Chemistry...
Below are our articles on the subject of Chemistry. If you can't see what you are looking for our other categories are displayed on the left under 'Our Quick Links'...
A Bending Bone
Unless it is something that has a soft and wobbly structure, like a jellyfish, all animals, including humans, have a stiff skeleton to support their muscles and...
Acids and Alkalis: Making Gases
When an acid is mixed with a carbonate, a type of alkaline chemical, the two chemicals react and form the gas carbon dioxide. This can be quite dramatic!...
Acids and Alkalis: Which Are Which?
The pH scale is a scale of numbers that describes how acid or alkaline (another word for alkaline is ‘basic’) something is. A pH indicator is a liquid or paper that...
Breaking Down Colours: What's in Your Pen
Chemistry uses chromatography to separate mixtures of chemicals. The word chromatography comes from the Greek words for ‘colour’ and ‘to write’....
Cleaning Tarnish Off Silver: Bicarbonate and Aluminium
After a while, even the best and most carefully polished silver becomes dull and tarnished, and needs to be cleaned again. Why does it tarnish,...
Green Coins or Shiny Ones? Oxidation of Copper
New pennies and two pence pieces are bright copper, but after a while, they turn dull. This is because the copper reacts with oxygen in the air...
Growing Crystals
To grow crystals, you need to start with a saturated solution – water that has as much, sugar, salt or whatever crystal ingredient dissolved in it as it possibly...
Ice Cream: Colloidal Chemistry
What is a summer without ice cream cones, or a slice of apple pie without a melting scoop of vanilla ice cream? Though it looks simple – cream, milk, sugar and eggs...
Invisible Ink
Invisible ink, sometimes called ‘sympathetic ink’, is a way of writing secret messages. Spies have used invisible inks to pass on secret messages, as have prisoners...
Make a Soda Fountain
Drinks are fizzy because they have carbon dioxide in them – the gas is forced into the drink at low temperatures and dissolves.
Homemade fizzy drinks can be...
Making an Emulsion
Oil and water are described as immiscible liquids – liquids that do stay mixed together (see ‘Why Oil and Water Don't Mix’). Even if oil and water are thoroughly...
Making Hot Ice
Water solidifies or turns to ice at zero degrees centigrade. This experiment makes something that looks just like ice but forms at room temperature and gives off heat....
Making Polymers: Cornflour Slime and Silly Putty
Polymers are made of long molecules like chains that stick to each other (cross-link). Natural polymers include hair, wool and cellulose (in...
Soap and Detergent Chemistry
Soap is made from animal fats and vegetable oils, mixed with a caustic chemical called sodium hydroxide (also known as lye). The sodium hydroxide reacts with the oil...
Soft and Hard Water: Making More Bubbles
Different parts of the country have soft or hard water. Hard water is water that has travelled through certain types of rock, including...
The Science of Making Butter
Bread and butter go together naturally (especially freshly made bread still warm from the oven). There are records of butter making from around 4000 years ago....
Why Oil and Water Don't Mix
Oil and water don’t mix – they are described as ‘immiscible’. Crude oil floats on the sea after a spill from a tanker. Motor oil shows up as a sheen on puddles in...
