Making spinach white, and then red! #chemistry #chemteacherphil #stemtok

The perfect paper for secret messages! #chemistry #chemteacherphil

If you could see on the atomic scale and looked at a latex balloon, you’d see holes! Holes large enough for atoms of helium to fit through. This is one reason why latex balloons deflate so rapidly when inflated with helium gas. Helium atoms are very small, much larger than the nitrogen and oxygen molecules that make up the majority of the air we breathe. So what makes other types of balloons, like mylar, so much more effective in trapping helium? Mylar balloons are comprised of three layers of different materials: nylon, aluminum and polyester. This combination makes it much more difficult for tiny helium atoms to find a way through, and mylar balloons can consequently remain inflated and floating for weeks! #chemistry #chemteacherphil

It is surprisingly easy to make your own fuel gel. All you really need are three ingredients: eggshells, vinegar and alcohol. Gel fuels like sterno, are useful because they provide a clean burning flame with minimal risk of spilling the fuel. Making a gel fuel requires encapsulating a combustible liquid inside a gelatinous solid. In this case, I make the gel by first creating a solution of calcium acetate, the primary biproduct of the reaction between the calcium carbonate in eggshells and the acetic acid in vinegar. Boiling the liquid concentrates the calcium acetate, which is really soluble in water, but much less soluble in alcohols. So when the alcohol fuel is added, it immediately causes the calcium acetate to precipitate out as a solid, trapping the alcohol in the process, and forming a colorless gel that works really well for toasting marshmallows! #c#chemistrychemteacherphil #learnontiktok

Rubber tires are essentially composed of a single molecule of cross linked polyisoprene. The old tire patches I use in this video are little more than metal discs filled with a combustable mixture with a thin rubber patch on the underside. When the mixture is ignited, it gets hot enough to cause the rubber in the patch to vulcanize with the rubber in the tube, creating a strong airtight patch, in spite of the fact that these patches are more than 75 years old! #c#chemistrychemteacherphil #learnontiktok