Have you ever mixed vinegar and baking soda (and maybe a little red food coloring) to create a homemade volcano?  It’s fun to see the reaction of these two common household chemicals.  But what is happening at the molecular level that makes these two substances react?  This reaction is known […]

Take a deep breath.  Along with that life-giving oxygen, you are inhaling, there are quite a few other things mixed into the air you breathe.  Let’s start with the gasses.  Air (on Earth, anyway) is made up of 78% nitrogen and only 21% oxygen.  Your lungs take up the oxygen

Water covers about 70% of our planet’s surface, and it makes up around 60% of our bodies.  It is such a common substance that people often think it is “plain” or “boring.”  But water actually has some interesting properties that make it a very unusual chemical!  One of water’s interesting

If you were painting and ran out of black paint, what would you do?  You might try to mix many of the colors you have together to create a dark pigment to use.  Black ink is typically made out of several colors combined.  Not all black pigments are the same!