Cosmic Queries – The Hidden Chemistry of Everything with Kate the Chemist

Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

StarTalk begins right now.

This is StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition, and today we’re going to dip into chemistry.

Chuck, are you with me here, Chuck?

I am.

How do you feel about chemistry, Chuck?

I’m waiting for you to dip into it, Dr.

Belk.

I have to say that I had a terrible chemistry teacher and ruined the entire experience for me.

You’re the walking wounded of chemistry.

I am the walking wounded of chemistry, and I won’t say his name, but I remember him vividly, and he would explain something and then immediately expect us to know like what the next thing is, and he would do this, and everyone would sit in the classroom kind of like in this terrified state, because it’s terrible to feel like completely ignorant, and it’s worse to feel stupid, because ignorant is one thing, but you feel stupid when somebody has an expectation of you that you’re not meeting.

Chuck, are you still in therapy for this?

It sounds like you got a lot to shake.

Right, so then, wait a minute, then, you know, me, I’m sorry I asked, okay?

No, I say what’s on my mind, so he didn’t like me because he asked a question and we hadn’t covered it, right?

And so I said to him in front of the whole class, you do realize you have a degree in chemistry.

This is high school.

And then he said, what, are you a comedian?

And I said, well, as a matter of fact, I am.

And the rest is history.

Well, neither you nor I carry any kind of significant chemistry expertise, so we went out into the ether.

Oh yeah, and we found Kate the Chemist.

Kate the Chemist, welcome to StarTalk.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, excellent.

Well, you are, can I introduce the lady please?

No, I was just going to say, I can already tell you’re going to make me like chemistry.

Just the name, Kate the Chemist.

I’m like, I need to hear more.

So you are, cause that’s what we call you on the internet, but behind, you know, part the curtains, you are Professor Kate Biberdorf and you’re on the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in their Department of Chemistry.

So this is just way excellent.

And you’ve written books previously just for kids, but recently you have a book that came out a few months ago for grownups.

So that’s cool.

I would have to get the title here.

It’s Elemental, The Hidden Chemistry of Everything.

I love the title.

And so Kate, let me ask you, is this finally grownups get to create a fire in the carpet in the living room?

Yes.

Do we have now have the permission?

That’s what the book is.

And I teach you how to do fireworks right in the middle of your living room.

No, not at all.

That’s, that’s how, that’s everybody’s memory of the chemistry kit growing up.

But the kids do it.

The parents come up to me after these shows because I blow stuff up for kids and they keep asking me these questions and they’re like, my little kid has this question about sunscreen.

I was like, your five-year-old has a question about sunscreen and they’re using their kids to ask the questions.

So in the book, I literally just went through and answered all their questions.

Oh, I got you.

Okay, cool.

In fairness, it could have been a very vain five-year-old.

It’s like, I gotta keep this tight.

I have got to keep this tight.

I know I’m five, but I’m thinking ahead.

So what is Kate the Chemist fiction series?

What is that?

There are seven books, so five fiction ones and then there’s two non-fiction ones.

But the fiction series is this little 10-year-old named Kate the Chemist and she goes around her neighborhood and solves any problems in the neighborhood using science.

It was just so fun to write because for the first time ever, I could like make stuff up.

Like you can’t do that in the chemistry world.

You can’t lie about things.

And so here I could just have little kids breathing fire and it was just an absolute blast.

Wow.

So what is one scenario that might be solved with chemistry in terms of like a mystery or a problem in a book series?

So the very first one is called Dragons vs.

Unicorns and it’s the little kids musical.

Very scientific.

It is.

Chuck, she says she made the stuff up and it is called fiction.

Okay.

Chuck, learn the definition of the word fiction, Chuck.

Okay.

Well, to be real, honestly, that’s kind of the reason why is they’re trying to get people who might be intimidated by science.

Like some kids don’t want to read a science book, but they might want to read Dragons vs.

Unicorns.

And so it’s a way to kind of hook kids, especially little girls, and get them excited about science.

And in the series, little Kate goes around and she’s kind of the director of the musical.

And there’s all these problems, like the unicorn’s horns fall off.

And so she has to make blue using science to get the stick so it’ll stay on the forehead.

So there’s a lot of little ways I can sneak it in there.

And it’s just a blast.

I had so much fun writing them.

I thought you would tell me what Dragon Breath is made of.

See, I’m not happy.

Sure, I can tell you.

I absolutely can tell you.

Yeah, it is.

And so what she does is, in the very beginning, we have the little girl breathe fire.

It’s just this big experiment.

And so it was really exciting, but they wouldn’t let her do it in the musical.

So it’s a big deal.

So they end up using Cheetos and liquid nitrogen.

So you dip the Cheetos into liquid nitrogen, give it a second, and then you can bite down on it.

When you exhale, you end up breathing.

It’s gas.

It’s smoke, right?

You do the condensation.

But yeah, so there’s a little bit of Dragon Breath in there.

Okay, so it’s smoke Dragon Breath, not flame Dragon Breath.

As a chemist, if dragons actually breathe fire like smog, right?

As in the desolation of smog, yeah.

As in the desolation of smog.

So smog, you see his belly actually glow red, and then the inside of his throat becomes very hot, and then boom.

Becomes radiant, and it’s ready to come out.

Radiant, yes, okay.

