BI Answers: Why can't I pour grease down the drain?

We've all been warned that pouring that delicious bacon grease down the drain is bad... but why is it bad?

The answer lies in the chemistry that happens after your wastewater is flushed from your pipes and delivered to the sewers: The fats in the grease and oil from your kitchen mix with the other chemicals in the sewers and form nasty conglomerations of chemicals that can build up and block the pipes that take our dirty water to the wastewater treatment plant.

According to a recent review of the subject, these fat and oil buildups caused about 47% of the up to 36,000 sewer overflows that happen annually in the U.S.

Here's how that goes down.

Grease + Sewer = Fatberg

When you pour grease into your sink it's just beginning its travels. The grease and oil head down your pipes and into the sewers where they meet up with all the other wastewater from the area. Here is where the nastiness starts.

These globs can build up in your home's pipes like this:

But things get really nasty when these greasy globs reach the sewers and merge with everyone else's fat and oils.

The fats in the grease get broken down into their component parts — fatty acids and glycerol. These fatty acids bind calcium found in the sewers — created from biological processes including the corrosion of concrete — to create a "soap" compound.

When sewer levels rise high, these fat blobs glob onto the ceiling of the pipes, creating stalactite-type structures that are sometimes called "fatbergs." We've actually just recently been discovering how they come to be. A 2011 paper in the journal Environmental Science & Technology was the first to successfully form these deposits in the lab.

While it's called a "soap" because of its chemical composition, this isn't something you'd want to wash yourself with. These blobs of fatty compounds can become bus-sized — for example, here's a 17-ton fatberg from a British sewer:

These clogs block the sewer line and can cause disgusting and dangerous backups. While drain cleaners might clear out your pipes in your home, the greasy mess just gets washed into the sewers afterward, creating a bigger problem down the line.

In the UK, where the footage above is from, the team sent to clean up had to go down into the sewers and power-wash the sewers to dislodge and break apart the fatberg. It takes weeks to break these apart, according to the local water authority Thames Water.

Where is it worst?

Fatbergs are more likely to form in areas with lots of restaurants, since there is more grease heading down into the sewers to create the deposits.

People who live in old or large apartment buildings should also be careful: Their grease is competing with the grease of everyone else who has ever lived in their building and on their block — even just a tablespoon per person can really add up when it all mixes together in the sewers. This could happen at any level — within the plumbing of a home, or at the neighborhood level. It's also possible that these soapy messes can block later stages of the water treatment processes at the city level.

When these huge globs happen, they can be really terrible to deal with if not caught early. The UK fatberg seen above was only discovered when locals started complaining that they couldn't flush their toilets. It could have been much worse. "If we hadn't discovered it in time, raw sewage could have started spurting out of manholes across the whole of Kingston,"Gordon Hailwood, the local sewer guy said.

What to do instead?

If you make a lot of grease at one time, say, frying a turkey, some areas offer fat and oil recycling to get rid of it and actually turn it into useful biofuel.

For smaller amounts of grease, let it solidify in the pan or in a jar, then throw the solid grease in the trash can. Make sure to wipe the greasy pan or dish with a paper towel to soak up the rest. Try to get as much as possible of the grease and oil into the trash instead of the drain — just the little bit that washes out with the wastewater can cause problems over time, especially in areas with high populations like cities.

"People try to discharge their oil and grease properly, but over time, you can get a fair amount of oil and grease from washing pots, pans and dishware," Ducoste told LiveScience in 2011. "The cumulative impact could be substantial. It's that long-term consistent discharge of that oil and grease, even if it's a small amount at a time, which could lead to problems."

When you do accidentally get some grease in your pipes, you can go ahead and wash it out using boiling water and a mixture of vinegar and baking soda, according ot Scott English Plumbing. This will help push it out of your pipes, though it will still be able to coagulate in the main water system.

The best plan is not to let any grease get down the drain if you don't want the sewer coming out of your faucet.

This post is part of a continuing series that answers all of your "why" questions related to science. Have your own question? Email science@businessinsider.com with the subject line "Q&A"; tweet your question to @BI_Science; or post to our Facebook page.

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I guess you'd have to call it Birchbox for cognitive pharmaceuticals.

A company called Nootrobox will mail you brain-boosting pills on the regular for your choice of $30 or $60 a pop, depending on how much you want at a time.

These pills are mental supplements called nootropics (pronounced "new-oh-tropics") that purport to help your mind operate at its peak capabilities when it comes to pesky tasks related to memory, focus, and attention.

I put my own personal thinking machine on the line to see what it's like to introduce these potential miracle drugs into my body. The FDA has evaluated all the ingredients contained within them, and everything is "either GRAS (generally regarded as safe) and/or acceptable as a dietary supplement compound." Good enough for me.

The Nootrobox arrived containing two small blue glass bottles full of green pills with a transparent coating. Each pill contains a blend of nootropics the company brands as "Rise." In nootropics-speak, each pill is a "stack," or combination of ingredients designed to get one's mind in a particular improved state.

The blend consists of only three ingredients. Specifically these are bacopa (linked to improved memory and comprehension), L-theanine (linked to increased levels of dopamine and serotonin, those happy neurotransmitters in the brain), and a little caffeine (which serves to reduce fatigue and restore alertness).

Nootrobox suggests taking one of their Rise pills in place of drinking a cup of coffee to get the dust out from between your ears each morning. A second class of nootropics users might take a second one with that day's lunch.

The only aim in taking these supplements is to maintain a focused, less-stressed attitude throughout the day. In my week of popping pills, I can attest that I certainly did feel a good deal sharper and focused than I'm accustomed to. It's a headspace I wouldn't mind occupying more often.

In the interest of gathering some external data, I asked my colleague Steve Tweedie if I seemed any different this past week. He somehow tolerates sitting next to me for many hours every day, so if anyone would notice a change in my altitude and behavior, it'd be him.

He said, "You seem a little more energetic. More talkative. It's odd. I wasn't really thinking about it before."

