GOING “GREEN” IN THE ARCTIC

One of the smoothest, most beautiful color changes I’ve ever seen.

The reaction is methoxymethyl deprotection of one of my agonists with concentrated HCl in acetonitrile as my solvent. The color change doesn’t happen in THF!

In zero gravity, ping pong becomes real-life pong, because with no gravity to alter its course, the ball just keeps travelling straight in the same direction.

Watch the video of Kevin Fong trying to play ping pong in space.

Using the classic baking soda and vinegar demo to blow up a balloon.

Mars used to be much more Earth-like than we once thought. The Curiosity rover recently discovered high levels of manganese oxide, which can only exist in oxygen-rich environments. This means Mars used to have as much oxygen as Earth and plenty of water on its surface. Source Source 2

This bizarre-looking creature, which lurks off the coast of Chile and Peru, is part of a family of sea-dwelling marine invertebrates known as sea squirts. Despite the fact that they resemble rocks so much that they are nearly indistinguishable when surrounded by them, they contain a mass of organs surrounded by layers of blood, skin, and muscle, and will bleed when sliced or cut in half, just like any other animal. Referred to as ‘Piure’ in Spanish, they are considered a delicacy in South American countries, even though locals describe them as having a flavor that is bitter, soapy, and iodine-like. 

Mysteriously, sea squirts contains nearly ten million times the normal concentration of the rare element vanadium in their blood, and nobody knows why. It is thought to be used as a chemical deterrent against predation, but this is currently an unproven theory.

(Source)

As fundamental forces go, gravity is pretty weak. It can easily be overcome by air pressure, as this classic demo shows.

There’s an intricate world beneath our feet! [Reddit/interestingasfuck]

NASA announced Tuesday the discovery of an unprecedented number of planets beyond our solar system — astronomers have confirmed the existence of 1,284 new worlds orbiting distant stars.

These planets beyond our solar system — exoplanets — were discovered with the help of NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, which launched in 2009.

“When NASA decided to build and launch the Kepler Space Telescope, we did not know if exoplanets — especially small, rocky exoplanets — were common or rare in the galaxy,” says Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters. “We now know that exoplanets are common, that most stars in our galaxy have planetary systems, and that a reasonable fraction of the stars in our galaxy have potentially habitable planets.”

NASA Spots 1,284 New Planets, Including 9 That Are ‘Potentially Habitable’

Photo: W. Stenzel/NASA

Materials: 1. A plastic comb 2. A narrow stream of water from a tap. 3. Dry hair Steps: 1. First, turn on the water. 2. Next, run the comb through your hair about 10 times. 3. Then, slowly move the comb towards the stream of water without touching it 4. Finally, you will notice how the water bends because of static electricity. Lesson: When you comb your hair, electrons, negativity charged particles, jump from your hair to the comb, and, thus, makes the comb negatively charged. Since water has both positive and negative charged particles, it is neutral. The positive and negative charges are attracted to each other when you move the negatively charged comb towards the stream, which results in the attraction of the water's positive charged particles creating the water to bend.