Note (12/2015): Hi there! I'm taking some time off here to focus on other projects for a bit. As of October 2016, those other projects include a science book series for kids titled Things That Make You Go Yuck! -- available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon and (hopefully) a bookstore near you!

Co-author Jenn Dlugos and I are also doing some extremely ridiculous things over at Drinkstorm Studios, including our award-winning webseries, Magicland.

There are also a full 100 posts right here in the archives, and feel free to drop me a line at secondhandscience@gmail.com with comments, suggestions or wacky cold fusion ideas. Cheers!

Ionic Liquids


· Categories: Chemistry
What I’ve Learned:

Ionic liquids: When all the little ants go chemical-warfaring.
“Ionic liquids: When all the little ants go chemical-warfaring.”

An ionic liquid is a salt that’s in the liquid state. But let’s define “salt”, because in this context, it’s not just for shakers and hot buttered popcorn.

Chemically, a salt is any mixture of positively-charged ions (called “cations”) and negatively-charged ions (aka “anions”). Salts form when an acid (which contains positive ions) and a base (chock full of negative ions) mix and neutralize each other. The best-known salt is made of sodium cations and chloride anions, and it’s so common it gets the saltiest name possible: “salt”. Or “table salt”. Or “that stuff the chef forgot to put on the bean salad, and that’s why the dude got Chopped”.

Any salt can be an ionic liquid, under the right conditions — even sodium chloride. You just have to heat it to fifteen hundred degrees or so Fahrenheit.

And then pay twelve bucks at some upscale Euro-gastro-bistro to have it ladled over your artisinal free-range pommes frites, probably. Which just goes to show, you don’t really want an ionic liquid made of table salt.

Some ionic liquids are more useful, however. Most are poor electrical conductors, highly viscous and some are even liquid at room temperature. These tend to have names like 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate, which is somewhat harder to pronounce than “salt”.

It’s also harder to pronounce than the name of that Kyrgyzstani guy who plays on your favorite hockey team. Barely.

What are ionic liquids good for? Lots of stuff! Industries like cellulose processing, industrial gas storage, nuclear fuel reprocessing and waste recycling use (or are researching) ionic liquids. They’re also being tested as electrolytes in batteries, treating wounds infected with bacterial biofilms and for heat transfer in solar energy systems. All of these things are pretty important — and also kind of boring, unless you’re a chemist or a drug-resistant biofilm.

So let’s talk about ants instead.

All the ionic liquids mentioned above are artificial, created in the laboratory. In fact, not a single naturally-occurring ionic liquid had ever been observed — until scientists took a closer look at ants.

But not with a magnifying glass on a sunny day, because that’s cruel.

South American fire ants invaded the U.S. several years ago, and it’s known that their “fire” comes from a vicious burny venom made of toxic alkaloids, which are bases. They’ve recently been joined by another South American ant species called tawny crazy ants — not to be confused with Tawny crazy Kitaen, which is a whoooole other sort of ecological hazard.

These ants have been fighting over territory for ages, and the tawny ants are one of very few species that can survive the fire ant’s flesh-melting juice. Scientists only recently discovered how they do it — by secreting and coating themselves with formic acid. The acid mixes with the fire ants’ alkaloids, neutralizing it to produce a harmless ionic liquid.

With chemical defenses in place, the tawny crazy ants survive the fire ants’ onslaught 98% of the time. And they do it with the only ionic liquid known (so far) in nature. That’s one “salt of the earth” species, there.

Actual Science:
Royal Society of Chemistry – Salty solvents — ionic really
Phys.org – Researchers discover ant rivals mix venom creating first instance of naturally occurring ionic liquid
GEN – Ionic liquids penetrate skin, bust biofilms
Motherboard – How ionic liquids could keep factories from belching carbon dioxide

Image sources: University of Glasgow (ionic liquid model), Troy Nunes Is an Absolute Magician (Chopped chef), Cuz Dads Are Still People Too (hockey tongue-twister), Write a comment

· Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Sublimation


· Categories: Chemistry
What I’ve Learned:

Sublimation: it's just nature's way of cutting to the chase.
“Sublimation: It’s just nature’s way of cutting to the chase.”

The word “sublimation” can mean a number of different things. In psychology, sublimation is an emotionally-driven defense mechanism identified by Friedrich Nietzsche, and then turned by Freud into some wild-ass uncomfortable shit about your mother. Because that’s what Freud did to everything.