We appear to have a case of mild but positive change on our hands. Pretty cool.

If this grabs your attention, check out Nootrobox here. Their FAQ section delves into a number of specific concerns that people may reasonably have, but my experience was one of total innocuity and small, desirable benefits.

You can order 30 pills for $29, 70 pills for $59, or a 7-pill "dabbler pack" for $9. If you subscribe to receive your nootropics monthly, the company'll knock 10% off of everything.

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BI Answers: Why does stale bread become hard, but stale potato chips become soft?

It may sound like a riddle, but it's not: Your bread gets hard when it gets old and stale, while chips get softer. Ever wonder why?

Bread and chips are actually very similar chemically and structurally. They are both made of a type of carbohydrate made of sugar molecules linked together called starches. Individual grains of starch absorb water, particularly in the presence of heat.

While both foods have starch, the starches interact differently with the water in its environment during the cooking process, changing its state when freshly cooked, according to Matthew Hartings, a researcher at American University in Washington, D.C. who teaches a course on the chemistry of cooking.

A freshly cooked bread, for instance, has been baked. This addition of heat and water weakens the attraction between the molecules in the starch, allowing it to absorb more water — a process called gelatinization, which is essentially what happens when a sponge fills up with water.

As bread goes stale, the water in the starch moves to other parts of the bread, such as the crust, so that the starch returns to a dense, hard state, like it was in uncooked flour form. This gives stale bread its crunchy texture.

On the other hand, when you fry potato chips, any water clinging to the potato starch evaporates, resulting in that satisfying crunch. As the chips are exposed to air, however, the water in the air binds to the starch in the chips, making the chips pliable again. The solution for this one is simple: invest in some chip clips to keep air away from your chips to keep them crunchy.

"In both cases, the water is finding a balance within its environment," says Hartings.

So the next time your chips go stale, take heart: they've finally found harmony with their surroundings.

h/t to Daniel Engber for raising this question.

SEE ALSO: Here's The Terrible Thing That Happens When You Pour Grease Down The Drain

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A lot of science is dedicated to big questions, like mapping the universe or figuring out which virus will try to kill us off next.

But sometimes, scientists take what they've learned from their research and show us how it can make our lives a lot easier in a cool way — like using chemistry to chill beers super fast or to cook the perfect burger.

These are the life hacks that really matter, and the American Chemical Society has put together a list of four great ones in one of the latest videos in their Reactions series.

The video itself explains the science behind the tricks, but here are the tips themselves:

To chill beers in under 20 minutes, pour a whole bunch of salt into a bucket of water, then add ice and then beer.

Create the ultimate fruit fly trap and eliminate the bugs by adding some dish soap to a bowl containing apple cider vinegar. Cover the top with plastic wrap and poke a few holes in there, and the pest problem will be solved.

Cook the perfect burger by poking a hole in the middle as you shape the patty. The change in surface area will make it easier to cook the burger to an even temperature throughout, making it easier to avoid under or overcooking the meat — and don't worry, the hole will close.

Don't let your kitchen sponges get stinky or mildewed by using two sponges — rinsing and letting one dry thoroughly before using it again will prevent odor-causing bacteria from growing in the first place, and both sponges should last longer than if you just kept one going at a time.

Watch the full video to understand the chemistry behind these tips and tricks. One that's not on the list: To koozie or not to koozie?:

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The winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry won't be announced for a little while — Wednesday, October 8th, to be precise — but we may already have an idea of who might win, thanks to an annual analysis by Thomson Reuters.

The Intellectual Property & Science unit of Thomson Reuters, which also owns the Reuters news service, bases its forecasts on the number of citations of a scientist's published work. These references serve as a proxy for how influential their work is. (This is also how the overall influence and importance of journals and scientists is assessed, a system that is not without its critics.)

The ratings have accurately predicted 35 Nobel laureates since 2002. These include 9 winners predicted in the year of the forecast, and 16 who won within 2 years. Here are this years predictions for the Nobel Prize for Chemistry:

Functional mesoporous materials

Three of the predicted Laureates work in this area of nanotechnology (read: absurdly small technology, at the scale of atoms and molecules). "Mesoporous" refers to materials with a pore size (similar to the pores in your skin) anywhere between 2 and 50 nanometers — a nanometer being one-billionth of a meter. In particular, mesoporous silica holds promise as a drug delivery system for cancer treatments, among other applications.

The possible winners: Charles Kresge, Chief Technology Officer of Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia; Ryong Ryoo, Director of the Center for Nanomaterials and Chemical Reactions at the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea; and Galen Stucky, Professor in Letters and Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization process

Three scientists from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) are predicted to win for their work on this process, which affords more precise control over the creation of polymers. or synthetic materials created from linking a large number of similar units. Think Teflon, used not only as a nonstick coating (and descriptor of former President Ronald Reagan), but also in replacement blood vessels. Applications for polymers are virtually limitless, so finding more precise ways of creating them is a big deal.

The possible winners: Graeme Moad, Ezio Rizzardo, and San H. Thang, all from CSIRO, where the RAFT polymerization process was first described in 1998 in a paper by Rizzardo.

Organic light-emitting diode

Two scientists are in the running for inventing organic light-emitting diodes, commonly known as OLEDs*. These are seen — literally — in a range of electronic devices including smartphones, tablets, and TVs. If there were a separate prize for being readily understandable to laypeople, they would win that hands-down.

The possible winners: Ching W. Tang of the University of Rochester in New York and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Steven Van Slyke, Chief Technology Officer at Kateeva, Inc. in Menlo Park, California.

*Correction: This article originally called organic light-emitting diodes as LEDs, not OLEDs. OLEDs are a newer technology.

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BI Answers: Why Does Beer Get Skunked?

It's fall. Time for football tailgates, baseball playoffs, and Oktoberfest — which technically began in September, but no one is going to stop you from celebrating. So go ahead and pop open a beer.

