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Category: Household Chemistry

Meringue: more fun with egg science

Meringue: more fun with egg science

Another way to cook eggs We’ve discussed one well-known way to cook eggs before. (Repeatedly!, In scientific detail!) As a quick guest post, I thought I’d mention a somewhat more exotic way to cook eggs – meringue. What’s a meringue? In its simplest form, a meringue is simply egg-whites with sugar, whipped into a foam and baked gently until it hardens. The end result can take a range of forms. It can be a squishy, wet foam like the top…

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Green Eggs, No Ham

Green Eggs, No Ham

COLOR AFFECTS YOUR MIND It’s been known for quite a while that colors affect your mind and emotional state at the subconscious level. Reds, yellow and oranges have a cheering effect on you; on the other hand, blues, greens and purples have a calming effect but they can also make you feel sad. There’s a lot of research that’s been done on this subject. If you’re interested in knowing more, The Teaching Company has a cool lecture series on this…

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The Roach-Killer Rock

The Roach-Killer Rock

This is the daily Merry Blogmas 2017 short science post for December 17. 2017. | Today’s topic is boric acid. THERE ARE NO BORIC ACID MINES Seriously, I really should have saved this up for my other blog but this blog is on a schedule. Thus it gets priority these days. I was calmly surfing the net, looking at do-it-yourself recipes using borax, when I came across a site that I refuse to mention here. This unmentionable site not only recommended…

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The Element Named after Soap

The Element Named after Soap

This is the Gnarly Science Merry Blogmas post for December 16, 2017 | If you make your own soap or do a lot of gardening, you probably know where this is going. Many of the oldest element names come from Medieval words like nitrogen from natron or sodium from soda. Some have kept their old names like sulfur. Some have names whose origins are lost to us like antimony. While the roots of most element names are rather mundane, there…

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Vinegar for Peeling Eggs

Vinegar for Peeling Eggs

Today’s “Merry Blogmas 2017” post is about the vinegar trick for peeling a hard-boiled or soft-boiled egg. This trick isn’t for everyone, but if you’ve tried the other “easy-peeling” measures that usually work, the vinegar trick may be for you. PEELING EGGS BY UNDERSTANDING EGGS Seriously, if you understand how an egg is built then peeling that egg is a lot easier. There’s a previous article on this blog that has discussed this topic in detail. It might help you…

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The Food Science of Hard-Boiled Eggs – Part III

The Food Science of Hard-Boiled Eggs – Part III

There are way too many variations out there on how to cook and peel a hard-boiled egg. Many of them are just plain bunk. The truth is that there are several different paths to cooking the perfect hard-boiled egg. Our goal here is to show you the science behind boiling an egg because if you understand the science, you will then know what to do to achieve that perfect egg and peel it too! In PART I, we looked at the…

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Merry Blogmas for December 6: Bread is Not the Same

Merry Blogmas for December 6: Bread is Not the Same

We continue  today with our daily “Merry Blogmas” posts on fun bite-sized science topics, which will run until Christmas. THE TASTE OF BREAD HAS CHANGED WITH TIME We no longer know what bread used to taste like but we do know that it had to taste different from the modern equivalent. How do we know this? From research done in research-funded “living history” projects and from archaeology on the remains of Medieval and Renaissance buildings. Here’s the evidence; In the…

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Merry Blogmas for December 5: Collagen-Based Glue

Merry Blogmas for December 5: Collagen-Based Glue

Today continues our daily Merry Blogmas 2017 posts of short science-lite articles for Dec. 1 through Christmas. Hide Glue and Other Collagen-Based Glues Collagen is the principle protein in the bone, muscle and skin tissues of mammals and certain fish. It is made up of fibrous strands of polypeptides, which is the same as saying that collagen is made up of long mostly-straight chains of linked amino acids. Collagen-based glues include those made from: animal hides animal hooves of animals fish skin…

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The Food Science of Hard-Boiled Eggs – Part II

The Food Science of Hard-Boiled Eggs – Part II

This is the second of three parts on the eggcellent topic of hard-boiled eggs. To state the obvious, this discussion is about the unfertilized eggs of chickens, ducks, and geese. THE BIOCHEMISTRY OF EGGS The problem with making the perfect hard-boiled egg is that everyone has their own favorite recipe or gimmick that works for them; however, few people understand why their own method works or why someone else’s doesn’t. To understand how to properly hard boil an egg, we first…

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