Sublimation can apparently also mean brainwashing someone to listen to a certain ’90s surf-ska-punk band at high volume until three in the morning, which some sadistic asshole seems to have done to our upstairs neighbor. I’d wish some sick Freudian thing on them both — but it’s the wrong way.

In scientific terms, sublimation is the process where a solid substance decides it’s not going to bother with becoming a liquid, and changes directly into a gas. Skipping the whole “melting” thing can be a real time-saver — like eating breakfast in the shower or getting dressed without underpants.

Of course, it takes a special set of circumstances for this molecular commando-ing to work. Most substances move from solid to liquid, and then liquid to gas, as the temperature rises. But at just the right combination of temperature and pressure, some compounds can be coaxed to slide straight from solid to vapor, without any of the wet stuff in between.

Which is usually not at all the way “going commando” works. So it’s all the more impressive.

Every chemical compound has something called the “triple point”, a pressure and temperature combination where it can exist in a solid, liquid and gaseous state in equilibrium. Think of it as a Zen thing — or, if you prefer, a big bowl of Neapolitan ice cream. All flavors at once, and one for all. Below this triple point, sublimation can occur. That happens at extreme conditions for most substances — but not all.

One familiar example of sublimation is often seen in science labs, haunted houses and cheesy productions of Phantom of the Opera. Namely, dry ice — which is the solid form of carbon dioxide. Instead of melting, dry ice gives off those spooky clouds of vapor that people associate with Halloween, spooky forests and black lagoons from which creatures are likely to emerge.

But even plain old water — or technically, ice — can sublimate, and at temperatures we’re familiar with. For instance, the process of freeze-drying food involves sublimation of ice crystals. So does freeze-drying’s sadder, uglier cousin, freezer burn. And glaciers and mountaintops and even comets can lose some of their ice via direct sublimation, as well.

One process that isn’t sublimation, despite the name, is (most) dye-sublimation printing. When these printers were first developed, it was thought that the dyes used literally sublimated from solid to gas — but it was later found this wasn’t the case. Still, the marketing was already in place — and you don’t say “no” to the advertising execs, so the name stuck. But in reality, only the fancier-sounding “dye sublimation heat transfer imprinting” printers are worthy of the name, and actually use sublimation.

(And just like everything in this world that needs five words to describe, they’ll cost you.)

So sublimation isn’t so strange, though it takes an odd sort of chemical shortcut to make it happen. But some days, you just don’t have time to cycle through all the phases of matter. Sublimation is just a quick way to get straight from solid to gas, without a lot of mucking about in between.

Or a lot of underpants. Like they say, sometimes science can get a little messy.

Actual Science:
Boundless – Solid to vapor process
Answers.com – Sublimation: chemistry’s phase transition
University of Toronto Scarborough – Sublimation theory
USGS – Sublimation – the water cycle

Image Sources: Explain That Stuff (phase diagram), Shower Food (just what it says), Bang 2 Write (Neapolitan scoop), The Hour (foggy Phantom)

· 1 comment
· Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Micelles


· Categories: Biology, Chemistry
What I’ve Learned:

Micelles: when the heart wants what the head hates.
“Micelles: when the heart wants what the head hates.”

Contrary to popular belief, a micelle is neither an expensive French pastry nor that nice lady currently living in the White House. Instead, a micelle is a clump of wishy-washy molecules called surfactants that can’t make the simplest decisions and probably never see any good action movies.

I’ll back up.

We have love-hate relationships with all sorts of things. Semi-sweet chocolate. That non-frozen yogurt full of bacteria that tastes like armpits. Tom Cruise.

Consider the Cruise. He makes some good movies — and a lot of okay movies — but by most accounts, he’s kind of a schmuck. Also, I think he worships Alf from that ’80s TV show; I’m not so clear on the details. The point is, your heart and your head — and any other organ you invite to the discussion — can rightfully disagree on how you feel about Tom Cruise. And they’ll disagree often, because he’s everywhere. You can’t swing a dead thetan without smacking some new movie, rerun, interview, gossip rag or ironic T-shirt featuring wee Mr. Cruise. He’s practically ubiquitous.

And that’s how surfactants feel about water, a substance almost as ubiquitous as Tom Cruise — although Waterworld really hurt its career.

(Oh, let’s face it. Water hasn’t done a really good flick since Splash. It’s been treading itself ever since.)

Back to surfactants. These are stringy little molecules with separate “head” and “tail” regions. They’re amphiphilic, which just means that one end is attracted to water (or is “hydrophilic”) and the other is repelled by water (aka, “hydrophobic”). They’re like schizophrenic Frosted Mini-Wheats, minus the wheat. And the frosting. And the talking commercial mascot.