But sometimes an awful thing happens when you lift that cool glistening bottle to your lips. Something tastes off. The beer is bad.

It's skunked.

Skunked is really bad. If you've experienced it, you know, and you don't want it to happen again.

Some people blame bad refrigeration practices — letting the beer go from cool to warm and back again — but even though that can make beer stale by increasing the rate of oxidation, it's not the culprit for that skunky taste.

Skunked beer is caused by a specific chemical reaction triggered by exposure to light, as explained in the latest Reactions video by the American Chemical Society.

Brewers know this — there's a reason why craft beer comes in brown bottles or cans, as opposed to green or — shudder — clear glass.

What's more, the name skunk is particularly relevant.

Beer gets its bitterness and a lot of its flavor from hops, one of the main ingredients needed to make the delicious beverage.

They're added to the wort, or not-yet-beer, during the brewing process. When boiled, hops release iso-alpha acids into the liquid.

So far so good.

But if beer is exposed to sunlight, the sun's power breaks down those iso-alpha acids. The resulting compounds bind with proteins that contain sulfur.

This creates a new chemical — one that's almost exactly identical to the one released by skunks.

It's incredibly potent too.

People can taste this chemical in concentrations of one part per billion. As the video explains, "if you filled an Olympic-sized swimming pool with beer, one eyedropper of this stuff would change the way it tasted." Which would ruin an otherwise delightful Olympic-sized swimming pool full of beer.

So treat your beer with respect and keep it out of the sun, especially if the beer is in a clear glass. Supposedly, enough light can get through a green bottle to skunk it, if given enough time.

Watch the full video for more.

This post is part of a continuing series that answers all of your "why" questions related to science. Have your own question? Email science@businessinsider.com with the subject line "Q&A"; tweet your question to @BI_Science; or post to our Facebook page.

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Researchers from the University of Southern Denmark say they've invented a crystal that pulls oxygen out of the air and even water. Apparently, just a spoonful of the stuff can suck up all the oxygen in a room.

The crystal is a salt made from cobalt*, and it appears to be capable of holding oxygen at a concentration that is 160 times higher than the air we breathe. The paper notes that "an excess" of the substance would bind up to 99 percent of the oxygen in a room.

But what's more remarkable is that the crystal can later release the oxygen when exposed to heat or low-oxygen conditions. In a press release, study author Christine McKenzie likens it to the hemoglobin in our blood, which uses iron to bind and release oxygen in the human body.

If the substance lives up to its promises, it could have a lot of really cool applications—for example, feeding high concentrations of oxygen into hydrogen fuel cells, and lightening the load for lung patients who have to lug around heavy oxygen supplies. Also, scuba divers could potentially leave their tanks at home, says McKenzie. "A few grains contain enough oxygen for one breath, and as the material can absorb oxygen from the water around the diver and supply the diver with it, the diver will not need to bring more than these few grains."

The study was published in Chemical Science.

*If you must know, the chemical name of the salt is written out as [{(bpbp)Co₂^II(NO₃)}₂(NH₂bdc)](NO₃)₂ * 2H₂O, where "bpbp" stands for 2,6-bis(N,N-bis(2-pyridylmethyl)-aminomethyl)-4-tert-butylphenolato, and "NH₂bdc^2" stands for 2-amino-1,4-benzenedicarboxylato). Don't ask us how to pronounce all that.

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Most of what we taste we actually smell. The only sensations that we pick up in our mouth are sweet, sour, bitter, umami and salty.

Without its smell, coffee would have only a sour or bitter taste due to the organic acids. Try it with your next cup of coffee — hold your nose as you take your first sip.

The rich satisfying sensation of coffee is almost entirely due to the volatile compounds produced when we roast coffee beans.

The compounds that are formed in the roasting process are very similar to any other compound that is formed in the cooking process. The smell of baking bread is from compounds produced when a sugar reacts with a protein in what is called a Maillard reaction.

Not every scent is as welcoming as freshly baked bread, though. Our sense of smell has developed over millennia to detect dangerous compounds.

Cadaverine and putracine, produced in rotting meat, can be detected by our nose at very low concentrations. The same can be said of sulphur-containing compounds such as hydrogen sulphide — rotten egg gas — which is detected by our nose at levels of parts per billion.

The upshot of this is that we do not detect all compounds in our surroundings to the same extent. For example, to us water is completely odourless although it may be very concentrated in the atmosphere.

Odour chemists have developed a system called odour activity values which show how we respond to particular compounds. This has an influence on how we experience a complex mixture of stimuli.

Flavourists and perfumists have developed a series of descriptors, or words that are used to describe a particular smell. Using gas chromatography equipped with a sniffer port, chemists are able to smell individual compounds as they come off the gas chromatography column and apply a description to what they experience.

Words such as fruity, earthy, flowery, caramel-like, spicy and meaty are used to describe the odour of individual compounds. It is this complex mixture of volatile organic compounds that we can identify with a particular food. The smell of baking bread can easily be distinguished from the smell of cooking cabbage; a lamb roast from a pork roast.

Yet it is not one compound that is responsible for the odour that we experience, but a complex mixture of hundreds of different compounds.

What we smell in coffee

Approximately 800 different compounds are produced in the coffee-roasting process. These thermal degradation reactions decompose sugars and proteins to form the volatile compounds that we smell.

Most of these reactions take place within the thick walls of coffee bean cells, which act as tiny pressure chambers. Not all of these 800 compounds cause the same response in the olfactory membrane in your nose, though.

Green (unroasted) coffee tastes very grassy when brewed. You still get the organic acids and caffeine in the brew but it lacks the full sensation because there are few volatile compounds due to the lack of roasting.

The profile of roast coffee includes only 20 major compounds, but it is the influences of some of the minor compounds that determine the overall taste that we experience.

When chemists are analysing the volatile compounds in coffee a huge range of different odour qualities are experienced.

Some of the nitrogen-containing compounds such as pyridine can actually smell quite foul, while others can smell quite fruity.

