Eight months ago a professor at the University of North Texas made a device to sniff for highway pollution. But then he set his hardware so it could sniff for something harder: drugs.

Guido Verbeck, a chemistry professor, equipped an electric Ford Sedan with a device meant to sniff out highway fumes and other environmental contaminants.

When he found out his hardware was sensitive enough to pick up the chemical profiles coming from drugs or drug-making reactions, he reached out to Inficon, an East Syracuse-based tech company dedicated to gas analysis, to build a dedicated drug-sniffing device.

He essentially developed an adapted mass spectrometer that sits in the passenger seat of the sedan. The device works by sucking in air through a small amount of air through a vent near the rearview mirror. An onboard computer analyzes the sample, and if it matches chemical signatures, it’s able to pinpoint the source of the fumes up to a quarter mile away.

The company calibrated the devices in Antarctica, home of some of the cleanest air in the world, in order to ensure it's as sensitive as possible.

Verbeck told VICE News that the device could cost anywhere from $80,000 to $100,000 on the commercial market — around five times the cost of a K-9 unit according to one police station. DEA officials told VICE they were “conceivably interested” in obtaining the device.

The upside for the DEA: no more buying dog food in bulk. The downside: the agency would have fewer adorable dogs.

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Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman spent 14 seasons as cohosts of Discovery Channel's wildly popular "MythBusters." But it turns out that their on-screen chemistry was caused by a lot of off-screen friction.

The "MythBusters" series finale aired on March 5 on Discovery.

Story by Jacob Shamsian, editing by Stephen Parkhurst

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You might have heard the rumors as a kid: Swallow gum and it’ll sit stubbornly in your stomach for seven long years.

But what does science have to say about that? Reactions, a video series from the American Chemical Society, traced the steps taken by our body's digestive system to find out that while some of the gum we chew can survive digestion, it "doesn’t mean the gum you swallowed in grade school is still there." 

Phew.

Turns out there are three basic components of digestion: The first includes the mechanical processes that are required to process your food when you first ingest it, i.e. chewing. The second focuses on the enzymes or proteins in your saliva and stomach that help break down that food. Last but not least are acids, which dissolve what's left into something your body can comfortably pass through your intestines.

Traditionally when you eat, your teeth and tongue work together to munch the food into small bits. Then your muscle movements push the food through the digestive tract until it is emptied into the stomach and churned with digestive juices, as shown below:

While this is happening, the enzymes in your saliva, stomach juices, and intestines drive chemical processes that allow you to convert that food into nutrients your body can use.

Then, the acids in your stomach get to work, dissolving what’s left of that food into a mush that your body can comfortably pass through your intestines and, eventually...dispose of.

But gum isn’t designed to be smoothly digested by your body like regular food. That’s because it contains either a natural or synthetic rubber base, which is what gives it its gummy consistency. Butyl rubber, commonly used in gum (as well as tires and basketballs, mm!), is a synthetic rubber that provides it with an ideal chewiness.

You’ve probably noticed that gum is unaffected by the crushing of your teeth — that’s kind of the point. So when you swallow the gum, it moves through your digestive tract into your stomach as one giant wad.

While your enzymes are able to break down the carbohydrates, oils, and alcohols in the gum as they would with regular food, the rubber base in the gum is basically immune to these enzymes.

Even the “harsh brew” of acids in your stomach is no match for this rubber base. (Remember that rubber is so resilient that we use it in gloves for protection.) As a result, part of your gum survives all of your digestive system's attempts to break it down.

But so do parts of a lot of other things you eat, like sunflower seeds or corn. So while that gum you swallowed is rebellious enough to stand up to your digestive processes, that doesn’t stop your muscles from eventually ushering it through your body and out the other end within a couple days.

To learn more, check out Reaction's video below:

SEE ALSO: How bubble gum is made

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NOW WATCH: How bubble gum is made

We learn about some awesome science in high school — like Einstein's theory of relativity, the periodic table, and DNA replication.

The knowledge we pick up there sets the foundations for all the other amazing things we go on to study.

But science definitely doesn't end at high school, and it's once you take your learning to the next level that things get really interesting.

In no particular order, here are some mind-bendingly incredible facts that we didn't learn at high school, but wish we did. Because I certainly would have paid a whole lot more attention if my teacher had shared a few of these insights in class.

Side note: If you did learn about all of this and more at school, then you had a kick-ass teacher and you should probably tell them that.

1. Water can boil and freeze at the same time

Seriously, it's called the "triple point," and it occurs when the temperature and pressure is just right for the three phases (gas, liquid, and solid) of a substance to coexist in thermodynamic equilibrium. This video shows cyclohexane in a vacuum.

2. Lasers can get trapped in a waterfall

Oh my gosh, yes. Not only is this an incredible example of total internal reflection, it also shows how fiber optic cables work to guide the flow of light.

