Chemistry & Elements — Posts

90 posts on "Chemistry & Elements" by Shlomo Strauss — bilingual writing on technology, science, and business.

• Beyond Food: How Soybeans Power Jet Engines and Plastics — Beyond agriculture, soybeans possess unique biological properties driving innovations in jet fuel, winter tires, and safer plastics.
• The Technologies Turning Carbon Into a Profitable Industry — New technologies are turning carbon capture from a costly necessity into a profitable industry by using emissions to create resources like concrete.
• Earthquake Lights, Mie Scattering and Venezuela's Red Sky — While dust caused Venezuela's red skies via Mie scattering, true earthquake lights stem from tectonic pressure and may help predict future tremors.
• Why rocket explosions on the launch pad keep happening — From cryogenic fuel physics to the New Glenn explosion, this piece explains the chain of failure modes that make every successful launch an engineering…
• How Camelid Nanobodies Are Reshaping Snake Antivenom Development — Researchers are using camelid nanobodies to create stable, highly effective snake antivenoms that can be mass-produced in the lab.
• Harnessing Bacterial Self-Destruction to Target Cancer Cells — University of Utah researchers adapted a bacterial defense mechanism to selectively destroy cancer cells' DNA without harming healthy tissue.
• The Geopolitical Battle Over LED Manufacturing — The transition to gallium nitride in LED manufacturing has sparked a geopolitical struggle due to its critical military and communication applications.
• How Quantum Tunneling Powers the Race for Nuclear Fusion — Driven by quantum tunneling and billions in investments, researchers are racing to achieve net energy gain from commercial nuclear fusion.
• How a Rare Helium Isotope Cools Quantum Computers — Helium-3, a rare isotope sourced from nuclear warheads and the Moon, is essential for cooling quantum computers to near absolute zero.
• How the Global Helium Crisis Threatens Advanced Technology — An Iranian attack on Qatari facilities and the depletion of US reserves have triggered a severe helium shortage, threatening chipmaking and MRI systems.
• The Challenges and Strategic Value of a Far Side Moon Base — Despite communication and terrain challenges, the Moon's far side offers vital resources like ice and helium-3, sparking a new geopolitical race.
• Antimatter transported for the first time in human history — A look at how CERN researchers transported antimatter in a purpose-built container, the physics behind its staggering cost, and its potential use in…
• The engineering inside Tesla's motors that most drivers never think — Dual motors, carbon-fiber sleeves, and silicon carbide inverters — a clear look at the engineering solutions Tesla built into its electric drivetrains.
• Natural gas feeds the world — here is how it travels to do so — From fertilizer production to cryogenic tankers sailing at -161°C, this piece explains why natural gas underpins global food supply and modern industry.
• Hormuz Island: red ochre, ancient salt, and a strait that shapes — The vivid red shores of Iran's Hormuz Island owe their color to iron oxide used locally as spice and pigment — and the island's strategic past echoes in…
• Iron Beam: the engineering behind Israel's high-power laser defense — From ytterbium fiber bundles to real-time atmospheric correction, a clear-eyed look at how Iron Beam combines dozens of lasers into a single 100-kilowatt…
• WD-40's trade secret is not much of a secret — and it doesn't matter — WD-40's formula is publicly listed and easily replicated, yet smart branding and consumer habit have built a company worth over $3 billion.
• How a Japanese toilet maker became a key supplier to the chip — Toto's mastery of ceramic shrinkage, developed for luxury toilets, led to an electrostatic wafer-holding technology now in high demand as AI chip…
• The hidden damage trail of geomagnetic storms — Beyond the aurora's beauty, geomagnetic storms accelerate pipeline corrosion, collapsed Quebec's power grid in 1989, and destroyed 38 Starlink satellites…
• The glass fabric holding the chip industry together — and Intel's — Why boron-free T-Glass became a critical bottleneck for AI chip production, and how Intel is developing a pure glass substrate as a future alternative.
