chemed 2013 diy chemistry

Alfredo Mateus is apparently pretty cool - or at least has some pretty cool ideas.

Through the Prezi above first, largely without words...

• The bottle tops - hacksawed off just below the screw top collar - become flexible in hot water and can be turned into keychains. The distorted bottle tops then can show the thermoplasticity when returned to hot water.
• The inflation of the preforms is a bit trickier, and the method hinted at in the Prezi is far tougher to pull off. Check out my other post about a way to successfully inflate the preforms.
• Carving a can with chemistry is a variation on the aluminum can demo using a solution of either sodium hydroxide or copper (II) sulfate to react away the aluminum can. Here Mateus has used this to produce some nice lights.
• The hydrophobic toys need a whole lot more explanation. The carbon compounds in soot are apparently hydrophobic and can make for a very cool 'maze' by letting the droplets roll around rather freely.
• The PET molecules, though, are pretty spectacular, and they're the ones I desperately want to recreate for my classroom. I just need to figure out how to throw around a few pop rivets. And sadly, they're the only ones that are NOT covered in the related pdf of instructions.

Any chance anybody can find better instructions for the 2L bottle molecules?

Making Stuff Smarter Activity Clip

"The Three Stooges Effect...when the Three Stooges tried to get through a doorway at the same time, and they couldn't?"

"The cornstarch doesn't want to get out of its own way, so when you push on it really hard, it can't move out of the way fast enough. When you hit it really slowly, you can push through it like a liquid."

The 'fill a pool with cornstarch and water' demonstration never gets old.

Making Stuff Stronger: Demonstration Clip

The Making Stuff series is an outstanding exploration of materials engineering and science with four episodes: Smaller, Stronger, Smarter, and Cleaner. In the series David Pogue plays the inquisitive and often comedic and corny host who looks at a number of materials being made at the cutting edge of materials science.

Here he takes a look at Kevlar, providing an excellent graphic showing the polymer's structure, and then suggesting a possible new use for a thick, Kevlar cable.