A Chemistry Professor at the University of Nottingham in U.K. received a super cool (in the most geeky way) present for his birthday -- the Periodic Table etched on a strand of his own hair. This was done for Professor Martyn Poliakoff by the nanotechnlogists of the university. This is what it looks like:
The 118 elements of the Periodic were carved using a beam of gallium ions. This technique is usually utilised to do repair works on extremely small components of semi-conductors. So, how small is this Periodic Table? Each letter carved has a height of four microns -- that is 4 × 10-6 m. The entire Periodic Table is 88 microns wide, and 46 microns tall. If this were to be done on a Post-it note, almost one million of them can be fitted on a single piece of the note paper.
A video was made to show how the process was carried out. Check it out here:
If you have read the Straits Times a few days ago, you would have seen a report on how some people in China are using chemicals to make counterfeit eggs. These fake eggs look exactly like the real ones and the total cost of making each of them is only one-tenth the price of a real egg. These are the steps to make a fake egg:
The process used to create the spherical yolk and egg white is actually a technique commonly used in molecular gastronomy to make little spheres which are liquid in the centre, and have a thin jelly layer outside. I have tried this item of molecular gastronomy, and saw the chefs making the spheres with mango juice. What the chefs do is to dissolve some sodium alginate (or what is known as sodium alga acid in the flowchart given above) in fruit juice, then drip drops of the mixture into a solution of calcium ions. The calcium ions will react with the alginate to form a thin membrane, enveloping the fruit juice in it and forming a small ball. This is the exact reaction the counterfeiter in the video carried out when he was swirling the orange sphere around in the colourless liquid in the mould. While chemicals such as sodium alginate and calcium chloride are not harmful to the human body, I can't say the same about some of the rest of the chemicals the counterfeiters use to make the eggs.
