Tiny Tech

Episode 030

The 1930s radio version of the great fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, often exclaimed Elementary, my dear Watson! when he reached an obvious conclusion. What you might not know, is that Sherlock Holmes was an expert chemist, often carrying out chemical experiments as part of his detective work.

Episode 029

Got the blues? Well, someone who's really blue -- but likes it -- is the cobalt blue tarantula. This large spider gets its color not from a pigment, but from tiny structures in its hair, which cause the reflected light to display an effect called interference. The same interference effect causes soap bubbles, opals, and butterfly wings to display many different colors depending on what angle you view them from. What is remarkable about the cobalt blue tarantula is that the color doesn't change in this way, but stays the same.

Episode 028

Teeth make eating possible, sharks scary, and smiles pretty. But when you have a cavity, you need to see a dentist. For over 200 years, dentists have been filling cavities with amalgams, which are mixtures of silver, mercury, and other metals. Since the 1970s, however, dentists have increasingly been using a new material called a composite, which is made by adding powdered quartz to a plastic resin.

Episode 027

Batteries are an amazing technology. Each battery is a little chemical reactor: when power is needed, the chemical reaction proceeds, and electricity is generated. When the chemical reaction ends, the battery is dead. Of all the kinds of batteries, lithium-ion batteries have the greatest energy per unit weight, which is why they are used in such things as laptop computers.

Episode 026

Remember that annoying cotton shirt that shrank two sizes after you did your laundry? Well, scientists have recently developed a really clever way to use a similar effect to make tiny three dimensional devices.

Episode 025

If the cells in your body get hot, they get a little uncomfortable and don't work as well. Unlike us, they can't just drink some ice-cold lemonade to cool off. Your cells can only live near body temperature, and if things get too hot, they die. This is true for normal cells, and also for cancer cells.

Episode 024

Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend sang Marilyn Monroe in Gentleman Prefer Blondes. However nanodiamonds may become everyone's best friend!...

Episode 023

In the movie Back to the Future, George McFly was a little confused when he told his future wife I am your density....

Episode 022

When I'm at the grocery store, I always seem to be in the slowest checkout line. But it's faster than it used to be because products come with a barcode on the label...

Episode 021

The plastic items we know so well are made of polymers, materials consisting of simple repeating units of particular chemicals. As it turns out, nature is a brilliant polymer chemist...