And then there’s a plume of fire from a chemist standpoint.

Yeah, Kate, explain that.

What would be that fire?

I’m serious.

How would you justify that scientifically?

Now, come on, we know we got to suspend disbelief, but if we could justify that scientifically, what would be that fire?

Well, I could tell you what fire is.

Fire is a combustion reaction, and it’s anytime you have a source of fuel, you have reacted with oxygen, and then you form carbon dioxide and water.

That’s the traditional one.

And so what you’re seeing is the release of that energy exothermically being shot out.

I breathe fire using cornstarch, which is a lot easier, a lot safer, but that doesn’t start in my belly.

I just put it in my mouth.

I spit it out.

What you’re saying is a safe way to breathe fire.

Yeah.

That’s what you just said that.

Yeah.

As opposed to the dangerous ways of breathing fire, I can do it safely.

I got one.

I got one.

I got one.

Okay.

So as we all know, there are anaerobic microbes deep in our gut, and they release methane.

Normally the methane comes out the back end, but if you could somehow reverse that tube and then have it come out of your mouth and then ignite it, then you could breathe fire with methane, a gas that you produced yourself.

So there you have it.

Basically, dragons have flatulent mouths.

Is that?

They’re fart faces.

I said it for you, Chuck.

Fart face.

Thanks.

That was the joke.

Normally, I don’t steep lower than you go, but I did it.

You know, I’m always getting the letters.

It is true.

Why are you always trying to bring Neil deGrasse Tyson down?

That’s so funny.

All right.

So, you know, this is actually a Cosmic Queries edition because, you know, we hardly ever have chemists, and I’m embarrassed by that because chemistry is, you know, some of my best friends are made of chemicals, and so we need more chemistry in this show.

So, Chuck, you collected questions from our Patreon members because this is a Cosmic Queries.

That’s right.

And Kate, I’ll be coming back to you about your periodic table, you know, intermittently, because me and periodic table go way back, too.

I got me.

Neil’s another lover of the periodic table.

Oh, don’t get me started on the periodic table.

All right.

No, what I want to do, I want to try to because I know the periodic table from the through the lens of an astrophysicist.

So and Kate, you clearly are chemist with your periodic table.

I want to come at you with some astrochemistry seat.

Just to see if you can hang with the astrochemist.

All right.

We’re going to try that a little later.

We’re going to have to go into the octagon for this one.

Oh, my God.

Two nerds enter and they both leave, but just one of them with a little more respect.

That’s all.

It’s nerd Thunderdome.

I would watch that.

Yeah, yeah, me too.

Me too.

All right.

So what do you got, Chuck?

Let’s just jump into it.

Who we got here?

We have the artist formerly known as James Smith.

Hello, Dr.

Tyson, Dr.

Biberdorf and Chuck.

Chuck, if you mess up my name, you should just give it up, buddy.

Bro, I really got to read these before I go.

Here’s my question.

Where do we find lithium on Earth?

And how can we find more of it?

Does it exist on other planets?

I love you guys.

Have a great day.

Let me give a hand off to Kate on this.

It is made in tiny quantities in the Big Bang.

Very tiny quantities.

But it is made, unlike most other elements that have to wait for billions of years for stars to create them in their cores.

The Big Bang itself makes a little bit of lithium.

Now, let me hand that over to Kate.

So it’s OG.

It’s an original gangster.

The OG.

Lithium, I’ve been here from the beginning.

Don’t call it a combat.

Kate, we need to call them the OG elements.

We need that.

Oh, that’s really funny.

I’m going to have to pitch that.

We’ll see what people say with that one.

Lithium is like all the most of the other metals.

We find it in oxide form a lot of times in mines.

I believe lithium was discovered back in the 1800s in Sweden, and it was formed with an aluminum silicate as well.

So there’s a little bit of aluminum there and a little bit of silicon mixed in.

So it’s in the mines, just like all our other metals.

We find it deep in the crust of the earth.

So you’re saying it doesn’t come in its own veins through the crust?

It’s mixed in with other elements?

Most of them are not.

I know that we do have it in oxide forms.

I don’t know if we can find it by itself.

It’s very possible, but the forms I know of it are in the oxide form.

So there’s an oxygen attached to it somehow, which makes it stable, because otherwise it would be extraordinarily reactive.

Before we move on, let me ask this.

So if iron is our core, do we find different…

The core of earth.

Yes, the core of earth, sorry.

If that’s our core, do we find different elements at different levels?

Or is it just kind of all mixed in and then, you know…

How does it work in terms of like as you get down to like the iron, do you find different things at different levels as you go down?

Chuck, the heavy stuff is in the middle and the light stuff floated.

That’s not that complicated.

Is that it?

Yeah.

Jesus.

It’s seriously that easy.

Is it really that easy?

Chuck, Chuck, just to be clear, we think of rocks as heavy because they like sink in the water, but the water is floating on the rocks and the rocks are floating on everything else that is heavier than they are that went to the center of the earth.

So, rocks are light by comparison, yeah.

So, here’s a question, Kate.

How do you get…

Why didn’t all the iron go to the middle of the earth?

How can we have these ores of iron that come up into the crust?

Well, it has to do with attractions, right?

Every single one of these atoms have protons in the center and electrons in the outside and it just has to do with what it interacted with on its way down to the center.