Other compounds have descriptors such as putrid or rancid. One compound, 5- methyl furfural, is described only as coffee-like. But it is the rich mixture of hundreds of different volatile compounds that, when we smell it, can only be described as "coffee."

Don Brushett does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Chemistry is beautiful.

You don't have to just take my word for it — a pair of scientists recently captured the spellbinding magic that takes place when two substances combine on high-definition video.

For their new media project, aptly named Beautiful Chemistry, the researchers transformed the tedious world of laboratories and white coats into a captivating wonderland of bubbling oranges, blues and purples, sparkling silvers and mesmerizing yellows.

Here are a few clips from some of their videos.

This is what happened when the researchers put a bit of iron chloride, a compound lab researchers often use to jumpstart other reactions, in a solution of corrosive sodium metasilicate.

It's not just falling snow that shapes compounds into beautiful, delicate crystals. When the researchers dropped zinc — a brittle, abundant metal found in Earth's crust — into a solution of corrosive silver nitrate, delicate flakes of zinc nitrate began to take shape.

The next time you boil an egg, think of this video. It's the surface of an egg surrounded by tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide. Instead of boiling water, the scientists popped an egg in some hydrochloric acid, a substance used frequently in the lab to adjust the pH of a solution. The acid is shown here reacting with the calcium carbonate in the egg shell.

Color is all about chemistry. Tiny pigment molecules give plants and flowers the vibrant reds, purples, blues, and yellows we see. Those same molecules can transform when they interact with an acid or a base, sometimes shifting into other, very different colors. The researchers put a piece of purple cabbage in a dish of the acidic compound sodium hydroxide and watched its purple flesh give way to a yellowish covering.

Here's what they captured after recording corrosive sodium metasilicate reacting with deep blue cobolt chloride.

"If our effects could get more kids and students interested in chemistry and change people's negative opinion towards chemistry," write the researchers on their website, "we would be extremely satisfied."

Congrats, team Beautiful Chemistry — you've hooked this one.

To watch the researchers' full videos, check out Beautiful Chemistry.

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Near the Olympos valley in southwestern Turkey, fires have blazed for at least the past 2,500 years, perhaps inspiring the fire-breathing Chimera in Homer's Iliad. Now we know why.

This video originally appeared on Slate Video. Watch More: slate.com/video

Jim Festante is an actor/writer in Los Angeles and regular video contributor to Slate. He is the author of the Image Comics miniseries The End Times of Bram and Ben.

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Let's start with a quiz...

1. How many senses do you have?

2. Which of the following are magnetic: a tomato, you, paperclips?

3. What are the primary colors of pigments and paints?

4. What region of the tongue is responsible for sensing bitter tastes?

5. What are the states of matter?

If you answered five; paperclips; red, yellow and blue; the back of the tongue; and gas, liquid and solid, then you would have got full marks in any school exam. But you would have been wrong.

The sixth sense and more

Taste, touch, sight, hearing and smell don't even begin to cover the ways we sense the world. We sense movement via accelerometers, which are located in the vestibular system within our ears. The movement of fluid through tiny canals deep in our ears allow us to sense movement and give use our sense of balance. Make yourself dizzy and its this sense that you are confusing.

When we hold our breath we sense our blood becoming acidic as carbon dioxide dissolves in it forming carbonic acid. Not to mention senses for temperature, pain and time plus a myriad of others that allow us to respond to the need what is going on within us and the environment around.

Magnetic repulsion

It is not just paperclips that are magnetic. Both tomatoes and humans interact with magnetic fields, too.

Paperclip and other objects that contain iron, cobalt and nickel are ferromagnets, which means that they can be attracted to magnetic fields. While the water in you and the tomato – or more accurately the nuclei in the hydrogen in the water in you and the tomato – is repelled by magnetic fields. This interaction is called diamagnetism.

But the forces involved are incredibly weak. So normally you don't notice them. That is unless you have been in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine. In there, a massive magnet manipulates nuclei of various atoms inside you in such a way that results in detailed images of your inner workings.

Though you don't need to go to a hospital to see diamagnetic interactions. Just use a couple of cherry tomatoes, a strong magnet, a wooden kebab stick and a pin:

And the types of magnetism don't stop there, but that's for another time.

You're painting with the wrong colour

You were taught that primary colours are those that can't be made by mixing other colored pigments together, and that all other colours can by produced by blending these primary colours. Red and blue fail on both counts. You can make red by mixing yellow with magenta. While a blend of magenta with cyan yields blue. Meanwhile a massive range of hues are inaccessible if you start with just red, blue and yellow.

Colour theorists had this all worked out by the end of the 19th century but for some reason it hasn't made it to school curriculums. The proof is in your colour printer cartridges. They come in cyan, yellow and magenta, which are the true primary colours.

A bitter taste in your mouth

Remember those tongue maps that crop up in biology text books? They clearly show how the taste buds for bitter sit at the back of the tongue, with sweet, sour and sweet having their own discrete regions.

These tongue maps first appeared in 1942 after Edwin Boring of Harvard University misinterpreted a German study from 1901. Despite Boring's mistake the maps soon started to appear in schools texts. Then in 1974 the topic was revisited and the whole idea was roundly discredited. Nevertheless over 40 years later tongue taste maps still persist in biology text books.

Look at the state of your screen

We all learned solids keep a constant shape because the molecules in them are ordered. These can melt to liquids which keep a constant volume and can be poured. Liquids evaporate to form gases that expand to take up the volume available to them. There we have the three states of matter, end of story.

Expect of course there is more. Liquid crystals have molecules that are ordered like a solid but are fluid like a liquid. These properties are vital for your cells, shampoo and of course liquid crystal (LCD) flat screen devices.

But why stop at four states. There is plasma, the state of matter for most things in the sun, or Bose-Einstein condensates, superfluids and dozens more.

Time to rewrite textbooks?