• Sugar cane: from white sugar to jet fuel and nano-cellulose — The world's highest-yield crop produces far more than table sugar — its byproducts include bioplastics, sustainable aviation fuel, Lego pieces, and…
• Why Chinese waste-to-energy plants are hungry for Western trash — China built over 1,000 waste-to-energy plants, but moisture-heavy local garbage drops furnace temperatures into the dioxin-forming range — making dry…
• Molten salt and the eutectic point powering next-generation solar — A Chinese concentrating solar plant using 30,000 heliostats and a eutectic molten-salt mixture can store thermal energy for up to six hours, outperforming
• The physics of bungee cords, and why summer jumps feel better — From vulcanized natural rubber to the Gough-Joule effect, this piece explains the material science that makes a modern bungee cord safe — and why cold…
• From banana leaves to the lab: the science behind chocolate — A breakdown of the fermentation process that turns raw cacao into chocolate, alongside the lab-grown cacao technology that could reshape the global…
• Breaking a CPU overclocking record with liquid helium — From quartz oscillators to liquid-helium cooling at near absolute zero, this post explains the physics behind pushing a CPU past 9 GHz to set a world…
• Superbugs, antibiotic resistance, and the AI hunting new cures — Overuse of antibiotics, especially in China, is accelerating the rise of untreatable superbugs — and AI models trained on billions of molecules may be…
• Germanium: the element inside your phone, missiles, and quantum — A look at germanium's unique optical and electronic properties, its role in 5G, thermal imaging, and missiles, and the chalcogenide glass competing to…
• Gallium: the metal that melts in your hand and corrodes aircraft — A concise look at gallium's unusual properties, its role in power electronics and military radar, the complexity of refining it, and why China's dominance
• How salt kills living cells, and the statistics behind osmosis — A concise explanation of osmosis, why high salt concentration outside a cell causes its death, and how certain organisms survive in extreme saline…
• The $400 million machine at the heart of modern chip manufacturing — A look at how ASML's extreme ultraviolet lithography machine works, and the startup betting X-rays can do the job better and cheaper.
• Lab-grown diamonds are becoming a critical component in chips and — Lab-grown diamonds, which conduct heat five times better than copper, may soon enable faster chips and room-temperature quantum computing qubits.
• Sodium batteries: a cheaper, safer alternative to lithium — Sodium-ion batteries offer lower cost, improved safety, and better cold-weather performance than lithium, though their lower energy density currently…
• Ethanol: from sugarcane and yeast to fuel, antiseptics and tax law — A concise look at ethanol — how it is produced from plants, why it is considered a relatively clean fuel, and why industrial grades are deliberately…
• Extremophiles: life forms that thrive where others cannot survive — From cold-adapted enzymes in laundry detergents to heat-loving microbes in a Gobi Desert hot spring, this piece explores how extremophiles work and why…
• Why skin darkens in the sun, and what an orange shark has to do with — A clear look at how melanin and carotenoids protect living cells from UV radiation, illustrated by a rare shark observed off Costa Rica with both albinism
• Hydrogen cars: how they work and what is holding them back — From the electrochemistry of the fuel cell to the challenges of green hydrogen production, a clear look at the technology, its promise, and its current…
• Methane: from swamp gas to Saturn's moon and a crater that won't stop — A concise explainer on methane covering its biological origins, its role shaping Titan's landscape, and the Darvaza crater that has burned since 1971.
• Iodine: from table salt to spacecraft propellant — A weekly science digest covering iodine's role in the body, its energetic reaction with titanium, and its potential as a spacecraft propellant.
