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…
Our daily “Merry Blogmas” posts on fun bite-sized science topics will run until Christmas. Today we look at the invention of spark ignition in the strange contraption called Volta’s pistol. Though originally scheduled for today, part III of the food science of hard-boiled eggs, will post tomorrow. WHY YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ALESSANDRO VOLTA Alessandro Volta is important. A little over two centuries ago, Volta invented the battery. He also discovered methane. More important than either, he’s that so-and-so…
We continue today with our daily “Merry Blogmas” posts on fun bite-sized science topics, which will run until Christmas. THE BIRTHPLACE OF DNA FINGERPRINTING BY THE PCR METHOD The banner image today (above) is a photograph of Octopus Spring in the Lower Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park. If this spring was anywhere else, there would probably be a shrine here for this is the birthplace of modern “cheap and easy” DNA profiling. If you didn’t know Octopus Spring existed,…
We continue today with our daily “Merry Blogmas” posts on fun bite-sized science topics, which will run until Christmas. WHAT IS ALUNITE AND WHY SHOULD I CARE? Most people outside of geologists have probably never heard of alunite but this rock has had wars fought over it. Alunite was a major source of potash alum from antiquity up until the 19th century. Potash alum was and still is one of the most important commodities in the world, used in medicines,…
We continue today with our daily “Merry Blogmas” posts on fun bite-sized science topics, which will run until Christmas. SACCHARIN IS NOT A KNOWN, PROBABLY, OR POSSIBLE CARCINOGEN If you pay attention to the news, that statement shouldn’t come as a shock. Unfortunately, because of the great saccharin scare of the 1970s, there are still people who think that saccharin causes cancer. Here’s how saccharin got its bad rep: There were some studies done in the 1970s where male laboratory…
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…
We continue today with our daily “Merry Blogmas” posts on fun bite-sized science topics, which will run until Christmas. SULFUR Sulfur is one of the coolest elements going. It’s also on the smelliest things on the planet. It stinks enough that I included it in the article I wrote for listverse.com on 10 rocks that stink. Sulfur has some really cool properties. It’s a soft yellow mineral that can be set on fire. It burns with a blue flame. While…
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…
What’s a Diatom? Diatoms are microscopic algae creatures that live in oceans, seas and deep lakes. When they die, their hard shell-like skeletal remains fall to the lake or sea bottom. Their fossilized remains are made of amorphous silica with the approximate chemical composition of opal, SiO2·nH2O. The “n” in that chemical formula means that the amount of water mixed in with the silica dioxide is not really known. Layers of pure fossilized diatom remains are called diatomite. What’s Diatomaceous Earth?…
