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.
As always and as we should probably preface every conversation that we have about materials, we should lean into the reduce side of the triangle way more than we do.
But, until we get that perfected, we need to figure out better ways to recycle those materials that we use.
In this video, an Aussie company is working on e-waste recycling, particularly toward the recovery of the precious metals: palladium, gold, copper. The activity series comes in at 2:15 when the narrator says, "palladium and gold are still stuck in the solids. They're harder to dissolve."
He really means that they're harder to react and doesn't explain that it's because of their extremely low positions on the activity series that this is true.
"For the precious metals, you need something with a little more oomph."
Yeah, you would.
This company goes on to use - according to the video - microorganisms that consume and absorb heavy metals allowing the company to concentrate those and sort them from the waste. That's fascinating, and I love the idea that they went looking for microorganisms that had evolved to thrive on mine waste instead of trying to 'invent' a new process chemically. Brilliant, gents!
That doesn't seem like much, but when they go on to say that open pit gold mining nets 3-5 grams per ton of rock, that looks way more profitable.
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And the the video gets to the environmental justice side of things. There is a cost to our consumer culture. We in the wealthy west just aren't always the ones who are paying that cost.
Man, I hope that some of these phenomenal processes that we've heard about over the decades come to fruition and that they don't all go the way of anything into oil.
Fine, but I'm sure nothing will ever surpass Gorilla Glass 6.
In all honesty, I did like seeing the various tests that the glass designers undertake when they're developing a new glass. I haven't had the issues described with the purse, but I'm assuming those are real issues.
In the video below, we get a brief glimpse into the manufacturing and prototyping of the various glass compositions on the way toward a final product.
Standard materials such as lime, sand, soda, and pot ash...plus "smaller, secret ingredients...[to] enhance optical clarity and electrical conductivity"
There's a lot that's not being said there in those quotes.
The real payoff of this video is - to me, anyway - the thin, sagging ribbon of glass at 2:49 through 2:58 then the rolled-up glass at 3:25.
A friend of mine, another high school teacher told a story that when he was buying a television - maybe about ten years ago now - he met a convincing salesman. The salesman was a former student of his who remembered that the teacher had young children. When he was speaking to my friend, the salesman took his fairly heavy, full keychain and chucked it directly at the screen from about five feet away. The keychain bounced and did no damage at all. The screen - among the first flat screen, narrow depth televisions that we find so ubiquitous now - was covered with a polymer layer that made it fairly impervious to damage.
But even that wasn't a television that you could roll up and hang on the wall like it was a poster.
The issues inherent in recycling, however, are amazingly complex, most of which - by my understanding - comes to the cost of separation of the materials into individual recycling stream destinations.
It's far, far easier to recycle already separated materials, but it's tedious, dangerous, and costly to pull out every battery, screen, motherboard, chip, and plastic casing. That, apparently is why we send the task to nations where the labor laws are more lax and the labor costs far cheaper.
Thanks, as always, to the outstanding Compound Interest for the great graphic.
That is a straight up gorgeous piece of film making and advertising.
The sights of the aluminum being forged, poured, machined, anodized, and finished are absolutely stunning. Go watch it again before you start looking at the science of what's happening.
We get the full gamut of processing (forging, machining) and materials (metals, alloys, ceramic - zirconia - beads for the finish).
Beautiful...
And that doesn't even being to touch on the gold and steel videos that I'm putting after the jump.
All of these are available on Apple's watch craftsmanship webpage along with text and photos of the zirconia chosen for the crystal covers, the ion-x glass for the Sport face (potassium ion soaked to increase strength), or the sapphire facing for the Watch and Watch Edition editions (that sounds incredibly stupid to read).
There is also a webpage from Atomic Delights (a blog with sadly only three posts in two years - better quality than quantity, I guess) that does a far better job breaking down the three videos and speculating on some of the science therein than I ever could.
Nothing is in my iPhone. I'm an Android guy, myself.
Hah! These are the jokes, folks.
I love the American Chemical Society's series of videos about the chemistry of a whole lot of different topics: candy, iPhones, fireworks, life hacks, and lots more. Here they go through the numerous different elements used in making a smart phone. I particularly find the molten potassium bath for the screen fascinating.