So, if it sees a lot of the oxygen, it’s going to have a reaction with that.

We all know rust happens so readily here, right?

So, things are going to rust out at certain points before…

Exactly, yeah.

So, it’s what it interacted with.

That’s what chemistry is all the time.

What is in its environment?

What’s its system?

What’s its surroundings?

What’s going on around it?

What can we…

So, when we find these ore deposits, they’re just distracted iron.

What’s that oxygen atom?

Frozen in the…

Oh, damn it.

Midnight train to Georgia just left.

All right, we got to take a quick break.

When we come back, we’ll pick up our Cosmic Queries with Kate the Chemist.

Hey, I’m Roy Hill Percival, and I support StarTalk on Patreon.

Bringing the universe down to earth, this is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

We’re back, StarTalk Cosmic Queries, with Kate the Chemist.

We’re talking about chemistry, something we don’t do often enough, Chuck.

I think that this is, we do so many other things, and we gotta give some chemistry a due.

And so we got Kate, Kate, professor of chemistry, associate professor of chemistry?

Yeah, I’m an instructor, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, at the University of Texas at Austin.

And we’re delighted to have you, you’re Kate the Chemist, and what are your social media handles?

I am at Kate the Chemist on Instagram and TikTok.

I just hit 100,000 followers on TikTok, which I’m so excited about.

Which I know is not a lot for you guys, but for me that makes me very happy.

No, 100,000, excuse me.

100,000 is a lot for anybody.

That’s for anybody.

I just made a mental note, I gotta get on TikTok.

Yes, please get on TikTok, it’s so fun, I really enjoy it.

It’s a very easy way to communicate science with other people and just give them little snippets, and I’m really enjoying it.

I never thought I’d say that, ever, but I’m really enjoying it.

Very cool.

Cool.

All right, so Chuck, what do you got for us?

All right, let’s just jump right in.

These are still Patreon members, right?

All Patreon.

All Patreon, we changed the rule.

You’re the only ones who get to ask questions.

If you are interested in asking us a question, Patreon is the way you have to do it.

It was a way for us to kind of democratize, actually, just the opposite of that.

Just the opposite.

Just the opposite of democratize, I’m sorry.

It was a way for us to cull the pool.

It’s not to democratize, to monetize.

That’s the word, all right.

All right, go for it, Chuck.

Yeah, here we go.

This is Max Madison.

He says, hey, Dr.

Biberdorf, why do you think many scholars, including Isaac Newton, believed in or practiced alchemy even as recently as the 1900s?

Do you think it was for greed or was it truly for the pure pursuit of science?

Ooh, good one.

Plus, Kate, I would add to that, from the alchemy I’ve read, there seemed to be some mysticism in there as well, at least if you go far back.

So how does all that square working its way so deep into the Industrial Revolution, for example?

Well, it’s really funny, because from a chemist’s point of view, when we think of alchemy, for me, it’s just more of the study of chemistry before we knew what was going on.

And it was just people mixing things together and trying to kind of cook here and there.

And sometimes they came up with medicines that were helpful, and sometimes they came up with crap that was not helpful at all.

And so it just depends on kind of where you fall.

And so for me, when I think of it, it just is like the chemistry before the 1900s, before we had any clue of what was going on.

So with that, is I of Newt on the periodic chart?

Yes, here it is, right there.

Have you ever seen, I saw this comic once.

It was Vegetarian Witches, right?

And so it was I of Potato, Head of Lettuce.

That’s awesome.

So anyhow, yeah, so that’s a really good answer.

I like that.

So what you’re saying is it’s the best people could do before they really knew what was going on.

But then, but why is it such an insult though?

You know, when you say, oh, you’re just an alchemist.

And it’s like, people will fight you if you call them that.

That’s true.

But you’re saying it should not carry a stigma.

I don’t think of it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Like I don’t honestly think of it with a stigma.

I think of it as people doing the best they could with what they had.

I mean, this was pre-internet.

This was before we were sharing information so easily.

You know, this is just what they had available to them.

So I don’t think it was a negative.

I don’t want to have to school you in this way, but we are post-internet and there are people who think Earth is flat.

So don’t think the internet fixes stuff, okay?

No, no, that’s not what I meant.

That is exactly what you meant.

No, no, no, it’s not.

It’s a way for people to communicate, for scientists to tell each other and share information more readily.

And that’s all I mean by it.

And so before we had that, it was much more difficult.

Well, you’d have to go to the library and you’d have to read a book and you’d have to find that very specific book.

That’s all I’m saying.

See, she’s on the internet for smart people.

You’re doing it for everybody else.

We got flat earthers, vaccine deniers.

We are on the DAI, the dumbass internet.

That’s what we are on, the DAI.

Give it to me.

All right, here we go.

This is Elias Ciametis, I think.

S-I-A-M-E-T-I-S.

So either Ciametis or Ciametis.

Ciametis, all right, I’ll give you…

You got a 50% chance on that one.

And Elias, if I messed up your name, change it.

I’m…

Chuck, Chuck, make my life easier.

All right, here we go.

Hello, Dr.

Tyson, Dr.

Biberdorf, and Lord Chuck.

Oh man, look at you.

That’s so funny.

He says this, and I love this, what are some fun chemistry experiments that I can do at home for my twins other than the ones in your books, because we have done those?