(It’s not a perfect analogy. Breakfast cereals can only teach us so much.)

If you dropped one surfactant molecule into a pool of water, it might well go crazy. The water-hating end would flop around, trying to get away, while the water-loving side would soak it all in. All confuzzled, it might contort or explode or lock itself in its room and write awful goth poetry.

But dump a whole bunch of surfactant molecules into water, and they make a plan. The water-repelled ends huddle up and glom together, drawing the water-attracted ends around them on the outside. The result is a big ball called a micelle, with all the brave hydrophilic bits exposed to the water, and the tender hydrophobic bits safely tucked inside.

(Yes, that’s basically the plot to the second half of 300. I’m telling you, water is really clutching at straws for good ideas these days.)

So why are micelles important? Well, they’re how detergents work, for starters. Soaps can pull dirt and nasty bits that wouldn’t normally dissolve in water into the center of their micelles and carry them away. From Dawn to Tide to Irish Spring, micelles make things cleaner.

More important, micelles are critical for life. There’s a lipid bilayer forming basically a big micelle (though technically a “liposome”) around every living cell; it’s called a cell membrane, and all our important DNA and enzymes and junk would leak out without it. Smaller micelles are formed in cells to push or pull in materials, including several vitamins (A, D, E and K) that we couldn’t process otherwise. And scientists can create artificial micelles to deliver drugs into cells directly.

So the next time you feel torn about some wacko celebrity, don’t let it get to you. Tom Cruise won’t live forever (probably), and if you had the same inner conflict about water, you’d never leave the house. Or bathe. Or make a decent cup of coffee.

But micelles make wishy-washy work. And they’ve never even seen Top Gun. Respect.

Actual Science:
Elmhurst College – Micelles
Frontiers in Pharmacology – Polymeric micelles for drug delivery
Chemistry Explained – Soap
Idaho Milk Products – What is a casein micelle?
Lab Muffin – What is micellar water and how does it work?

Image sources: University Federico II (micelle model), DC Dental (Tom Cruise), Business Insider (weepy Mini-Wheat), Chemistry in Your Cupboard (hot detergent action)

· 2 comments
· Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Polymerase Chain Reaction


· Categories: Biology, Chemistry, Genetics
What I’ve Learned:

PCR: Putting polymerase to good use since 1983.
“PCR: Putting polymerase to good use since 1983.”

The polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, is perhaps the most important laboratory technique in modern genetics. And let’s face it — there aren’t a hell of a lot of “olde-time genetics” to compare with. You don’t see prehistoric cave paintings of chromosomes, is all I’m saying.

And while “polymerase chain reaction” is a scary-sounding mouthful, you can break it down with just a little bit of background. So simple, even a cave painter could understand it.

First things first: PCR was invented back in 1983. One PM (PST), a PHD from the PAC-10, high on PCP, was driving his POS down the PCH with his PYT and poof! PCR just popped into his head.

(Of course, that’s not precisely true. Serious science doesn’t work that way.

He was actually on LSD. So… um, yeah.)

Origins aside, here’s how the polymerase chain reaction works. Under normal conditions, DNA is double-stranded — two strings of genomic sequence wound around each other. But like cheap glue, tight leather pants and bad combovers, when DNA gets hot enough, it comes apart at the seams.

In organisms, there’s a class of enzymes that uses one strand of DNA as a template and builds the complementary strand, producing a new double-stranded DNA sequence. These enzymes are called polymerases — the ‘P’ in PCR — and we wouldn’t be here without them.

(For that matter, neither would fish or philodendrons or athlete’s foot fungus. The job polymerases do, synthesizing sequence from DNA templates, is important for copying genes, making proteins and pretty much everything else a growing cell needs. Which is the only kind of cell there is, really.)

The ‘chain reaction’ part of PCR is performing this process over and over in the lab. With a little molecular juggling, scientists can snip out or “prime” most any sequence for PCR, then produce millions upon millions of copies by cycling through heating and copying, heating and copying, until they’ve made all the DNA they need.

See? Polymerase chain reaction, just like it says. Simple. Ish.

The tremendously useful thing about PCR is, it works on just about any snippet of DNA a researcher might get hot and scientifically-horny about. And each cycle doubles the amount of sequence, give or take a kilobase. You can set up a machine in the evening with some barely-there scrap of genetic fluff, and come back in the morning to bucketfuls of DNA to play with.