3. We've got spacecraft hurtling towards the edge of our solar system really, really fast

We all know rockets are fast, and space is big.

But sometimes when we're talking about how long it takes for us to get to distant parts of the solar system (eight months to get to Mars, are you kidding me?) it can feel like our spacecraft are just crawling along out there.

This GIF shows just how wrong that idea is by comparing the speed of the New Horizons probe, which flew past Pluto last year, to a 747 and SR-71 Blackbird.

When a movie studio wants to find out what audiences think of their films, they usually have to wait for focus group responses or reviews. But what if they could get instant feedback from viewers' breath?

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and Johannes Gutenberg University measured the chemicals in the air during 108 screenings of 16 movies. These were as diverse as "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,""Buddy,""The Hobbit," and “The Hunger Games."

Apparently, the scientists could determine what sort of movie had been screened based on those chemicals, as well as how the audience reacted to it, on a scene-by-scene basis.

“The chemical signature of ‘The Hunger Games’ was very clear; even when we repeated the measurements with different audiences,” Jonathan Williams, one of the study's authors, wrote. “The carbon dioxide and isoprene levels in the air always increased significantly as the heroine began fighting for her life."

The researchers suggested that chemical changes are caused by the way we breathe during certain scenes. In suspenseful scenes, for example, the audience members become tense and breathe faster, excreting more adrenaline and cortisol.

It's hard to tell how useful this research will be. One application, The Wall Street Journal suggested, is for advertisers. Since they will be able to track specific points of time in a movie, they will be able to tell how audiences are reacting to their product placements.

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Get ready to throw out your periodic tables this winter.

In the bottom-right corner of the one you have now, you'll see a handful of comical symbols like Uut, Uup, Uus, and (our favorite) Uuo:

Respectively, those symbols — all of them temporary placeholders — stand for ununtrium, ununpentium, ununseptium, and ununoctium.

But the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) has just decided on some new and permanent names: nihonium, moscovium, tennessine, and oganesson.

They aren't substances you'd recognize. In fact, you'll probably never, ever see the newly named elements in real life. They were created in high-tech labs by scientists hurling smaller atoms at each other until they made something larger. (The scientific equivalent of throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping it sticks.)

Each name was proposed by the research team that created the element, and the names show that personal connection. Number 113, nihonium, named for Japan (called Nihon in Japanese), is the first element to be discovered in Asia. Similarly, moscovium (115) and tennessine (117) were discovered by a team of scientists collaborating from Russia and Tennessee.

Oganesson will be only the second element named for a living scientist (after seaborgium, named for Glenn Seaborg). Yuri Oganessian is a Russian scientist who helped create at least three of the incredibly heavy, incredibly short-lived elements that fill up the last slots of the periodic table, including 118, the soon-to-be oganesson.

The names aren't quite final yet — a decision will be announced in November. Between now and then, the public has five months to tell IUPAC, which is in charge of naming elements, what they think of the suggestions.

So speak now or forever hold your peace with tennessine.

SEE ALSO: A theoretical physicist explains why the hard problem in science today is not about physics at all

DON'T MISS: Here’s what really happens to your body when you swallow gum

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If you love science and tasty cocktails, we've got the recipe for you: A spherical mojito, mint leaf and all, that bursts in your mouth.

To create it, Tech Insider took a page from Spanish chef Ferran Adria, who popularized molecular gastronomy — a way to mix up traditional food recipes with organic chemistry.

To pull it off we modified one of Adria's revolutionary culinary techniques, called frozen reverse spherification.

Here are the steps to follow if you want to show off your lab and mixology skills to a group of curious friends this summer.

Step 1: Make mojitos!

Mojitos might be the perfect summer drink. Shake up your favorite mix of ice, rum, limes, mint, and simple syrup (sugar dissolved in water) to your own taste. Try it, then try it again. Yum.

If you don't have a favorite recipe, you can scale up this one as needed (it's for one drink):

- glass full of ice
- 0.75 oz simple syrup
- 6 mint leaves (no need to muddle; the ice will smash it up)
- juice from half of a lime
- 1.5 oz of your favorite rum (a former bartender on staff prefers 10 Cane rum)

Once you've made the perfect mojito and you've made extra sure it's delicious, add two parts club soda to each part rum — this will help it freeze solid.

Step 2: Hack your mojitos.

Then for every shot of alcohol, also add a quarter teaspoon of calcium lactate, a calcium salt that can be found in baking soda, cheese, and antacids.

Pour the mixture into a silicone mold and put in the freezer overnight. If you want to be extra-fancy, put a mint leaf in the mold before you pour, so it's suspended in the orb. 

Now you can relax and drink any leftover mojito (responsibly, please).

Step 3: Mix up some sodium alginate, let it rest.