At what age do you think it is appropriate or beneficial to get them started?

Oh, well, let’s start with that one immediately.

As soon as they can start talking, I think it’s really important to get that inquiry in mind, try to ask questions.

And I think it’s really important, too, to announce that you don’t know everything, and it’s okay not to know everything.

As a scientist, that’s what we’re doing, is exploring.

We have questions, and then we’re searching for answers.

And so if you can kind of break down science into that right at the young age, then kids love science.

It’s all fun about explosions and exploration.

What I would highly recommend is try Elephant’s Toothpaste.

That’s not, well, the kids’ version is in my book, but do the big kid version.

Grab 35% hydrogen peroxide from a medical supply store.

Order potassium iodide off of Amazon.

Don’t use yeast, because yeast isn’t gonna do anything, but use, order potassium iodide.

Use dish soap, make sure it’s not natural dish soap.

Natural dish soap doesn’t have hysterectin in it, so it doesn’t bubble as much.

And so like Dawn dish soap is fantastic.

Add some food coloring, use a big flask, an Erlenmeyer flask is best, and add it right together.

Add potassium iodide last, and it’s gonna shoot out the top as the hydrogen peroxide decomposes.

I mean, that’s just a winner.

Everybody loves that.

Everybody loves that.

It’s easy.

They love that.

Kids love it.

Outside, outside it’ll destroy your ceiling.

Doesn’t it make a big mess?

But there’s tarts, and there’s also things, like you can wash stuff outside, no big deal.

Did you see the internet video where they did a version of that where it is almost half a city block that they filled with that?

What?

Yeah.

What?

It’s insane.

They made a set.

It’s like half a city block as a square, a half a city block square.

And they just did, they filled the whole thing.

It’s insane.

It is.

It’s insane.

It made me so nervous, because they did one right before that, where I don’t think their safety was up personally.

Like it got too close to them.

I don’t think they were wearing anything.

It made me so nervous that they were going to get just covered in this stuff, which is just not good for your skin.

Yeah.

I saw that one too.

And they’re running away from it in that video.

It hits the house.

And I’m like, yes, I’m like, you people are insane.

It was a cool video.

No one got hurt.

So that’s all I care about.

Wait, wait, Kate, does that mixture have any utility at all other than the demonstration of a geyser?

Well, to be honest, I use it in my classroom to talk about either stoichiometry or catalysis.

And so you can talk about how you can use another molecule to come in and break apart a certain molecule into new pieces.

Because what happens is hydrogen peroxide decomposes into oxygen gas and water.

And it’s extremely exothermic.

So it’s really hot.

So your students can actually feel the heat.

So you can talk about it in thermodynamics.

You can talk about catalysis.

Yeah, OK, so it’s very educationally helpful.

Instructive, yeah, yeah, yeah, OK, cool.

Now, I’m going to say, I just want to stop you, because I don’t care if I don’t know something.

That’s why I love doing this.

Stoichiometry and catalysis, you sounded like you just told me I was going to die.

I’m sorry, Chuck, but you have stoichiometry and catalysis.

You have six months to live.

So I don’t know what those are.

Our stoichiometry tells us that you have the catalysis.

Stoichiometry is just the chemistry version of dimensional analysis.

So if you’re saying like, I’m going 60 miles an hour and I have 100 miles to go, how long is it going to take me to get there?

That’s dimensional analysis.

So it’s just basic unit conversion.

Stoichiometry is you throw molecules on top of it.

So you got a little carbon dioxide, you got some methane, and you just go through the map.

And so you can do that with the decomposition and go through how much oxygen you would expect to produce.

And it’s a very fun, I say fun exercise because it means the explosion and catalysis.

You’ve probably heard of catalysts before.

And so that’s where you just have a new molecule and it takes two other molecules and brings them together.

And so it’s essentially a it’s like it’s like the highway for a reaction instead of the back roads.

So when you throw in a catalyst, it allows it to go way fast and it’s on a much faster route.

And it’s just better usually.

Awesome.

That’s great.

All right.

All right.

What’s next, Chuck?

Here we go.

This is Roman Prakup, who says, Hey, hey, Dr.

Tyson, do they ever say where they’re from?

I was like, no one where they’re from.

No, they don’t say.

Yeah.

I mean, guys, if you want to start including that for Neil, that would be great.

I will definitely include it in your question.

Roman Prakup says, Hey, Dr.

Tyson, Dr.

Biberdorf, Lord Nice, what is stopping us from using H instead of Li in Li-ion batteries, which I believe would be a lithium-ion battery, right?

Theoretically, they should be able to form the same connections with other elements, and H is lighter than Li.

So hydrogen lighter than lithium is only because H is the only S1 non-metal element.

You know what, I was understanding everything he said right up until that point.

Now you’re just showing off, Roman.

Wait, wait, I got to slip in here, get a little astrophysics.

So you may remember on your periodic table, hydrogen is listed twice, sort of as a gas and as a metal.

Oh, we have a live demonstration of it there.

So under very high pressures, hydrogen takes on the properties of metals.

And in the center of Jupiter, which is 90% hydrogen, the hydrogen manifests as metal and it conducts electricity and it does all the things metals do.

And Jupiter has a ferocious magnetic field as a result of it.

But everywhere else, hydrogen is just like regular hydrogen.

