;colony/science / Chemistry
⚗ Chemistry
Chemistry
Atoms, bonds, and reactions — intuitive the moment they move.
Read it your way
Every answer here is written twice. Flip the switch and the page rewrites itself.
Try it now · Plate 26
Why does the same stuff become solid, liquid, or gas?
Sweep the heat slowly and watch the particles change personality.
PLATE 26 · ONE SLIDER, THREE WORLDS
Heat 20%
Sweep slowly through 34% and 67% — watch the personality change.
State
solid
Particle jiggle
20%
Cold: every particle vibrates in its parking spot — that's a solid holding its
shape. Warmer: they break parking and tumble over each other, still touching —
a liquid that pours. Hotter still: they fly apart and fill the whole box — a
gas. Ice, water, steam: same molecules, different dance.
Every question
Chemistry, answered twice.
Plate 26Open → Why does the same stuff become solid, liquid, or gas? Ice, water, and steam are the same molecule in three moods — and the mood is set by one number. Plate 27Open → What does the pH scale actually measure? Lemon juice sits just five points from water on the pH scale, which works out to one hundred thousand times more acidic. Plate 46Open → Why does metal feel colder than wood? Touch a metal table leg and a wooden one side by side: the metal feels colder. But put a thermometer on each and they read exactly the same. Your skin isn't measuring temperature. Plate 65Open → What is fire? Fire is a chemical reaction caught in the act. It needs three partners at once, and pulling any one away snuffs it instantly. Plate 66Open → Why does iron rust? Rust is iron slowly going back to the ore it came from. The cruel part: the rust flakes off and exposes fresh metal, so it never stops on its own. Plate 78Open → Why do atoms stick together? Atoms bond because most of them sit one or two electrons short of feeling settled, and the right partner fixes that. Plate 79Open → Why does a smell fill a room? Nothing pushes a smell across a room. The particles just bounce about at random, and chance does the rest. Plate 80Open → Why does a balloon shrink in the cold? A balloon stays puffed because the air inside is hammering on the walls. Cool that air and it hammers less, so the balloon caves in a little. Plate 119Open → What is inside an atom? An atom is almost entirely empty space. All the weight hides in a speck in the middle, and one number in that speck decides whether you're holding gold or oxygen. Plate 120Open → How does soap actually clean? Water alone slides straight off a greasy plate and leaves the grease behind. Soap works because each of its molecules has two ends that want opposite things. Plate 121Open → What is a catalyst? A catalyst can make a reaction run millions of times faster without being used up — it never appears in the recipe, yet nothing would happen in time without it. Plate 122Open → What makes fireworks colourful? Every firework colour is a particular metal glowing, and each metal can only ever glow its own exact set of colours. Plate 123Open → Why does salt melt ice? Salt doesn't warm the ice up — it can't. It lowers the temperature at which water is willing to stay frozen, so ice that should be solid turns to liquid instead. Plate 163Open → Why does bread rise? Bread rises because it is quietly alive. Yeast feeds on the dough's sugars and breathes out carbon dioxide; the stretchy gluten traps the gas in bubbles, and the whole loaf puffs up. Plate 167Open → Why does fizzy drink go flat? A fizzy drink is carbon dioxide held captive in liquid by pressure. Crack the cap and that pressure escapes, so the gas slowly slips out as bubbles until there is none left to tickle your tongue.
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