This is the natural disaster to worry about

Forty-one minutes...that's the length of this video from Veritasium about the transformation of raw rubber into the amazing modern material we have today - primarily through the development of vulcanization by Charles Goodyear in the late 1800s.

In those forty-one minutes, Dr Derek explores - with seemingly a co-host for the first time that I've seen - the science behind rubber's stretchiness, the efforts to find an additive that can improve rubber's less useful properties, and a fungi that threatens the millions of rubber trees currently supplying our world's rubber needs.

But it's still forty-one minutes long...and that's without a whole lot of stretching.

Sorry...I'll see myself out.

Lamberts: Mouth blown Restoration glass - cylinder glass method - window

I've heard about and watched videos about the float method of producing flat, plate glass in which molten glass is poured onto a river of molten tin. The tin cools the glass very slowly and allows the glass to cool perfectly flat and smooth resulting in plate glass that can effectively be infinitely long.

I've also heard about crown or table glass (click here and scroll down a bit) in which an inflated ball of glass was cut open and spun into a flat disk. The larger the disk could be spun, the larger the panels of mostly flat glass that could be cut from that disk. The panels would by necessity be thicker on one side (the side nearer to the center of the disk) than on the other. 

Cylinder blown glass - as shown in the above video - requires a ball of glass with a bubble to be blown then swung into a longer and longer cylinder which is then cut open and laid flat to produce the flat pane of glass. The larger and longer the cylinder, the larger the pane of flat glass.

Float glass is much cheaper, but this cylinder glass process is far more fascinating to watch.

Molten Steel Exploding at 10,000fps - The Slow Mo Guys

There's not a ton of science in today's video, just some ridiculously slowed down footage of molten iron being smacked with a cricket bat by two British guys - thankfully with good personal protective equipment (PPE) for themselves. 

...but at least it's really, really pretty footage.

The $200 Million Mistake Hiding in Chicago’s Skyline

I need to remember to take my umbrella the next time I got to Chicago in case a 350-pound Carrara marble slab comes tumbling down from a building.

The building in question - now known as the Aon Center - was originally clad in the aforementioned Carrara marble, using panels that were 1.25 inches thick.

Apparently marble isn't terribly durable when going through extreme freeze-thaw-hot-summer cycles with each temperature shift leading to tiny cracks developing which allowed water to get into the cracks and freeze - like pot holes forming on the side of the (initially) world's 4th tallest building. 

Eventually, all the marble panels were replaced with granite which seems to weather the Chicago winters far better and is less prone to hurling itself off the building's facade and onto the tourists looking up with their mouths agape. 

Learn to Build With Cardboard! STRONG, Waterproof, and Free!

We've seen NightHawkInLight around these parts before - or at least we've heard his voice.

In this video, he posits a few simple rules for building with cardboard...

• Direction matters - cardboard is not equally strong in all directions
• Layer for strength - laminate/glue multiple layers together for a strong material
• Glue then trim - glue the layers together before trimming them to size
• Wheat paste is awesome - It's an environmentally friendly glue - which he shows you how to make.
• Reinforce edges - Trim and fold over the cardboard facing to reinforce the edges
• Mixed materials - Small amounts of wood can be added for extra, targeted strength
• Face jointed reinforcement - again with the wood reinforcement
• Surface hardening - more wheat paste but as sizing not as glue
• Securing joints - use toothpicks to hold pieces in place until the wheat paste sets
• Utilize tensile strength - cardboard is strong in tension; use its strength
• Templates save time - if you're making dozens of the same piece, use a template
• Splice sheets perfectly - He shows a way to thin both sheets and splice two together.
• Fold sheets cleanly - sort of like the splicing
• Papercrete fiber recycling - Hey, a composite made of composites! This one is wheat paste and paper pieces - not ice.
• Panel jointery - Again, more tips for joining pieces together
• Improved jointery - seriously, more joining tips

Then he gets to how to waterproof the cardboard. One of the methods he suggests involves shellac - which I've blogged about before and is very much not vegan-friendly - with beeswax. The other is hot glue, beeswax, and mineral oil and looks to be way gloopier.

The last part of the video explores ways to make the waterproof coating UV-resistant, something that I never would have thought to be concerned with.

Honestly, this video is way more detailed about cardboard building than I ever would have guessed could be done.

Now I just need to go back in time and get grandpa to bring home some boxes from his Inland Container job in the 70's.

PYREX vs pyrex - What's The Difference & Why It Matters

About thirteen minutes into the above video, the YouTuber shows a screenshot from the Corning Museum of Glass's website...

...that asks whether the PYREX stamp in all caps definitely tells that the PYREX item was made with borosilicate glass - something I'd been told was a definitive tell.

According to the Corning Museum website, "the change from upper to lower case signified a re-branding of the trademark Pyrex®  in the late 1970s but is not a conclusive way to determine, historically, what type of glass formulation the product is made from."

So that's apparently out the window.

The video does go on to explore the various other ways of differentiating borosilicate from soda lime pyrex: the blue tint, visibility in mineral oil, even a not-very-scientific drop test onto a patio block.

In the end, the best that the host came up with was to look for a made in France mark. Apparently the French know to use only borosilicate glass.

Why Lithium Is Dangerous But PERFECT For Batteries

Our chemistry book has a diagram of a battery in the electrochemistry chapter, and I discuss that battery for a bit before explaining to my students that the basics of ACME (anode, cathode, metallic path, electrolyte) hold for every battery but that the engineering of modern lithium-ion batteries is far different from the diagram in the book.

This video - again leaning into the algorithm-rewarded longer and longer format - explains some battery basics involving the activity series, the history of the development of the lithium-ion battery, and the methods of fiery failure when the battery overheats.

This is, as Dr Derek says, a technology that has allowed our modern, battery-dependent world.