So Kate, over to you.

So it’s a gas.

So the main difference is it’s a gas.

And so lithium is going to be a metal.

We can force it to be in the aqueous state so we can dissolve it in water, but hydrogen is a gas.

And so that immediately changes everything about how it would operate.

One thing we always talk about is how we could eventually try to replace a gas tank in a car with hydrogen gas.

And so when I say gas tank, I’m actually talking about the liquid that you pump into your tank, whereas hydrogen gasoline gasoline.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That’s what I just had to say.

Hydrogen gas is an actual explosive gas.

And it would be really, really dangerous to put that on our car if we got into an accident because now would be a huge explosion like that’s unbelievably flammable and stored under pressure.

So it’s super dangerous if it gets knocked into.

So that’s one of the biggest hiccups is that it’s a gas and it’s flammable.

So it’s very dangerous and we have to take care of it.

All lithium flammable as well, so there’s pieces to that.

I was about to say, the lithium burns to the flames too, doesn’t it?

I was like, I got a feeling lithium might be in the same category since they’re telling me to take my battery out of my suitcase when I’m flying.

Okay, so maybe it’s just not as flammable and explosive.

Is that a fair characterization?

That’s fair.

And it’s stored under pressure, like you said.

That pressure component really changes things.

Right.

All right.

But just to be clear, and that S1 little ditty he put at the end there, if I understand that correctly, Kate, correct me if I’m wrong, that lithium appears directly beneath hydrogen on the periodic table, and everybody in a column in principle can make the same families of molecules.

And this is all he was saying there, right, Kate?

Yes, that’s exactly right.

So both hydrogen and lithium have one electron in their very first shell, that little, that external valence spot.

So in the 1S shell, hydrogen as one, in the 2S shell, hydrogen, or lithium as one.

Yeah, okay.

Wow, I got to say, chemistry is a lot of fun.

It is fun.

I’m so mad at your teacher.

I was ready to jump through the webcam and hug you like it breaks my heart when I hear that chemistry teacher awful.

Kate, Kate, you’re not helping me here.

Yeah, no, Kate, no, Chuck did need a hug in that moment.

This is true.

Clearly, I did because I didn’t even realize I was harboring on that.

All right, let’s go to Jim Kelly and Jim Kelly says, hi, Dr.

Biberdorf.

When I took chemistry in college, it was the late 80s.

I had a lab partner who told me the story of when the chemistry in high school, he mixed some things together that caused a cloud of gas to billow forth.

My vague memory was that it was green.

When the teacher saw it, he yelled to the class to evacuate immediately.

Luckily, no one was hurt.

I don’t remember what he said the cloud of glass he created was, but I’m curious.

Do you have any idea what chemicals would be available in a high school chemistry class that could cause this kind of event?

And what, indeed, was produced?

Hey, Chuck, you pronounced my name Jim.

You know what, Jim?

People don’t have any confidence in you, Chuck.

No, that was wrong, Jim.

That was wrong.

Jim, Chuck was having a hard day today, so look what he did to you.

So, Kate, you know any magic green gas cloud recipes?

Chlorine, I’m sure it’s chlorine gas is what the teacher was afraid they made.

So chlorine gas is yellow green, it’s not good to breathe in, it can go into your lungs, it dissolves in the water vapor that’s in your lungs, and so it forms hydrochloric acid, so then you have acid in your lungs that can burn, burn, burn.

You’re burning up from the inside?

Yeah, it burned.

It’s terrible.

It’s absolutely painful.

So wait, so Kate, wait, so Kate, if chlorine is a gas, but of course when mixed with sodium, it’s just salt, why do we fear hydrogen in a battery if it’s gas, but then if it mixes together with something else, it’s no longer a gas?

Well, it depends on what the phase would be, right?

And what its chemical compound would actually be, just like you’re saying, because if it’s something with hydrogen partnered with another metal, it could be something that could be right, quite reactive.

So in lab, we use something called lithium aluminum hydride.

And so when the hydrogen actually has that electron, instead of giving it up and forming an acid or a proton, instead of when it has that electron, it can actually be quite reactive and it’s very dangerous.

So when we use lithium aluminum hydride in lab, you end up having to take your flask and put it in a liquid nitrogen bath.

You soak it in something that’s at 77 Kelvin or negative 194 Celsius because it’s so reactive.

So that my gut instinct is I don’t want a battery with that.

I don’t want to be anywhere near that.

All right, but a little known fact that the orange fuel tank that was the main tank of the space shuttle orbiter when it launched, it had the two solid rocket boosters on the side and then the main tank in the middle was it had two tanks inside of it and one of those two tanks is twice the size of the other, precisely twice the size.

And the one that’s twice as big had liquid hydrogen in it and the one that was half the size had liquid oxygen in it and you blend them together, they pick up a two to one ratio and out comes the exhaust, which is just water.

And so you’re saying we can’t do that in a car?

I don’t think so.

Not safely.

Have you ever been around those doers?

The doers are the vacuum sealed containers that you have to, in order to keep something in the liquid phase.

So in order to have nitrogen, if you ever see liquid nitrogen, it’s kept in these doers.

They’re vacuum sealed containers because nitrogen wants to be in a gas in our environment here on earth.

Same thing with hydrogen.

It wants to be a gas.

