Christmas isn’t far off now, and whether you’re celebrating it or not, you may well have started seeing Christmas lights starting to appear adorning houses and Christmas trees. How do these lights actually work, and how can they be made to produce such an array of colours? This graphic takes a look at the chemistry.
Today, hair dyes are widely used, either to cover up grey hairs, or simply by those wanting to change their natural hair colour. The chemistry behind how they change the colour of hair can actually get pretty complicated, but this graphic tries to boil it down to the key classes of chemicals involved, and an overview of the process that produces the dye molecules.
Coloured glass is something that’s commonplace in our lives, from the green of wine and beer bottles, to the red, yellow, and green of traffic lights. The origin of these colours is something we don’t give a lot of thought to, but a range of different elements are responsible. This graphic takes a simple look at a few of these, and the colours they impart.
If you’re currently a student, then you’ll no doubt often make ample use of highlighters during revision. Even if your studying days are far behind, you probably still use them from time to time. But what are the chemicals behind their luminous colours? This graphic looks at some of the possible dyes that can be used.
Following on from the start of the Chemistry Advent Calendar yesterday, here’s another festive post, this time looking at the chemistry of the poinsettia plant. The red leaves of the poinsettia plant can be used to make a pH indicator, due to their chemical composition; this is actually something of an upgrade on one of the oldest posts on the site, now complete with a explanatory graphic!
It’s Fireworks Night here in the UK tomorrow, which means fireworks (obviously), bonfires and sparklers. We’ve looked at fireworks in a previous post, so this time around it’s time to take a look at the chemicals that go into producing sparklers, and their various roles.