@chemteacherphil

@chemteacherphil

Phillip Cook

Do science Stay curious Be happy 🧪💥🧪

Likes: 60.5M

Followers: 3.9M

Following: 40

Making all the popcorn pop at once. #chemistry #chemteacherphil

10 days ago

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You can make chalk do something really weird just by heating it super hot. Chalk is made of calcium carbonate, and heating it causes the chalk to decompose into carbon dioxide gas and calcium oxide, or lime. If you keep heating the lime to about 2500 C it will begin to glow with a blinding white light. This “limelight” is the result of candoluminescence and calcium oxide was used in theatres in the 19th century in calcium lights to illuminate the stage. So when an actor was illuminated by a calcium light, they were “basking in the limelight”, which is where the phrase comes from! Science!!! #chemistry #chemteacherphil #candoluminescence #limelight

17 days ago

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Hydrogen is the lightest element on the periodic table, and is also happens to be the perfect green fuel for buses! The hydrogen powered buses that @Foothill Transit is rolling out use hydrogen gas and oxygen in the air to generate electricity using fuel cells, which convert energy stored in chemical bonds into electrical energy. These buses are great because they emit zero carbon, and can be refueled quickly, just like their diesel powered counterparts! #foothilltransit #greeningbig

1 month ago

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This is why we call it the whoosh bottle demo. #chemistry #chemteacherphil

1 month ago

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Polyurethane, discovered by chemist Otto Bayer in the 1930s, has transformed from a scientific breakthrough to a ubiquitous material in modern life. Polyurethane is made through the polymerization reaction of isocyanates and polyols, and its versatility quickly became evident during World War II when it was used for insulating aircraft fuel lines to prevent the fuel inside from freezing. In the 1950s, polyurethane foams emerged, revolutionizing comfort in furniture and bedding. Today, polyurethane is everywhere. It's the cushioning in mattresses and footwear, the insulation in buildings and appliances, the protective coating on surfaces, and the adhesive holding things together! #chemteacherphil #chemistry

1 month ago

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Lightsabers are actually plasma sabers. Plasma is a gas which has been zapped with enough energy to free electrons, resulting in a cloud of high energy charged ions, which are difficult to control. A lightsaber tames the plasma using electromagnetic fields, which confines the ionic particles into an elongated donut shape that looks cylindrical. And the the most powerful lightsaber? That’s up for debate but I think its Mace Windu’s purple saber, as violet light carries the most energy of all visible light. And we actually use electromagnetic containment with plasma generated in nuclear fusion reactions, where plasma temperatures can exceed 150,000,000 C, which is far beyond the temperature that any Earthly material could withstand, and ten times hotter than the core of our Sun! The electromagnetic field acts as a “magnetic bottle”, shielding everything else from the intense heat of plasma. #chemistry #chemteacherphil

2 months ago

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Just like rubber trees, dandelions contain latex, which means we can use dandelions to make car tires! This is important because rubber trees grow in limited areas around the equator, whereas dandelions grow all over the northern hemisphere in all kinds of soil. The specific cultivar of dandelion used in the production of rubber for car tires is the Russian dandelion, which produces a lot of latex, primarily stored in its roots. Continental tire produced the first dandelion based car tire in 2014 and has been ramping up production since then. How cool is that! #chemistry #chemteacherphil

2 months ago

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There is so much science and chemistry involved in making the cleaners that we use everyday. The solutions have to have the ideal mix of surfactants and detergents and these special molecules have to be able to attract a wide variety of dirt, grime and mineral deposits and be easily washed away with water. The sinks in my lab had gotten horribly dirty from years of students learning and doing chemistry. So I went to @The Home Depot and got some @Ecolab supplies to get the job done! I used two specific cleaners in this video; the heavy duty citrus cleanser to clean away greasy organic residue, and the calcium, lime and rust remover to get rid of the mineral deposits around the faucets, as the water in the science building is very hard. After a little scrubbing and a quick rinse, the sink is ready for this year’s batch of chemistry students! #EcolabTHD

2 months ago

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I’ve always wondered how Press and Seal wrap works compared to other cling films. Unlike cling films like Saran Wrap, that rely upon static electricity to stick to surfaces, Press and Seal film actually contains a food grade contact adhesive. The ingeniousness of the design is where the adhesive is located: in thousands of little dimples that have been embossed into the plastic film. This means the film won’t stick to itself or anything else until you actively press the film onto it. Pressing the film causes strong intermolecular bonds to form between the contact adhesive and the object its pressed onto, resulting in a water and airtight seal, and in this video I show that the bond that forms is so strong that you can use the wrap to make a balloon! #chemistry #materialscience #chemteacherphil #LearnOnTikTok

