]

Does this mean we can cast fire, acid, cold, and lightning spells now?