There are many more than the five "facts" that need to be fixed in school textbooks. I am not suggesting that we should start teaching 6-year-olds about matter that only appears in Nobel Prize-winning physics labs or filling the curriculum with detail on dozens of senses. But maybe we should stop telling kids fibs.

Perhaps a biology lesson should start with: "We have many senses, here are the five we are going to learn about." Or a sentence dropped in here and there that mentions the existence of more than three states of matter. As for the tongue map, just rip that page out of the book.

Mark Lorch does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

IN DEPTH: 35 Science Misconceptions And Myths

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Looking up at the sky on a chilly fall night, the universe looks like a big black curtain dotted by pearls of ivory and glimmers of sparkling diamond white.

In reality, those tiny spots of light represent the actual average color of the cosmos.

Most of the stars in the universe formed about 5 billion years ago. In the past, these stars would have appeared brighter and bluer. But as stars age, they shift from blue to yellow and eventually red. Thanks to these aging stars, the color of the universe has gradually shifted over time from a blueish to a reddish hue.

If you were to take in all of that, or put "the [whole] universe in a box" so that you could see all its light at once, the average of all the colors you'd be able to perceive with your human eye would look like this:

Not very, er, striking, is it? The scientists who discovered the average color of the universe named it Cosmic Latte. Alternative titles included Cappuccino Cosmico, Skyvory, and Big Bang Buff.

Don't let that bland color fool you, however. If we were to take the same light, but instead of looking at it all at once (which gave us the average we saw above), put it through a prism, it would produce a rainbow of nearly all of the colors we see here on Earth, from deep violet to ruby red.

Prisms work by separating the visible light into the different colors of the electromagnetic spectrum, resulting in the characteristic rainbow of colors. A prism separating all the visible light from the universe would give us a slightly different spectrum than the one we're used to.

To get a picture of all of that light, scientists looked at data from a large light survey of more than 200,000 galaxies. Then they built what they call "Cosmic Spectrum," to represent the sum of all of the energy in the universe that is emitted at different wavelengths of light.

The Cosmic Spectrum looks like the graph below. You can see that some colors are more represented than others.

Which can also be visually represented this way:

This rainbow of colors is what scientists used to arrive at the average color of the universe. That color is getting redder as the stars of the universe age. As fewer and fewer new stars form, more stars will age and become red giants.

Eventually, Cosmic Latte might look more like Spacey Strawberry Frappuccino.

DON'T MISS: These Stunning Hubble Images Show Us The Secrets Of The Universe

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BI Answers: Why does Sriracha sauce taste so good?

It adds kick to scrambled eggs, looks pretty on pasta, and even tastes good on pizza. Rumors that its southern California factory was closing spurned frightened fans to storm grocery stores and stockpile it by the box. An outside company even came out with keychain-size bottles of the stuff so devotees could squirt it on their favorite foods on the go.

But what explains our near-universal infatuation with Sriracha? As the American Chemical Society points out a recent video, it's all about the chemistry.

Sriracha's taste comes from five main ingredients: ground up red chile peppers, vinegar, garlic powder, salt, and sugar. It's so simple you can even make it at home.

But only one is responsible for its kick — the peppers.

Their sweet burn is what makes us all swoon — quite literally — for the sauce.

The peppers used in Sriracha contain two molecules in the capsaicin family that trigger the production of a special protein in our mouths. That protein, called TRPV1, is designed to respond to hotter-than-boiling temperatures by triggering the release of pain-killing molecules called endorphins — the same feel-good chemicals that get released when we exercise, eat chocolate, or have sex.

In other words, for people who like spicy food, Sriracha does more than simply taste good. It feels good, too.

But how spicy is Sriracha? And why does it heat up our mouths but not make our eyes water like wasabi or hot mustard?

According to the scoville scale, which ranks spicy foods based on how much they would need to be diluted by a solution of water and sugar to make their heat undetectable, Sriracha is somewhere in the mild-to-medium range. With a scoville ranking of 1,000 to 2,500 (depending on the patch of peppers your bottle came from), Sriracha ranks slightly more timid than Tabasco, which has a ranking of 2,500 to 5,000 scoville.

A pure habanero pepper, by comparison, clocks in at 350,000. Two of the world's hottest peppers rank far higher — the aptly named Trinidad Moruga Scorpion and Carolina Reaper rank somewhere between 1.5 million and 2 million scoville.

Sriracha's heat comes from a class of heavy molecules that mostly stay in your mouth. Wasabi and hot mustard, on the other hand, are made up of smaller, lighter molecules. These waft into your nasal cavity, where they make your nose burn and bring tears to your eyes. So even people who don't love the eye-watering heat of other spicy condiments might like Sriracha because it's a different kind of spice.

If it's still too spicy for you, though, and you can't finish the bottle, don't worry, because Sriracha basically never goes bad thanks to a few magical ingredients.

This post is part of a continuing series that answers all of your "why" questions related to science. Have your own question? Email science@businessinsider.com with the subject line "Q&A"; tweet your question to @BI_Science; or post to our Facebook page.

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Thanksgiving dinner comes with a lot to orchestrate — turkey, stuffing, family, and everything else.

There are high stakes, and while science can't necessarily solve awkward family conversation about politics at the dinner table, there are scientific ways to help ensure you don't have to deal with a dry turkey. Now that would be a true disaster.

Understanding a few simple chemical processes can actually make your Thanksgiving meal tastier and healthier.

A Bytesize Science video from the American Chemical Society tipped us off about some of these hints, which we've supplemented with additional information.

1. Brining your turkey before cooking it means the meat will be more moist and taste better.

You've got two brining options here.

A classic wet brine, as described by Bytesize Science, involves soaking the turkey in cold salt water. During that time salt seeps into the turkey, which helps change the proteins inside so that they can hold more water.

This works, but some say it leaves the turkey a little too waterlogged — plus, it's a mess.

Business Insider's resident food expert recommends a dry brine instead, which involves covering the dry turkey in salt overnight.