You’d have to use a special container, which are ridiculously heavy.

So on top of the fact that things are pressurized, I just realized in the near future, I asked you a stupid question because of course, those tanks, they’re kept refrigerated until launch.

Right.

So yeah, you can’t do that with a car.

Not in Texas.

No, no.

You guys don’t even have electricity.

We got to take another quick break and we come back more with Kate the Chemist as we’d loving it because Chuck is learning some chemistry for the first time in his life.

All right.

We’ll be back in a moment on StarTalk.

We’re back, StarTalk Cosmic.

So our first foray with a pure chemistry episode here, and I’m loving it.

And we got Kate the Chemist.

Anybody that’s named Kate the Chemist, you got to have him on the show.

See, because he’s…

No one voluntarily just randomly calls himself the chemist, unless they can like mix some stuff together.

And Kate, you met your husband in your chemistry department, correct?

We were both getting PhDs in inorganic chemistry.

We met in Welch Hall.

He was behind me in our Saturday morning seminars and like making jokes about things.

And it made me laugh and just fell in love.

But now he’s in software engineering, correct?

Yeah, software engineering, he’s coding.

He’s quite an introvert and I’m quite an extrovert, so it’s pretty good balance.

So Chuck, so if you have a couple where they both are completely chemically fluent, they have to really stay in love their whole time because that could get really, here honey, drink this.

Exactly, that’s what I was going to say.

That’s a terrible, yeah, you don’t want to make your wife mad when she knows how to put together concoctions that will burn you up from the inside.

This is nine episodes of CSI, ready to be written right here, okay.

I’d have to be very careful about it, that’s for sure.

Yeah, Kate, I think you only mentioned two platforms when I last asked, TikTok and, was it Twitter or Instagram?

Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, I’m at Kate the Chemist.

On Twitter, I’m K with the number eight, the Chemist, someone else stole my handle there, so.

Ouch!

We got people, we can take care of that.

Thank you, thank you.

Chuck, call our people.

I will, without a doubt.

You’ll have it in the morning, okay?

All right, Chuck, give me some more.

Here we go, this is Sparrow Chaos.

Sparrow Chaos says, hello, astrophysicist Neil Tyson and chemist Kate Biberdorf and Chuck.

How does dissolving a salt molecule in water make its atoms ionize?

Yeah, are you ready for this?

Okay, it’s actually pretty simple.

So what they do is they form what are referred to as ion-dipole interactions.

And so the salt goes in and it’s in a lattice.

So when you think of sodium chloride, I’m sure you don’t think of it in this big cage, but that’s what it looks like.

So there’s a sodium ion, then a chloride ion, and then a sodium and chloride and sodium and chloride, and they alternate, you form this giant cage, it’s a huge box.

Exactly, like a big cube.

Yeah.

So the sodium atom is boxed in by the chlorine atoms.

They’re all boxed in.

Structurally.

They’re completely surrounded in.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, interesting.

Like a cube, every other corner is a sodium, and then every other corner is a chloride.

And so they just rotate, it’s a one-to-one ratio.

And so they’re already technically in the ion form when they’re in salt, because it’s a sodium ion attracted to a chloride ion, and that’s what forms the sodium chloride.

So they’re already together.

And so when that cube drops into the water, they form the ion-dipole interaction.

So the ions from the salt, dipoles from the water, because water is shaped in this beautiful little point, kind of, if you will.

So the oxygen’s at the top, and then the hydrogens are directly below it.

And so this forms an interaction with the salt, and they come together.

Well, I gotta show off here.

I gotta show off.

It’s 105 degree angle, is that correct?

It might be.

I know it’s less than 109.5 degrees because it’s in the bent form, but it’s like 105 might be right.

Oh, okay, that’s all I knew.

I just wanted to show off that little bit of thing.

That’s all I knew, okay.

Yeah, that sounds right.

As far as I’m concerned, you’re talking about FM radio.

I know, 109.5.

Yeah.

Classic rock all the time, 109.5.

The ions.

It’s coming to you live, right now.

All right, very cool.

Wait, wait, so keep going.

So now what?

Oh, so it just lives that way.

That is the natural state.

Yeah, they break apart.

And so the ions then kind of separate by themselves.

You have a sodium ion that’s completely surrounded by water.

And so since sodium is positive, it’s gonna be attracted to the oxygen negative side of water.

So the O’s are gonna be surrounded.

My missing one just came out.

My O’s are gonna be around the sodium.

And then the chloride, the chlorine on the other side is negative.

And so that’s going to be surrounded by the hydrogen component of the water molecule.

So it’s completely gonna arrange.

So all the ions separate out and they’re completely surrounded by tons and tons of water molecules.

And that’s what your saltwater actually is.

It’s beautiful.

Okay, so the whole ocean is this, is what you’re saying.

Well, plus a lot of other crap.

There’s plastic in there.

There’s coral reefs.

There’s fish.

And fish poop, fish poop.

Fish poop, especially.

Yeah, yeah.

Carbon dioxide these days.

So yeah.

Yeah.

I know.

Sorry to go there.

All right.

Yeah, she had to bum us out.

All right.

All right.

So Chuck, what else you have?

All right.

So let’s go from a brine to a food question.

This is…

That’s Chuck’s only chemistry word he knows.

That was my only chemistry joke that I could do.