• How a fusion reactor could turn mercury into gold — A US startup claims that bombarding mercury-198 with neutrons inside a fusion reactor can produce gold as a byproduct — here is the science and the…
• Ammonium nitrate: why the same compound fertilizes crops and levels — A concise chemical explanation of why ammonium nitrate is both a highly effective fertilizer and the powerful explosive behind disasters like the 2020…
• From mining waste to battery materials: olivine's unlikely second — A New Zealand startup has developed a process to extract magnesium, silicate, and battery-grade NMC from olivine powder — an industrial waste product — in
• Why a glowing copper ball barely scorches a coconut shell — Lignin in the coconut shell undergoes endothermic pyrolysis, absorbing heat and forming an insulating char layer — a property that also makes lignin…
• Carbon: the element that makes life possible and threatens it — From DNA to fossil fuels and carbon monoxide poisoning, a concise look at the chemistry that makes carbon both essential to life and a source of serious…
• How FPSO platforms use hydrostatics and electrostatics to process oil — A look at how FPSO vessels exploit hydrostatic pressure, gravity separation, and electrostatic fields to extract, process, and store crude oil far…
• Bioluminescence: from glowing cave larvae to self-lit street trees — The luciferase-luciferin reaction behind New Zealand's glowing cave worms also points toward engineered luminescent trees as a future alternative to…
• Why your jeans are yellow before they turn blue — the chemistry of — A concise look at indigo's history and chemistry — from death penalties for smuggling it to a Nobel-winning synthesis and the redox reaction behind every…
• The children's uranium kit from the 1950s that became one of — The Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab sold radioactive ore samples and a Geiger counter to children in the early 1950s, with fewer than 5,000 units made…
• Solid fuel and staging: the physics behind Iran's Sajjil ballistic — A clear explanation of solid-fuel propulsion, multi-stage rocket design, and the extreme engineering challenges that the Sajjil missile's unusual contrail
• The physics of glass: why it shatters and how it is made stronger — From borosilicate to tempered glass, the post explains the physical mechanisms behind heat resistance and impact strength in different types of glass.
• Why ice crystals in cirrus clouds create rings of light around the — A clear explanation of how hexagonal ice crystals in cirrus clouds refract sunlight at precise angles to produce single or double halos around the sun.
• Aluminium is the most recyclable material humans use — From Napoleon's dinner table to modern recycling plants, aluminium's near-perfect recyclability and staggering energy savings make it unlike any other…
• Cherenkov radiation: when particles outrun light in water — A clear explanation of why nuclear reactor cores glow blue, and how the same physics underlies ship wakes and sonic booms.
• Soap bubbles, surface tension and Plateau's laws: the physics of — From the Laplace equation to Plateau's 120-degree rule, this post explains how surface tension and energy minimization shape soap bubbles, honeycombs, and
• The neutrino that nearly broke the speed of light barrier — From a $100-million underground detector in Japan to a loose cable that sent physics into a panic, this piece traces the neutrino's strangest moments.
• A controlled nuclear blast to reverse decades of carbon emissions — A proposed geoengineering plan would use an 81-gigaton nuclear detonation to pulverize basalt rock, absorbing 30 years' worth of global carbon emissions…
• Cesium: the metal behind atomic clocks and nuclear fallout — From defining the international second to persisting in post-nuclear fallout, this post examines the remarkable atomic properties that make cesium both…
• Why a pickle glows yellow when electric current passes through it — Sodium ions in a pickle emit light at 589 nm when excited by electric current — the same principle behind old sodium street lamps.
• Why electronic solder is exactly 63% tin and 37% lead — The specific tin-lead ratio in solder is no accident — it forms a eutectic mixture that lowers the melting point to 183°C, protecting circuit boards…
• Why rain smells like earth, and how that knowledge may improve food — Scientists identified the specific nasal receptors behind geosmin detection, with plans to mimic them in electronic sensors for food and water quality…
• Cryogenic freezing: how close is science to reviving the dead? — A new protein from silkworm eggs enabled researchers to revive frozen mouse brain cells, yet reviving an entire human body remains scientifically out of…
• The structural secret that makes teeth nearly unbreakable — Tooth enamel's hexagonal hydroxyapatite rods and flexible amelogenin protein combine to withstand hundreds of kilograms of pressure while resisting sudden
• Lab-grown heart tissue beats like the real thing — Using pluripotent stem cells, scientists grow beating cardiac tissue in the lab — a breakthrough for drug testing, even as a full artificial heart remains
• Why ping-pong balls explode out of a container when doused with — Liquid nitrogen at minus 196°C vaporizes on contact with ping-pong balls and expands 700-fold in volume, launching the balls in every direction.
• Neodymium: the element behind color-shifting glass and electric — The electron structure of neodymium causes glass to shift color under different light sources — and the same element puts over a kilogram of rare-earth…
• Fool's gold and its surprising potential in clean energy — Pyrite, long dismissed as fool's gold, is a natural semiconductor that researchers are investigating for use in solar cells and high-capacity lithium…
• The physics behind fireworks colors — From metal salt combustion to electron energy transitions, this post explains how fireworks get their colors, shapes, and precise timing.
