Asphalt - Chemie im Straßenbau
Roads are one of the defining features of modern civilizations, believe it or not. To me and I think most others, the state of the roads in...
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Science & Medicine
Chemistry in Everyday Life
Chemistry in Everyday Life is a podcast that aims to explain the fascinating world of chemistry to lay people with the help of common examples encountered all around us.
Episodes
20 of 41 episodesLast episode of Chemistry in Everyday Life: Cyanide Poisoning
It takes a little bit more than 100mg of cyanide to kill a 75 kg human being. A little more than 100mg and the unfortunate victim will show...
Why can we digest starch, but not cellulose?
Both starch and cellulose are made of glucose, one of the main sources of energy for the human body. Yet... we can digest starch that we fin...
Summer Re-runs: Prove It! How do we know what chemicals we have? - Part 2: Analysis
Dear Chemistry in Everyday Life Fans, I am off this month and as a consequence, we are looking back on past episodes over the summer. Today’...
Summer Re-runs: Protection from the Sun Pt. 1 - The Ozone Layer
Dear Chemistry in Everyday Life Fans, I am off this month and as a consequence, we are looking back on past episodes over the summer. Today’...
Summer Re-runs: Breathe in, Breathe Out - Oxygen Transfer in the Blood
Dear Chemistry in Everyday Life Fans, I am off this month and as a consequence, we are looking back on past episodes over the summer. I aske...
You look radiant today - Radiotracers and Imaging
PLEASE NOTE: During the month of August, I will repeat some previous episodes. If you want to influence which episodes will be played, you c...
Prove It! How do we know what chemicals we have? - Part 2: Analysis
Have you ever wondered how all these scientists come up with their findings in forensics, environmental science, pharmaceuticals, … cooking,...
Prove It! How do we know what chemicals we have? - Part 1: Purification Techniques
Have you ever wondered how all these scientists come up with their findings in forensics, environmental science, pharmaceuticals, … cooking,...
Absorbing Fats - Bile in Action
After talking about red blood cells two episodes ago, this episode looks at a different bodily fluid. One that helps in the digestion of fat...
Life-saving explosions - Airbags
In this episode I confront the horrible memory of my one and only bad car crash. I only remember fragments, but the airbag was a big part of...
Breathe in, Breathe Out - Oxygen Transfer in the Blood
Oxygen in, Carbon Dioxide out. We learn this basic paradigm about breathing from a very early age on. But how does it work? From a chemical...
Sing this corrosion to me
Why does iron rust? Why does this not happen for stainless steel? How else can we protect materials from corrosion? If you want to know, lis...
The concept of energy in the human body
I always found the concept of energy in the human body very intriguing… or in any organism for that matter. The term energy is very abstract...
Space. The Final Frontier...
Space. The Final frontier… a friend of mine asked me if there is chemistry in space and how it is different from the chemistry, we observe h...
Distilling the essence - Talking about Distillation
I always tried to avoid making an episode about making alcoholic beverages, because there is already so much great content about it and I di...
Portable Power - Batteries and their Chemistry
Batteries are ubiquitous in daily life and I took them for granted for such a long time that I felt obliged to write an episode about them....
A World of Mirror Images
From winter gloves and people with inverted organs to the effects of molecular mirror images. Chirality can be found everywhere, so it is hi...
Conjugated Systems... no, we are not talking about Latin ;-)
We talked about Glow Sticks, we talked about Fireworks. Now it feels like the right time to look at another big factor in color of compounds...
Glow Sticks - A new year's saving grace
Our 2020 new year’s celebration had to look quite different this year. The Belgian government had to restrict contact, so no extended family...