the world around you is in a constant flurry of chemical reactions that we never
even see and rarely stop to think about the chemistry of everyday life usually only
becomes relevant to us when things get a little dangerous you spill gasoline and you shoot at
the gas station he accidentally swallows acid that sort of thing who's living this life and
it's a shame we don't pay more attention because chemistry is pretty amazing so let's take a look
number 10 most acid can't dissolve glass glass is one of the most chemically unique substances
in the world it was discovered sometime around 3500 bc and yet it is still very mysterious to
many people to this day people like to spread the popular myth that glass isn't even a solid
but liquid that's not true but it is a testament to the unusual chemistry of glass that so many
people find it perplexing even today despite being remarkably fragile the atomic structure
of glass is both stable and strong it's chiefly made of silicone dioxide which forms strong
stable chemical bonds and while this does nothing to make your favorite bars resistant to a hammer
when it comes to chemicals it's incredibly durable glass is one of the most resistant materials we
have it can easily stand up to acids which would destroy plastics and metals for an acid to eat
through glass it needs to be corrosive enough to destabilize the silicon dioxide bonds something
like sulfuric acid can dissolve most metals and has even been used in the past to dissolve human
bodies however it's safely stored in glass because it's just not corrosive enough to get through the
chemical bonds it's worth noting that most acids suffer the same problem but not all
the most highly corrosive acids can dissolve glass which includes any acid that is fluorine based the
electronegativity of fluorine is strong enough to strip electrons from the glass and break down the
chemical bonds dissolving the substance 9. water expands when it freezes unlike almost everything
else chemistry 101 says that matter expands when it gets hot and contracts when it gets cold this
is true but it's not universally true it's true with an asterisk for most substances this makes
sense if you apply heat that is adding energy that energy causes the atoms to move faster
and they push away from one another a bit because the added energy helps them resist the attractive
forces between molecules this causes the matter to expand the most fun example you can have with this
idea is water heat up water and it evaporates into a vapor form the water molecules become
less dense and the volume increases we've all seen this happen on the stove when boiling a pot
and as the water cools down it condenses again returning to a liquid state
it becomes less dense and this means it should continue to do so as the water gets even colder
but it doesn't at freezing temperatures most other substances will contract but water likes
to be unpredictable a normal crystalline structure is densely formed the atoms are organized more
tightly so the structure can be more compact and physically smaller think of it like packing
a suitcase if you fold and organize everything you can fit more into the space available water
will contract down to around 4 degrees celsius at this point it begins to expand again it will
increase in size by nine percent by the time it reaches the freezing point this has all to do
with hydrogen bonds the normal atomic structure of water is a bit of a jumble the hydrogen and oxygen
molecules are held together in a slap dash way but as water freezes the hydrogen bonds become
more organized one hydrogen evenly spaced between two oxygen this repeats and creates a very neat
lattice structure but the result is there are clearly defined spaces between the atoms that are
not present in the liquid state these spaces cause the entire molecule to expand ever so slightly the
ice is therefore less dense than liquid water and it's the reason ice doesn't sink there are
also empty pockets that allow it to float number eight all hydrogen is over 13 billion years old
you may have heard someone waxing poetic once saying that we're all made of stars it's a
common sentiment and the idea is that we're made of the same stuff as the whole universe around us
and that's more or less true but it's actually far more interesting than that little poetic
sound bite makes it seem the universe came into being about 13.7 billion years ago at that time
big bang created everything every single thing we know today started at that moment but some of it
took longer to come into being than other things hydrogen was the first element which makes sense
one proton and two electrons in each atom it's simple and abundant about 75 of all present mass
in the universe is hydrogen after hydrogen was formed helium came along that has two electrons
and two protons and you could go along the periodic table to see what came next with
lithium and so on and so forth many elements were forged in early stars things like carbon
which makes up the bones of living things and trace elements of stuff like copper or
magnesium all of that stuff is billions of years old and is what makes us stars so to speak but