Well, not actual bucketfuls. Biochemical bucketfuls. Everything’s relative. But it’s plenty.

So what is PCR used for? At this point, pretty much everything that involves DNA. You name it — mutation screening, DNA fingerprinting, tissue typing, genetic mapping, invasive virus and bacteria detection, parental testing, gene sequencing, genetic mapping and more. Basically, when biochemists do anything past making coffee in the lab, it usually includes PCR.

Of course, scientists don’t actually make coffee in the lab.

Not unless they’re on LSD, anyway. So… um, yeah.

Actual Science:
Science Magazine – PCR and cloning
University of Utah – PCR virtual lab
National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) – PCR
NobelPrize.org – The PCR method – a DNA copying machine
Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News (GEN) – PCR @ 30: the past, the present and the future

Image sources: UFPE (Brasil) Disciplina de Genetica (PCR), John West (combover), Andrew Wittman and A Time for Such a Word (DNA buckets) and The Premature Curmudgeon (Albert Hofmann / LSD science)

· Write a comment
· Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Transactinides


· Categories: Chemistry, Physics
What I’ve Learned:

Transactinides: They're not heavy. They're your metals.
“Transactinides: They’re not heavy. They’re your metals.”

The transactinides are a group of fifteen elements — fundamental building blocks of matter, like carbon or hydrogen or double-sided duct tape. But transactinides are pretty special elements, in a number of ways.

First, the transactinide elements are all radioactive, which means they spontaneously split apart into other elements, releasing energy in the process. What’s more, these elements are highly volatile — even the most stable break down within about twenty-eight hours. Much like that drama major you dated back in college.

Transactinides are also the heaviest elements known to exist — and none have ever been detected in nature. We’ve only found them in the laboratory, by cramming atoms of smaller elements together until they stick for a few seconds, like some kind of chemically-unstable PB&J.

(I don’t know what a PB&J decays into, exactly. Strawberry Pop-Tarts? A jelly doughnut? Uncrustables?

This is why you don’t see many snack-related analogies in chemistry textbooks. Clearly, sandwich science is still in its infancy.)

These elements are so bleeding-edge, they don’t even get real names until they’ve been produced in a lab and the results tested and repeated. At that point, a newly “confirmed” transactinide is usually named in honor of someone important to science. Like Rutherfordium was named after physicist Ernest Rutherford, or Seaborgium for a race of Doctor Who villains, I think, or Livermorium, which was named after something a bird said in an Edgar Allen Poe poem. Science is all over the map sometimes.

But before those fancy names, the more theoretical transactinides get systematic titles to identify them. These provisional names are built from Greek and Latin roots for numbers, smooshed together like the ephemeral atomic phenomena they describe. So the element with atomic number 113, for instance, is currently called ununtrium, while the heaviest transactinide, with atomic number 118, is ununoctium.

(Nobody in science really uses these names, for two reasons. First, it’s simpler to just say “element 118”. And second, nobody wants to spend their career trying to produce something that sounds like a disease you get from licking raw chicken meat.)

While most of the periodic table is well established at this point, physical chemists still work on transactinide elements — usually trying to produce the ones not yet confirmed. Just this week, element 117 — or ununseptium, if you prefer your science Gregorian chant-style — was confirmed by a lab in Germany. It was first synthesized by a joint American-Russian team in 2010, who fired a beam of heavy calcium isotopes into a bunch of berkelium atoms to get the job done.

That was a challenge in itself. Berkelium currently only exists on this planet as the result of synthesis experiments and “nuclear incidents” — like an H-bomb test, or Chernobyl disaster.

Also, berkelium’s half life is less than a year, so if the scientists couldn’t agree quickly about how to do the experiment, the berkelium they made for it would have already turned into something else.

So basically, this marks the only time in recorded history when Americans and Russians have gotten their shit together in short order to produce something good. From sammiches to glasnost, is there anything transactinides can’t do?

Actual Science:
SciTopics – The superheavy elements
Compound Interest – Element infographics – the transactinides
Scientific American – Superheavy element “ununbium” has ordinary chemistry
Motherboard – Element 117 may finally get a real name
Phys.org – Modern-day alchemy: a recipe for a new superheavy element

Image sources: Chemicool (ununseptium), Wikipedia and Philica and Smuckers and StarTribune.com and SodaHead (PB&J decay), What Culture (Cybermen/”Seaborgmen”), GlobalResearch (Putin/Obama)

· Write a comment
· Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

« Older articles
Newer articles »