Salting the outside of the bird draws moisture out at first, but as that salt breaks down the proteins in the meat, it reabsorbs those juices, leaving you with a moist, flavorful Thanksgiving meal.

2. Get the most antioxidants out of your cranberry sauce.

We know that the preference of cranberry sauce in a can versus homemade cranberry sauce is generally made based on tradition, not what's healthier.

But if you are interested in getting the most out of your antioxidant-packed cranberries, we'd recommend leaving them as close to their natural form as possible.

The antioxidant level in foods decreases when they are crushed or cooked, so the more that's done to them, the fewer the health benefits that will be left.

The good news? Even dried or cooked cranberries still have far more antioxidants than most other foods.

3. Chemistry can make fake turkey feel more like a real bird.

Factory farming got you down?

If you've decided to opt for a vegetarian version of what was almost America's national bird, there are steps you can take to give it a more real feel.

If your fake turkey uses seitan, a meat substitute made of the wheat protein gluten, that "wheat meat" is highly sensitive to acid levels. Playing with the levels of acid can change the texture of your fake bird. So you can use a mixture of acidic soy sauce and basic vegetable stock to come up with a meat-like guilt-free alternative.

4. Crushing garlic and letting it sit for a while before cooking will maximize its health benefits.

Garlic goes with just about everything except dessert on the Thanksgiving menu. And this ancient cooking staple may have important benefits for your heart, too.

But there's trick for getting the most out of this flavorful bulb, according to a study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. After crushing your garlic, let it sit for 10 minutes.

This releases an enzyme that maximizes its healing power.

We're thankful for science.

Kelly Dickerson contributed to an earlier version of this post.

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If there was ever a video that illustrated why safety goggles need to be worn in the lab, this is it.

The guys over at Slow Mo Lab have poured 98% concentrated sulfuric acid over a kitchen sponge, just to see what would happen.

That poor sponge didn’t stand a chance:

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In the Northern Hemisphere at least, the idealised vision of Christmas involves snow.

Whilst no one snowflake is exactly the same as another, at least on a molecular level, scientists have none-the-less devised a system of classification for the many types of crystals that snow can form. This graphic shows the shapes and names of some of the groups of this classification (click on it for a larger version).

You might wonder what the shapes of snowflakes have to do with chemistry. Actually, the study of crystal structures of solids has its own discipline, crystallography, which allows us to determine the arrangement of atoms in these solids.

Crystallography works by passing X-rays through the sample, which are then diffracted as they pass through by the atoms contained therein. Analysis of the diffraction pattern allows the structure of the solid to be discerned; this technique was used by Rosalind Franklin to photograph the double helix arrangement of DNA prior to Watson & Crick's confirmation of its structure.

Back to snow crystals: the shapes they form are very dependent on temperature and humidity. This diagram illustrates this fact: simpler shapes are more common at low humidities, whilst more complex varieties of crystal are formed at high humidities. We still don't know the precise variables behind the formation of particular shapes, although researchers are continually working on theoretical equations to predict snowflake shapes.

The number of categories snow crystals can be categorised into has been steadily increasing over the years. In early studies in the 1930s, they were classified into 21 different shape-based categories; in the 1950s, this was expanded into 42 categories, in the 1960s to 80 categories, and most recently in 2013 to a staggering 121 categories.

This latest study splits the classification into three sub-levels: general, intermediate, and elementary. The graphic featured here shows the 39 intermediate categories, which themselves can be grouped into 8 general categorisations. Each of the intermediate categories have specific characteristics, which are detailed at length in the research paper this graphic is based on.

The eight intermediate categories shown in the graphic are:

• Column crystals.
• Plane crystals.
• Combination of column & plane crystals.
• Aggregation of snow crystals.
• Rimed snow crystals.
• Germs of ice crystals.
• Irregular snow particles.
• Other solid precipitation.

There's a lot more out there on snowflake structure than described here; if you want to read in much more detail, check out some of the links below. If you'd rather just see some amazing macro images of snowflakes, then check out the photos of Russian photographer Alexey Kljatov.

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Christmas in London is threatened by a plague of disgusting greasy sewer blockages called fatbergs.

Fatbergs are a persistent problem beneath London.

In August, a team from Thames Water removed a Boeing-747 sized fatberg. The summer before that, a 15-ton lump of congealed fat clogged sewers in Kingston.

But where do they come from?

The answer lies in the chemistry that happens after your wastewater is flushed from your pipes and delivered to the sewers: The fats in the grease and oil from your kitchen mix with the other chemicals in the sewers and form nasty conglomerations of chemicals that can build up and block the pipes that take dirty water to the wastewater treatment plant.

Fatbergs aren't a new problem in London but they are getting worse at this time of year as everyone's cooking up great greasy feasts for the holidays. "The fat situation is definitely getting worse. It's building up in certain sewers it never did before,"Vincey Minney, a veteran worker at Thames Water, told the AFP.

It's not just London, either: according to a recent review of the subject, these fat and oil buildups cause about 47% of the up to 36,000 sewer overflows that happen annually in the U.S.

Here's how that goes down.

Grease + Sewer = Fatberg

When you pour grease into your sink it's just beginning its travels. The grease and oil head down your pipes and into the sewers where they meet up with all the other wastewater from the area. This is where the nastiness starts.

These globs can build up in your home's pipes like this:

But things get really nasty when these greasy globs reach the sewers and merge with everyone else's fat and oils.

The fats in the grease get broken down into their component parts — fatty acids and glycerol. These fatty acids bind with calcium found in the sewers — created from biological processes including the corrosion of concrete — to create a "soap" compound.

When sewer levels rise high, these fat blobs glob onto the ceiling of the pipes, creating stalactite-type structures that are sometimes called "fatbergs." We've actually just recently been discovering how they come to be. Researchers who published results in a 2011 paper in the journal Environmental Science & Technology were the first to successfully form these deposits in the lab.