hydrogen is outside of that hydrogen was not made in a star because it predates stars and the human
body is about 10 hydrogen by mass so 10 of us is older than stars it's the stuff of creation
itself 10 of a human body is made of the origin of the entire universe because that hydrogen
every atom dates back 13.7 billion years number seven absolute zero is impossible to reach
the atoms in any substance are constantly in motion the colder something gets the slower the
atoms move that's the basic chemistry behind freezing anything and as we know different
substances have different freezing points pure water freezes at zero degrees celsius or minus
32 degrees fahrenheit ethanol freezes at minus 114 fahrenheit or minus 174 celsius and science
has determined what the literal coldest point ever could be and they call it absolute zero
at minus 459.67 degrees fahrenheit the atoms in any substance would cease moving entirely atoms
need energy to move at absolute zero all of that energy has been tapped and there is nothing left
the substance would truly be frozen solid and essentially chemically dead in a way that is
kind of hard to define this has to do with the heisenberg uncertainty principle according to
heisenberg you can never know both a particle's position and speed at absolute zero you could
know the speed which would be zero but not the position if you tried to find the position that
process would actually give the atom some energy and therefore it's not really absolute zero when
considering atoms as waves the closer they get to absolute zeros the larger their waveforms
get at absolute zero its waveform would be the size of the entire universe which is
perplexing and not possible the atom in this case simply can't exist that's not to say that science
hasn't done a great job reaching cold temperatures in 2021 we managed to cool atoms down to 0.000
of a kelvin number six two pieces of the same metal can bond in space many of us take shop
class in high school and so have a little bit of an experience with welding there are various ways
we can weld but the idea is basically the same you use heat to melt metal and allow two pieces
to bond together as one it seems pretty simple and while there are actually many ways to weld metals
the basic principle we're concerned with here is when the metal is heated to its melting point so
the atoms of both pieces intermingle usually with a filler material included these two pieces become
one as the metals cool down in space there's an amazing wrinkle in the process of how welding
takes place in space cold welding occurs two metals can be bonded without the addition of
heat the science behind it is quite fascinating here on earth if you have two pieces of copper
there is going to be oxidation on the surface of each oxygen water whatever else has come into
contact with the metal and made a microscopic layer on top of it this layer is like a shell
and it's literally unavoidable in an atmosphere in space oxidation is obviously not an issue
since there's no oxygen if you take two pieces of identical metal in the vacuum of space and
they're completely clean then there is no layer of anything between the two if you touch them
together there is literally nothing separating the atoms of one from the other the atoms between
the first and second piece have no reason not to share space and connect with each other through
chemical bonds you can put them together in a cold world and they become one if you ensure
100 contact between the two pieces meaning no gaps then the bond will be perfectly solid 5.
dna can make clothing flame resistant the average person likely knows a lot of things about dna and
how it's changed the world from screening for and treating illnesses to solving crimes to
potentially resurrecting amusement parks full of dinosaurs it is one of the most well-known parts
of science these days but when you get into the finer details there's a lot of fascinating and
weird things to learn about dna one of the nuttiest things dna is flame retardant dna
structure is supported by a skeleton of phosphate try to burn that and you just make phosphoric acid
that acid strips water molecules away and leaves a carbon residue behind it also produces ammonia
which prevents combustion so trying to burn dna results in a one-two punch of fire fighting
chemical reactions the result is a layer of carbon that prevents combustion the process of coating
cotton in dna is not super difficult but it's also not currently the most practical safety method at
our disposal it's a little pricey and it comes off when you wash the clothes but the science
is solid overcome those two factors and you can have a way to flameproof clothing that doesn't
alter the look or feel of the fabric and it's also environmentally friendly number four the sun isn't
actually on fire one of the most obvious things to anyone who looks up at the sky on a clear day
is that the sun is a giant ball of fire in the sky take a look at some photos of the sun provided by
nasa and you'll see all these crazy flares and the swirling burning surface which just
further confirmed that the center of our solar system is a cosmic furnace a 432 690 mile radius