You’re talking about…

Okay, forget it.

Carrie Manneberg says this.

Hi, Dr.

Kate and Dr.

Tyson.

This is a food chemistry question.

Is it true cooking vegetables will reduce their nutritional value and denature some enzymes?

Some raw veggies taste great, but when you roast a veggie, like onions…

They taste even better.

They taste so much better.

So what does heat do to the big molecules, Kate?

It depends on what the molecule is.

So they’re completely right that with your proteins, they are going to denature.

So they go from the crumpled up position.

So they’re kind of like on top of each other, the fetal position, and then they open up to more of a starfish when they apply the heat.

So that’s going to change their structure.

So Kate, what happens when some heat slaps on to some big vegetable molecules or vitamins?

Vitamins, I guess, is the nutritional part of this.

Yeah, well, so the molecules for vitamins are either going to be fat soluble or water soluble.

So it depends on how you’re cooking them.

So if you have a lot of oil in there, then the vitamins will dissolve in your oil or your fat.

And so that will be pulled out.

And depending on if you eat that liquid that’s around there, it’s very possible that it will dissolve out of there.

Okay, so if you knew in advance, whether it’s water soluble or oil soluble, you might cook your vegetables differently to avoid that.

Perhaps, but in general, the idea is just to minimize the amount of oil.

You don’t want that stuff in your body anyway.

You don’t want any of those fats.

You want to minimize it because it’s not good for your arteries.

Okay, but I bet what he’s talking about when you roast onions, you’re putting them neither in oil nor water.

You’re just slapping those puppies on the grill right next to your T-bone.

So how about if it’s just pure heat and you get those little brown marks on your onions?

Yeah, the caramelization.

Exactly.

I love me some of that.

And so caramelization is when you have your sugars.

And so that can be either your complex carbohydrates, more like your starches, or those can be your simple sugars, which are actually sugars.

And so when you go through caramelization, you’re breaking down the sugars, you’re breaking them into smaller molecules.

So you are changing their chemical composition.

But I don’t think necessarily that’s making it better or worse for you, for onions specifically.

For me, I’m more worried about cooking your veggies in a lot of oil or fat.

So it may be that, well, OK.

But surely there’s some molecules that don’t like the heat.

And it’ll just bust them and break them apart, right?

That’s different, though.

That’s talking about if you had too much heat.

So if you had too much heat, then your molecules are going to completely decompose, like actually break apart, instead of breaking into smaller molecules.

So it’s like whether or not it’s breaking into more of its elemental states, or whether or not it’s breaking into smaller molecules that are still tasty and aromatic and give things a smell.

Still of themselves.

OK, interesting.

Yeah.

So is that the difference between decomposing and biodegrading?

Well, that depends, too.

So biodegrading is going to be something that usually happens outside, right?

So you have like your, what am I trying to think of?

So like six pack rings, those need to be biodegradable.

And so that’s when sunlight hits it.

So high energy UV radiation will hit it and do trigger some kind of chemical reactions as well.

But those are usually photosensitive chemicals.

OK.

All right.

Speaking of water soluble, who knew?

Who would have known that the wicked witch of the West was water soluble?

That’s just an interesting little fact.

We need some chemists to work on that, I think.

I think they got to get to get some top people trying to figure that one out.

What kind of life form is she where that occurs?

Right.

All right, Chuck, keep them coming.

Here we go.

This is Brady Fitcher.

And Brady Fitcher says, Hello all from Los Alamos, California.

My question is, in the world of chemistry, is there ever any thought to the possibility that new chemistry might someday be discovered?

In the way that the physical world is grappling with the ideas of dark matter or dark energy?

Or in the same realm of possibilities, like a chemical world that sort of exists maybe in the quantum realm?

Wait, wait, so Chuck, this is a movie trailer ready to happen.

In a world.

In a world.

Yeah, I love that question.

So Kate, are we living in the entire one and only chemistry universe that-

I refuse to, yeah.

Can you imagine a whole other chemical realm that is apart and distinct from everything we’re doing now?

Yes, and I think it would be ignorant to say that we know everything now for chemistry.

I mean, we can’t figure out how the electron moves across from the nucleus.

It teleports from one side of the atom to the other.

We can’t figure that out.

So to claim that we know exactly what’s going on is just gibberish.

But I do think we know a lot more than we did 100 years ago.

So we’ve made a lot of progress.

I really wish I was going to be alive like 200 or 300 years from now because I think that’s when the chemistry is going to be just like, ah, beautiful.

That’s like a chef does it.

Kiss your fingers and pop up your hand.

We’re back to cooking with you.

That’s great.

But wait a minute.

So in physics, there are entire branches of physics that were discovered, right?

So relativity was a branch of physics and quantum physics, a branch of physics.

So is there a branch of chemistry you can imagine waiting to be discovered?

Oh, man, that is such a good question.

I’m just extending the question from our guy.

Yeah.

Honestly, I can’t put a name to it, but 100% because I just think we don’t know everything right now.

I think there’s so much more to figure out.

We have a decent understanding of the atom, but we still can’t see it.

Our microscopes are getting better and better and better, but it’s not perfect yet.

And so I think that we’re so close to learning a lot, like we’re right on the past.

So right now we’re playing with atoms, and they’re doing stuff we just accept, but we haven’t gotten in it to say, hey, I saw you do that, and now I understand it.