• Supercooled water and the physics of instant freezing — A clear explanation of supercooling — why pure water stays liquid below 0°C, how a gentle squeeze triggers chain-reaction freezing, and the link to…
• The triple point: where water boils and freezes at once — An explanation of water's triple point — the precise temperature and pressure at which all three phases coexist — and what it has to do with pressure…
• Sodium polyacrylate: the polymer that absorbs 800 times its volume in — A clear breakdown of how sodium polyacrylate's ionic polymer chains attract water molecules, why salt reduces that capacity, and the role osmosis plays in
• The Rehbinder Effect: how water makes glass resist shattering — Discovered in 1928, the Rehbinder effect explains how surface-active substances weaken intermolecular bonds in solids, making materials like glass…
• How pure oxygen can make a diamond vanish — When a diamond is heated to extreme temperatures and exposed to pure oxygen, every carbon atom oxidizes into CO₂, dissolving the hardest natural material…
• Why titanium screws change color: the physics of electrochemical — A titanium dioxide layer formed by electrochemical redox produces a spectrum of colors through light interference, not changes in chemical composition.
• The physics of what happens when lightning strikes a tree — A lightning bolt carrying billions of watts superheats water inside a tree until it explodes, and the post explains how lightning forms and travels from…
• Vantablack: the material that absorbs 99.965% of visible light — A concise look at how carbon nanotubes make Vantablack so extraordinarily dark, its uses in telescopes and space, and the art-world controversy it sparked.
• Why batteries explode under pressure — A step-by-step look at battery anatomy and the chain reaction that turns physical pressure into fire and heat.
• Why a flame conducts electricity: fire as plasma — A flame placed between charged metal plates acts as an electrical conductor because fire is a plasma full of free electrons and positive ions.
• Van de Graaff generator: how a spinning belt builds millions of volts — A clear breakdown of how a Van de Graaff generator accumulates extreme voltage, and why high voltage alone does not determine the danger of electric shock.
• Dendritic agate and the fractal geometry hiding in minerals — Dendritic agate is a manganese and iron oxide crystal whose repeating fractal growth process produces plant-like patterns resembling both snowflakes and…
• Cryonics for $220,000: Tomorrow Bio's bet on coming back to life — Tomorrow Bio fills bodies with antifreeze and stores them in liquid nitrogen, wagering that future technology will one day reverse death.
• The cloud chamber: tracing radioactive particles through — A clear breakdown of how Wilson's cloud chamber uses supercooled vapor and ionization to make radioactive particle tracks visible and measurable.
• Serbia's lithium protests expose the environmental cost of the EV — As automakers celebrate Rio Tinto's renewed lithium mining license in Serbia, mass protests highlight the ecological destruction that fuels the green…
• How a tiny quartz crystal keeps your watch accurate — From piezoelectricity to the Mohs scale, this piece explains the engineering behind the 32,768 Hz quartz crystal at the heart of every modern watch.
• Chinese farmers are using precision lasers to eliminate weeds without — Precision laser systems now let Chinese farmers detect and destroy weeds on the spot, offering a cheaper and less toxic alternative to chemical herbicides.
• What happens when magnesium meets microwave radiation — A piece of magnesium in a quartz cup turns into glowing plasma inside a microwave — here is the physics behind the blue sparks.
• Solid-state batteries and why they matter more than you think — Solid-state batteries promise faster charging, greater safety, and longer lifespan — and a Chinese company claims to have already shipped them in budget…
• Why explosives explode: the chemistry behind the blast — A concise explainer on exothermic and endothermic reactions, and why explosives are defined not by energy density but by the speed of their release.
• The Stirling Engine and Three Forms of Energy in One Flame — A Stirling engine powered by a candle illustrates the chain from chemical to thermal to kinetic energy, and why that energy cannot be reused.
• Why a firework keeps burning underwater — A built-in oxidizer supplies oxygen independent of the surroundings, and combustion temperatures above 1,000 °C evaporate water faster than it can cool…
• Shape memory alloys: how metal remembers its original form — Alloys like nickel-titanium switch between austenite and martensite phases, allowing them to recover their original shape when heated.