While it's called a "soap" because of its chemical composition, this isn't something you'd want to wash yourself with. These blobs of fatty compounds can become bus-sized — for example, here's a 17-ton fatberg from London in 2012:

These clogs block the sewer line and can cause disgusting and dangerous backups. While drain cleaners might clear out your pipes in your home, the greasy mess just gets washed into the sewers afterward, creating a bigger problem down the line.

In London, Thames Water sends crews to clean up these fatbergs. The teams go down into the sewers and power-wash the buildup to dislodge and break it apart. It's a process that takes weeks.

Where is it worst?

Fatbergs are more likely to form in areas with lots of restaurants, since there is more grease heading down into the sewers to create the deposits. But greasy holiday feasts are causing a big problem this year, Thames Water said.

People who live in old or large apartment buildings should also be careful: Their grease is competing with the grease of everyone else who has ever lived in their building and on their block — even just a tablespoon per person can really add up when it all mixes together in the sewers. This could happen at any level — within the plumbing of a home, or at the neighborhood level. These soapy messes can also possibly block later stages of the water treatment processes at the city level.

When these huge globs happen they can be really terrible to deal with if not caught early.

The UK fatberg in 2012 seen above was only discovered when locals started complaining that they couldn't flush their toilets. It could have been much worse. "If we hadn't discovered it in time, raw sewage could have started spurting out of manholes across the whole of Kingston,"Gordon Hailwood, the local sewer guy said.

What to do instead?

If you make a lot of grease at one time by, say, frying a turkey, some areas offer fat and oil recycling to get rid of it and actually turn it into useful biofuel.

Let smaller amounts of grease solidify in the pan or in a jar, then throw the solid grease in the trash can. Make sure to wipe the greasy pan or dish with a paper towel to soak up the rest. Try to get as much of the grease and oil as possible into the trash instead of the drain — just the little bit that washes out with the wastewater can cause problems over time, especially in areas with high populations like cities.

"People try to discharge their oil and grease properly, but over time, you can get a fair amount of oil and grease from washing pots, pans and dishware," Ducoste told LiveScience in 2011. "The cumulative impact could be substantial. It's that long-term consistent discharge of that oil and grease, even if it's a small amount at a time, which could lead to problems."

When you do accidentally get some grease in your pipes you can go ahead and wash it out using boiling water and a mixture of vinegar and baking soda, according to Scott English Plumbing. This will help push it out of your pipes, though it will still be able to coagulate in the main water system.

The best plan is not to let any grease get down the drain if you don't want the sewer coming out of your faucet.

This post was originally part of a continuing series that answers all of your "why" questions related to science. Have your own question? Email science@businessinsider.com with the subject line "Q&A"; tweet your question to @BI_Science; or post to our Facebook page.

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With New Year's Eve upcoming, a large number of people will celebrate by popping open a bottle of champagne.

The bubbles in your glass may seem simple enough, but there's actually a wealth of interesting chemistry behind them – chemistry that's vital for the perceived taste and aroma of the wine. There's a lot more to the bubbles than you might think, and this post picks apart some of the chemical compounds involved.

The obvious chemical contributor that causes the bubbles to appear in champagne in the first place is carbon dioxide, which originates from the fermentation process.

Champagne is unusual amongst wines, in that it undergoes two fermentations – one before bottling, and one in the bottle before it is drunk. The second fermentation produces the carbon dioxide and ethanol that are vital for the finished product.

An average 0.75 litre bottle of champagne contains around 7.5 grams of dissolved carbon dioxide – this may not sound like a lot, but when the bottle is opened, it would release around 5 litres of carbon dioxide gas if you allowed it to bubble until flat. In an individual champagne flute, assuming a volume of around 0.1 litres, this would equate to approximately 20 million bubbles. This isn't even the bulk of the carbon dioxide – only around 20% of it escapes from the wine in the form of bubbles, with the other 80% escaping via direct diffusion.

The bubbles themselves need nucleation sites to form in the first place. Tiny cellulose fibres, which are either deposited from the air or left over from when glasses have been wiped with towels, allow the trapping of gas molecules as the glass is filled.

The dissolved carbon dioxide wouldn't usually have the energy required to push through the intermolecular interactions of the liquid molecules, but the pockets of gas lower the energy required, thus allowing bubbles to form. They can also form if the glass has had a specially etched portion during manufacture.

As well as giving champagne its characteristic fizz, studies have shown that the bubbles are also vital contributors to the flavour and aroma of the wine. They can pull some compounds in the wine with them as they rise; when they reach the surface and burst, these compounds can be thrown into the air within tiny liquid droplets.

Scientists have analysed the composition of these droplets, collected by holding a microscope slide over a champagne glass then transferring them to a solution which was then run through a spectrometer to identify compounds present.

A large number of flavour and aroma compounds were discovered in the droplets, a selection of which are shown in the graphic. Hundreds of components were present, with some still yet to be identified, but interestingly, the composition of these droplets differs from that of the main body of the wine. This is due to the fact that only certain molecules are pulled up to the surface by the bubbles, influencing the droplet composition.

The study's authors state that many of these compounds contribute to the aroma of the champagne, and the droplets dispersed by the bursting of the bubbles are therefore vital for both the aroma and flavour of the wine.

These are, of course, merely a selection of the many compounds found in champagne. If you want to learn more about champagne's chemistry, check out the recent video by the ACS Reactions team, or take a look through some of the links to further reading provided at the foot of the page.

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This graphic is the first in a planned series looking at the effects and chemistry of a range of different poisons. As such, it seemed appropriate to start with one of the most well known poisons: arsenic. Arsenic has been used by poisoners for centuries, primarily in the form of white arsenic, or arsenic trioxide, which this graphic focuses on.

Arsenic Trioxide has, according to some sources, been used in traditional Chinese medicine for over 5000 years. Whilst there is no definitive record of its first use as a poison, it’s doubtless been utilised as one for a number of centuries, over which it has been used to depose of relatives, officials, and rulers. Its popularity owes much to its appearance and smell: colourless and odourless, its addition to food is as a consequence difficult to detect.