2 months ago

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There’s nothing quite like a free radical polymerization reaction! The green nail polish in this video is a UV gel polish. And if you’ve ever wondered how gel polish works, its all about polymerization. In this case, the reaction is started by photoinitiators in the polish, which absorb UV light, which converts them into free radicals that cause the acrylic monomers (often methacrylates) to cross-link and bond, becoming a super durable plastic resin that even the toughest solvents have a difficult time removing. And there’s an interesting story behind how acrylic nails were invented; A dentist named Fred Slack broke a nail and came up with a repair fashioned out of aluminum foil and dental acrylic. The success of his fix led to the founding of a nail company, Patti nails. Artificial nails aren’t the only thing that polymethylmethacrylates are used for, as they’re also used to make Plexiglas, eyeglass lenses and as photomasks for lithography of silicon semiconductor chips! #chemistry #chemteacherphil

3 months ago

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Most people just use matches, but I prefer a different approach. To start a campfire in my backyard, I use potassium permanganate and glycerine. When combined, the two react violently, combusting to produce potassium carbonate, manganese (III) oxide, carbon dioxide, water and a lot of heat! This combination is well known to survivalists, as potassium permanganate can also be used in water purification and wound disinfection. For me, its just a surefire way to make certain that my campfire gets going, even when the kindling is damp! #chemistry #chemteacherphil

3 months ago

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Phenolphthalein is a common pH indicator used in acid-base chemistry. But the history behind this compound is stranger than fiction! It was originally developed as a synthetic dye to compete with mauvine in the late 19th century. It was never used as a dye due to its pH sensitivity, which led to widespread use as a pH indicator. Phenolphthalein will change from colorless to pink once the pH is above 8, making it an ideal indicator for acid-base titrations. This color changing property also led to its use in a very surprising place…Hungarian white wine. In the late 19th century, Hungary experienced a devastating wine crop failure, and this led to a short supply of Hungarian wine. Feeling the pinch, many unscrupulous wine retailers repackaged cheaper foreign white wine as Hungarian. To combat this, the Hungarian government added phenolphthalein to authentic wine, as it is tasteless and colorless in wine. This allowed for quick and easy testing of wine but also led to an unanticipated outcome. Phenolphthalein is a powerful laxative, so you can imagine what would happen if you had a few glasses of the authentic phenolphthalein laced wine! The phenolphthalein wine experiment was shortlived, but an enterprising Hungarian pharmacist in Brooklyn, New York by the name of Max Kiss had an idea…why not use phenolphthalein to make a tasty laxative? The dominant laxative at the time was castor oil, which tasted horrible. His solution? Mix phenolphthalein with chocolate. He called it Ex-Lax, and it quickly became the most popular laxative in the US. His original formula remained in US Ex-Lax until 1997, when studies linked phenolphthalein to some forms of cancer and the FDA banned the use of phenolphthalein as a laxative. #chemistry #chemteacherphil #LearnOnTikTok

4 months ago

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Starting a campfire with water and a ziploc bag. #chemistry #LearnOnTikTok #chemteacherphil

4 months ago

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If you’ve ever gotten a itchy after wearing a ring or necklace, its probably due to nickel. Lots of jewelry contains metal alloys containing nickel, and this nickel reacts with acids naturally found in our sweat, which can result in irritated skin. A simple test for nickel in jewelry involves a chelation reaction using a basic solution of dimethylgloxime, which reacts and traps nickel ions, forming a cherry red precipitate in the process. Chelating agents like dimethylgloxime are commonly used to remove toxic metals due to their ability to trap heavy metal ions. To test the jewelry, I soaked a qtip in the testing solution and rubbed it on the ring for about 30 seconds, and the pink result indicates that nickel is present. And don’t worry if you have jewelry with nickel in it, you can protect yourself by applying a coat of clear nail polish to prevent the reaction and irritation. #chemistry #chemteacherphil #STEM #LearnOnTikTok

4 months ago

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This demonstration is one that you should NEVER ATTEMPT. Its dangerous, not only to prepare, but also to interact with. This is because the compound involved is so touch sensitive that even a slight breeze can cause it to explosively decompose. There’s not much use for the compound due to its nature, but it is interesting to because the molecules of nitrogen triiodide are structurally identical to that of a very stable compound, ammonia. The difference is properties is due to the size of iodine atoms (in the sensitive compound) compared to hydrogen atoms (in ammonia). The formation of bonds between nitrogen and iodine are sterically strained, and that means it doesn’t take much energy to break the bond. Once this happens, the compound rapidly decomposes (at roughly the speed of sound through a solid) forming nitrogen and iodine gases. The purple vapor that you see is the cloud of iodine vapor produced as the nitrogen triiodide decomposed. #chemistry #chemteacherphil

4 months ago

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Making black fire with table salt. #chemistry #chemteacherphil #LearnOnTikTok

8 months ago

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Heating coffee using thermite! #chemistry #LearnOnTikTok #thermochemistry

8 months ago

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