A Bittersweet Farewell and Enthusiastic Hello: A New Science Podcast Is Headed Your Way!
We have some bittersweet news: Orbitals is coming to a close. BUT there's a new science podcast headed your way in 2022! It's called Tiny Ma...
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Orbitals
From antibiotic resistance to Roaring Twenties poisonings to body farms, you can find chemistry—and a good story—anywhere. Every month writer and host, Sam Jones, PhD, takes on a chemistry t...
Episodes
20 of 46 episodes
🧪 Solutions 112 | The Sweet Chemistry of Vanilla Memories
If there's one flavor you can always count on, it's vanilla. Sweet, creamy, and nostalgic, it comes from a creeping orchid vine. But with in...
🧪 Solutions 111 | A Walk Among the Sponges
Think the science behind sponges must be boring? You're so, so wrong. Shrink down to the microscopic level with us and take a walk among spo...
Bacteria are cleaning up our toxic waste | Orbitals 410
Bacteria often get a bad rap, which is fair—they are responsible for diseases like strep throat, pneumonia, and tuberculosis, and antibiotic...
🧪 Solutions 110 | What your raincoat and a hydrogen fuel cell have in common
Polymer membranes make everything from rain jackets to medical devices. But they're also integral parts of hydrogen fuel cells, powering car...
The Great Molasses Flood of 1919 | Orbitals 409
When you hear the word "molasses" you probably imagine super slow-moving, brown-colored sweet stuff that you add to a cookie recipe. And tha...
🧪 Solutions 109 | No 5G Without Chemistry
5G is coming… but can your phone handle it? Surprisingly, a lot of that comes down to the chemistry inside! Let's crack open your phone to f...
Sweat: The Taboo Fluid That Keeps Us Alive | Orbitals 408
Sweat is this thing that many of us seem to loathe, but also pay a lot of money to do while being yelled at by professionals. So what is swe...
🧪 Solutions 108 | Antiviral Fabric: From Less-Smelly Socks to Life-Saving Masks
A team of researchers making workout gear that never stinks realized that their invention could actually have a bigger impact fighting a glo...
It's Raining PLASTIC?! | Orbitals 407
In 2020, researchers discovered that more than 1,000 tons of plastic—that's over 100 million plastic water bottles worth—rains down on Natio...
🧪 Solutions 107 | How Wood is Making Sunscreen More Effective
Many of us slather sunscreen on in the summer to keep sunburns at bay. But new materials can improve sunscreens without adding more of the s...
The Icepick Surgeon | Orbitals 406
Sam Kean's latest book, The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science ,...
🧪 Solutions 106 | Fermenting Pheromones and Phytases
How do you keep moths from munching on apples? By confusing them with a field full of mating pheromones brewed in a lab. The same fermentati...
Pretzel Perfume, Egg Foam, and the Number of Bubbles in Beer: Pub Chemistry | Orbitals 405
A lot has happened in the last year (understatement of the millennium), so we wanted to bring our listeners something a bit sillier than usu...
🧪 Solutions 105 | The New Molecules Making Vaccines More Effective
Vaccines help our immune system to learn to recognize invading pathogens before we ever get infected. But some vaccines include molecules th...
Why Are Doctors Still Prescribing Opioids? | Orbitals 404
Over half a million people in the US have died from an opioid overdose over the last 20 years, and a lot of the time they were prescribed th...
🧪 Solutions 104 | How Omega-3s from Algae Could Help Save Our Oceans
In this episode of Solutions, we're going to travel from mangrove coasts to outer space, to the middle of Nebraska, and even to Norway to an...
Combating The Climate Crisis: From Blackout Curtains to Feeding Cows Seaweed | Orbitals 403
April 22nd is Earth Day, so this month's episode is all about our warming planet--what the data are telling us about our planet's future, ho...
🧪 Solutions 103 | Boats Floating on Air and Solar Panel Crystal Balls: Lessons from Nature
We humans are pretty smart, but sometimes our best solutions to big problems are inspired by nature! We're talking to scientists about how d...
Does Life Exist Beyond Earth? How Would We Know? | Orbitals 402
In today's episode, we're talking about life. What it is, how it started here on Earth, and how we're trying to find it in other parts of th...