Arsenic was particularly popular as a poison in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, and it gained the nickname "inheritance powder" for the ubiquity of its use in disposing of spouses or relatives. What also helped was the fact that very little was required – in fact, little more than the size of a pea could constitute a lethal dose.

It was, at the time, very easy to obtain in the amounts required to kill; Fowler’s solution, a popular medicinal tonic at the time, contained arsenic trioxide dissolved in potassium carbonate solution, and the compound could also be easily obtained as a rat poison. Additionally, prosecutors could often summon little in the way of evidence against poisoners, due to the lack of any chemical tests that could identify arsenic’s use.

The initial symptoms of arsenic poisoning were often hard to distinguish from those of food poisoning at the time, another factor which made it difficult to prove cases of poisoning. Symptoms commonly appeared around thirty minutes after ingestion of arsenic, though this could be delayed if it was eaten with food. These symptoms included fatigue, headache, numbness, and palpitations. A metallic taste may also be noted in the mouth, and a victim’s breath may also develop an odour resembling that of garlic.

In cases of acute poisoning, the symptoms quickly become more severe. Stomach pains progress to diarrhoea and vomiting, and the victim may also pass bloody urine. Psychosis and hallucinations can follow, and subsequently seizures, coma, and death. Around 95% of any arsenic trioxide ingested is absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract, and from this point it can inflict damage across the body, with the main organs affected being the skin, lungs, liver, and kidneys.

Death often occurs within 24 hours of ingestion of the poison, as a consequence of a failure of circulation or shock. If the victim perseveres through, they will likely eventually succumb over the subsequent days to either liver failure or kidney failure. Should the victim happen to be poisoned more slowly and methodically, they may also experience loss of hair, and discolouration of the fingernails may also indicate the poisoning.

Of course, as the number of murders utilising arsenic poisonings increased, so chemists turned their attentions to trying to develop tests to detect the element in tissue samples from its victims. As these tests were developed, arsenic poisoning became less popular as the likelihood of the poisoner being sent to the gallows increased. The first major test which could be utilised was developed by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who reacted arsenic trioxide with nitric acid and zinc to produce arsine (AsH₃), a gas with a garlic odour.

Whilst Scheele’s test was of some utility, it didn’t produce physical evidence that could be presented in court. A test which did produce physical evidence was developed by Samuel Hahnemann, who combined a solution made from the sample with hydrogen sulfide and hydrochloric acid to produce arsenic trisulfide, a yellow-coloured compound. Unfortunately, this compound degraded with time, so its use as evidence was somewhat limited. Another test was needed.

This is where the chemist James Marsh stepped in. In 1832, he altered Scheele’s method, reacting an arsenic-containing sample with zinc metal and sulfuric acid. As with Scheele’s method, this produced arsine gas, but Marsh then heated this gas.

Heating arsine causes it to decompose into arsenic and hydrogen gas; when the arsenic contacts with a cold surface after heating, it leaves a characteristic silver-black residue, which could be preserved and used as evidence against poisoners.

The Marsh test was very sensitive, capable of detecting as little as 0.2 milligrams of arsenic in a sample. It was also very specific for arsenic; the only other element which gave a similar-looking residue was antimony, but this could be resolved by attempting to dissolve the residue in sodium hypochlorite solution. The antimony residue, unlike that of arsenic, would not dissolve in this solution.

After the development of the Marsh test, poisonings using arsenic sharply declined. At the time, treatments were limited, so being poisoned by arsenic compounds usually meant certain death, with little that doctors could do to prevent it. In the modern day, there are some measures that can be taken, though their efficacy is reduced the longer the duration between the initial poisoning and the treatment.

Pumping the stomach can prevent some of the poison being absorbed into the body if it is carried out soon after the poisoning. Intravenous therapy is also utilised. Additionally, chemical compounds generally referred to as "chelating agents" can be administered; these compounds bind to the arsenic and help to prevent its toxic effects in the body.

Examples of compounds that can be used to do this include dimercaprol, also known as anti-lewisite, which was developed as an antidote to the chemical agent lewisite in World War II. Other, more soluble compounds with lower toxicities are now more commonly used.

Today, poisons using arsenic are rare; the last person to be convicted of using arsenic as a poison was Marcus Marymont, a US sergaent, who in 1958 used white arsenic to poison his wife. Arsenic trioxide is used today as a treatment for some types of leukaemia, and is given intravenously as a low concentration solution due to its toxicity. It has been shown to induce death of cancer cells, though the mechanism by which it does so is still unclear.

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The chemical bisphenol A, used to stiffen some plastic food containers, poses no health risk to consumers of any age, including unborn children, at current levels of exposure, Europe's food safety watchdog said on Wednesday.

Some studies have suggested possible links to everything from cancer to heart disease to infertility to kidney and liver problems, prompting European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to re-evaluate the potential risks of BPA.

BPA belongs to a broad class of compounds called endocrine disruptors. It is found in plastics used to make food containers, bottles and coatings in tin cans, and is also commonly used in thermal paper in cash register receipts.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned BPA from baby bottles in 2012, but said there was not enough evidence for a wider ban and has found the chemical safe at low levels.

The EFSA acknowledged in its assessment that BPA residues could migrate into foods and drinks and be ingested by consumers, and that BPA from thermal paper, cosmetics and dust could be either inhaled or absorbed through the skin.

But it found that exposure to BPA was "considerably under" the safe level known as the "tolerable daily intake", or TDI.

It said that after weighing up "a significant body of new scientific information on its toxic effects", EFSA's expert panel concluded that high doses of BPA -- hundreds of times above the TDI -- were likely to adversely affect the kidney and liver, and might also cause effects animals' mammary glands.

But at current levels — which it said were often three to five times lower than the TDI of 4 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day — it found "no consumer health risk from bisphenol A exposure".

(Editing by Alison Williams)

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