We just kind of agree with each other.

This is what it does, and we make stuff out of it and move on.

We haven’t found an experiment to break down our theories yet, but I think it’s coming.

Hopeful.

Very hopeful.

Okay.

Here we go.

This is Kevin Ho.

Kevin says, hello, Dr.

Tyson and Dr.

Biberdorf.

When we hear the word chemist, we often think of some mad scientist working in an underground lab with lots of different beakers and flasks boiling away.

Do either of you know any mad or maybe just kind of crazy scientist in your field?

Kate, other than yourself, you need not implicate yourself in this question.

You have immunity, diplomatic immunity here.

So yeah, is it possible to know a lot of chemistry and be diabolical so that you end up doing things nefarious?

For sure.

100%.

We’ve heard some really sad stories about people taking their own lives because they know and often they do it in kind of horrendous ways.

So I don’t like that.

I don’t like that side.

But I do think that chemists in general are quite fun.

We usually use our skills for good.

So a lot of us, you’ll find a lot of chemistry in elementary schools.

But you know, we’re out there trying to promote science, make scientists look good.

I want to show that anybody can be a scientist.

It doesn’t matter who you are, what you look like, but honestly, anybody can be a scientist.

If you have a question, technically you are a scientist, so.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

And can you be a scientist if you’re not simultaneously wearing a lab coat?

That’s the question.

But you’re in the kitchen.

Cooking is chemistry.

If there’s anything, if it’s anything, it’s chemistry.

Chemistry and thermodynamics as well.

Yes.

All right, Chuck, let’s go on a fast lightning round.

So, Kate, you have to answer in fewer than five words what your questions are.

Give it to me.

Chuck.

All right, here we go.

This is Gerald Johnson.

Gerald Johnson from Seattle.

He says, I have reached a scientific plateau.

Has, have, we reached a scientific plateau or has science discovery invention just slowed down compared to the days of old?

Kind of what you were just talking about.

So, yes or no, Kate?

No, we haven’t reached the end of that.

We just got vaccines.

She’s like, I just got a booster shot.

What’s your problem?

Okay.

It’s possible that, I mean, a lot of advances happen on the frontiers of journals and doesn’t always make it into the newspapers.

And then there are, Kate, what are they called who bring chemistry into popular products that just, engineering chemists, you know, chemical engineers, right, who then do interesting things with it.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah, I have to disagree with the person as well.

I’m on Kate’s side with this.

Okay.

Keep going.

We took more than five words to do it.

Friedrich Johansson says this.

Hello, doctors and lords.

Chuck, don’t get too accustomed to that, Chuck.

We got to…

You know what?

I got to tell you.

At first, I was like, oh, God, I can’t believe this is stupid.

Now I’m kind of like, I like the sound.

Anyway, Team Seas is the initiative to get funds to remove plastic from the oceans.

Is there some plausible chemistry as a means of removing plastic and, more importantly, microbe plastic from our seas?

Yeah.

So, Kate, you got like a microbe.

That would have to include biochemistry, right?

Some microbes that would munch on plastic and either return it to its base ingredients and die.

And then die.

Return it to its base.

Or, you know, Chuck, it’ll eat the plastic and then it’ll become super microbes.

So, we want to be careful what we wish for here.

So, Kate, what’s the future of chemists helping the oceans?

I’ll give you more than five words because we’re going to end on this question.

I’m going to give you more than five words.

Go.

I would say I agree with your answer on that.

The only thing I’d be concerned of is any waste that would then be produced in that reaction.

So, if they’re producing methane or producing something else, that could be bad for our environment.

I do think MOFs could be the answer.

So, metal organic frameworks.

So, they’re like those cages we discussed before.

So, they would essentially trap the plastic, if you will, and then you’d be able to kind of filter that whole thing out in general.

So, that might be a feature, but it’s a long way for that one.

So, this is a, it’s an incarceration system.

Exactly.

Yeah, I don’t like the sound of that.

I don’t know about that because you know what it’s going to have.

Now, all the black plastic is all locked up.

The white plastic still roaming the ocean just as free as they ever was.

That means it’s time to end the show because Chuck, we can never reel Chuck back when he goes on that.

Kate, it’s been a delight to have you.

We know we’re going to want you back and my one little sort of, I have more, but I would throw out a periodic table tidbit.

So, we astrophysicists discovered an element on the sun before we discovered it here on Earth.

Do you know which element that is?

Helium.

Yep, you got it.

So, Helios.

So, we named it after the Greek sun god, Helios.

And so, that was a rare case where we had better data from the universe than we did, than we can produce here on Earth.

So, oh yeah.

And so, that’s my one little, and I can say I helped.

So, Kate, we’re all going to look for your book so that finally adults can blow stuff up the way you did as kids.

Tell me the name of the book again and where can we find it?

It’s Elemental, The Hidden Chemistry of Everything, and it’s sold anywhere books are sold.

Anywhere books are sold.

That’s the answer now.

Yeah.

That’s how that goes.

All right.

Well, thanks for being a cherished guest on StarTalk.

And I assure you, this is your first and it won’t be your last, provided you agree, provided you survive, Chuck, you think you’ll think you’ll be back.

All right, Chuck, always good to have you as my co-host here.

All right.

I’m Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always, looking up.