inferno that weighs about two octillion tons that's a hell of a thing but it's also wrong
the size isn't wrong and the weight isn't wrong but the action is the sun is not on fire this is
one of those things that seems almost too obvious when you start to wonder how it can burn it all
with no oxygen out there that's because many people think of the sun in the wrong way the sun
doesn't burn like charcoal on a barbecue instead it's a massive nuclear fusion reaction hydrogen
proteins are fusing inside the sun to form helium this reaction produces massive energy in the form
of both light and heat of course there are other reactions happening as well deuterium forms and
the helium nuclei come in several forms gamma rays are released and the energy is all pushed out from
the core to what we'd consider the surface of the sun this is all released as light and heat and it
makes it look like the sun is on fire even though it's technically not number three asparagus makes
everyone's urine smell but not everyone can smell it arguably the most important chemistry-related
question of our time is why does asparagus make your pee smell funny there's more science
behind this than a lot of people realize however most people after eating asparagus have noticed
that it causes a strange musty smell when they urinate not all people experience this however so
what's going on it's a bunch of oddly unique science asparagus contains the appropriately
named asparagus acid this substance on its own does not smell however eating it causes chemical
changes and the production of new biochemical compounds in your body these new compounds
filtered through your insides and then excreted as urine make a unique odor and this happens to
everyone now some people in the world have not experienced the odor which is to say they eat
asparagus and smell nothing but just because you don't smell something doesn't mean it's not there
as it happens the ability to smell this odor is a unique part of science some people are genetically
incapable of smelling it so while they produce the same smelly compounds they just don't notice
it because they don't have the p smelling gene number two superfluid helium seems to defy physics
we already touched on absolute zero as a concept but what these ultra low temperatures can do is
also a marvel of chemistry few things get weirder than helium when it's cooled down to near absolute
zero when you bring it to 3.2 degrees above that temperature helium changes from a gas to a liquid
it becomes what scientists call a superfluid and they're not just using that term lightly
superfluid helium basically laughs in the face of what most people think they know about science in
liquid form helium is able to flow upward it will climb right up the side of containers that are
used to hold it spin it in a circle and it will spin for eternity no longer trapped by the slowing
effects of things like friction ironically if you just rotate the container the liquid will stay
inside this is what makes it super in the chemical use of the word it flows without resistance the
liquid has no entropy or viscosity it can even pass through membranes that otherwise seem solid
superfluid helium's weird properties are thanks to something called bose-einstein condensation
in simple terms that means that at ultra-low temperatures the atoms all overlap so much that
it's like making one big single atom everything works together to give it unique properties you
can't find a matter where the atoms are all still acting as individuals and lucky for us it can
actually be observed in lab conditions number one pencil lead and diamonds are chemically identical
one gram of diamond could be worth around 36 000 this wouldn't be a pristine and
valuable diamond either this is just a basic bargain diamond a metric ton of graphite that
stuff you find in pencils will cost you about 690 us dollars suffice it to say diamonds cost a heck
of a lot more than graphite the reason this is in any way interesting is that chemically graphite
and diamond are exactly the same thing both are made of pure carbon and nothing else the reason
diamond and the tip of your pencil can be the same thing is one of the quirks of chemistry
that makes it so interesting it's not enough that the atoms inside of a substance are the
same they need to be organized in the same way it's like making eggs for breakfast you could
poach an egg fry an egg or scramble an egg and get three very different looking meals without
ever adding an extra ingredient carbon's kind of the same thing atoms of carbon in a diamond
are bonded in tetrahedral structures every atom attaches to four more atoms this three-dimensional
arrangement is the secret to the strength of a diamond gravite on the other hand forms in
sheet-like layers where the atoms are bonded to three other atoms at the corners to make hexagons
the difference in structure makes graphite much softer soft enough that it flakes off on paper and
can even be used as a lubricant so i really hope you found this video interesting if you did please
do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and as always thank you for watching