Oh, Glorious Science

A couple of days ago I visited a science fair for kids. I wanted to reignite the spark that made me fall in love with science in the first place. It had faded away whilst my studying routine seemed to have murdered every tiny bit of fascination I had for chemistry. Remembering the awe and excitement of childhood and youth while discovering inventions and theories playfully (they had lots of things, experiments to try out), was just the right thing to get over the stress of preparing exams and working in the lab.

NIGHTS

all this learning all this working all those nights just pass by

FROZEN SKIN

Your skin gets numb, aches, itches. Below 32°F (0°C) your blood vessels constrict, your skin hardens, then even the deep tissue, the muscles and nerves freeze. Your cells can’t withstand the cold anymore. They literally break, stiffen and give up. Finally the skin blackens.

There is still no real treatment to reverse the severe effects of third or fourth degree frostbite. So soak in all the warmth you can get. Today. Tomorrow. Whenever.

KJELDAHL

laboratory rub

With this freakishly steampunk-esk looking apparatus we had to use something called the Kjeldahl method in order to determine the accurate amount of nitrogen content in a sample. Besides the long waiting time this was one of the nicest experiments I had to do so far (ok, maybe I liked all the colourful stuff you have to make, too). The main reason was this apparatus which looked like something out of a mad scientist horror movie. There is a certain surreal appeal to it. It was nice watching it while the water started to boil and the whole thing worked and sweated like hell until it spilled out the pink fluid we had to analyse.