Vital air and lifeless air
Antoine Lavoisier explained how combustion uses oxygen with a very clever experiment. Later, he lost his head.
King of Fire
French magician Ivan Chabert was famous in the 19th century CE for his feats with heat: sitting in an oven, putting melted lead in his mouth, and bathing his feet in molten metal.
Simultaneous not simultaneous
According to special relativity, something can happen both before and after something else – depending on the observer’s frame of reference.
Shattered tears
In the late 17th century CE, Prince Rupert’s drops were some of the most confusing objects known to science: an extremely tough glass teardrop that will disintegrate if its tail is even slightly damaged.
Worst stink
Organosulfur compounds include some of the sweetest and the worst smells known to science. Thioacetone is the worst of them all.
Flapdragon
A Christmas Eve parlour game played in Victorian England involved grabbing burning raisins with your hands and eating them while they were still alight.
Tractor beaming
The idea of the tractor beam first appeared in fiction in 1931. Since then, scientists have worked to make it a reality… and they’ve actually had some success.
Saltiest ponds
We’ve all heard of the Dead Sea, so salty that people naturally float in it. But the Gaet’ale Pond in Ethiopia is saltier, and the Don Juan Pond in Antarctica is so salty that it doesn’t freeze, even at -50°C.
Boiling saliva
There is a point not more than 20km away from you right now where your normal body temperature is enough to boil the saliva off your tongue and the moisture out of your lungs.
Space ice
Water freezes into ice. This is not new information to you (I hope). But which kind? Because there are eighteen different phases of ice, including electric viral space ice.
Cosmic election
The universe is full of cosmic rays, blasted out from neighbouring galaxies, supernovae, and the like. In 2003, they nearly changed the outcome of a local Belgian election.
Impossible colours
Through some tricks of the human eye, we can see colours outside of the normal visual range: Stygian, self-luminous, and hyperbolic colours, and perhaps even combinations like redgreen. These are the impossible colours.
Iceberg battleship
Take water, mix with wood pulp, and freeze. Now it’s as strong and tough as concrete, as long as it stays frozen. So, in World War II, serious plans were afoot to use it to build battleships out of ice.
Antifreeze wine
Remember that Simpsons episode where Bart went to France and witnessed antifreeze being added to wine? It had its basis in fact, although it got the country wrong.
Death chemist
Thomas Midgley Jr. was responsible for two of the most environmentally damaging inventions of the 20th century. An environmental historian said he “had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth’s history.”