Sodium alginate is a derivative of brown seaweed. It's a natural polysacchride, meaning it's made up of long chains of sugars.

Take 2 cups of water — for best results, use distilled (not tap) — and mix it with about a third of an ounce of the sodium alginate.

When the alginate comes into contact with calcium ions, the molecules start to link up. If your tap water is hard (meaning it has a high calcium content), the reaction will start too early and the bath will start to gel before you drop your mojitos in. Which is why you should play it safe and use distilled.

Let it rest for 15 minutes or longer (preferably longer) so any air bubbles float to the surface and don't get in the way of the chemical reaction you're about to trigger.

We've all been there.

You're in a liquor or grocery store, trying to pick out wine with a group of friends when, inevitably, some unexpected member offers up their expert opinion.

Truth be told, there's a whole lot of science behind wine. Genetics, chemistry, microbiology, and even psychology all play a role in everything from how it's produced to which ones we buy and when.

To get a better sense of what goes into making that glass of red or white, we chatted with James Harbertson, a Washington State University professor of enology — that's the study of wine.

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Is cheap wine bad for you?

No way. Last year, rumors of a lawsuit that claimed that cheap wines had high levels of arsenic in it began circulating. One small detail the rumors left out: The lawsuit compared the levels of arsenic in wine to that of drinking water. To have any kind of negative experience as a result of this, you'd most likely have to drink about 2 liters of wine — a little more than 13 servings' worth.

That's an awful lot of wine.

What's the difference between a wine that costs $50 and a wine that costs $500?

The short answer? Not a lot — so long as you're just drinking it.

The price comes from a number of different factors — the maker, the type of grape, how long it's aged, etc. But if you're just looking for a solid bottle of wine, an inexpensive bottle could taste just as good if not better than a thousand-dollar bottle.

If anything, there's a bigger psychological component at play. A study that conducted a blind taste test in which people were given samples of wine found that they did not get any more enjoyment from a more expensive wine compared to a less expensive version. In another study, researchers found that untrained wine tasters actually liked the more expensive wines less than the cheaper ones.

If you're collecting, on the other hand, of course the price tag will make a difference.

"In the end, it's just wine," said Harbertson.

What are tannins and what are they doing in my wine?

You know that dry feeling you get in your mouth after a sip of red wine? You can thank tannins, naturally occurring chemicals that are found in wine and other beverages, like black tea.

Tannins give wine its weight — what makes it more milky than watery — so they're integral to all red wines, Harbertson said. They bind to proteins like the ones in saliva, which is what makes your mouth dry out. It's not as simple an experience as tasting something that's bitter, he said. The interaction of red wine in your mouth ends up feeling more like a texture than just a taste, something known as a "mouthfeel."

Scientists just found something in space that could explain how the molecules that gave rise to life on Earth first formed.

What they spotted is called a chiral molecule, and it's the first one ever found in space.

Chiral molecules are molecules that come in two different flavors that are chemically the same but structurally are mirror images of each other. Scientists refer to theses molecules as being left-handed or right-handed.

Often we find the chiral molecules on Earth have evolved to be mostly right-handed or left-handed. This is called homochirality, according to Science Magazine. For example, all the amino acids in living organisms on Earth are left-handed. Some scientists think this may have happened because left-handed amino acids were the first to incorporate themselves into the first life forms. So right-handed molecules became essentially useless. But the bottom line is we don't know how homochirality came to be on Earth. 

Why it matters that we found a chiral molecule in space: Astronomers found a molecule called propylene oxide inside a distant gas cloud 28,000 light-years away. On Earth, propylene oxide is an ingredient in a type of plastic.

We can't tell yet whether the propylene oxide in the cloud is left-handed or right-handed, but with future studies, we might be able to tell if there are more right-handed than left-handed molecules in the cloud. That could help scientists figure out why homochirality exists on Earth. We'll be able to determine whether molecules get skewed in one direction while they're first forming in space, or later on when life starts to arise.

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For the latest in the alcohol chemistry series, we’re looking at a pirate’s favourite spirit: rum. It’s actually hard to describe what constitutes a rum, because there’s not really a fixed definition; different countries have different standards that rums have to meet. Still, despite the differences in types, there’s still a lot of chemistry in common.

Rum originates from the process that gives us sugar. Sugar cane has to be processed to produce sugar, and this processing produces a syrupy fluid known as molasses. Back in the 1600s, this was a problem in the sugar cane plantations of the Caribbean, as they didn’t have any real use for these molasses. They didn’t have any nutritional or monetary value. However, the colonists quickly discovered that, if water was added, the resulting material could easily be fermented to produce alcohol. Suddenly, a useless byproduct was a valuable precursor to rum.

The process for making rum is also quite variable, depending on the type of rum being produced. Initially, the molasses, having been mixed with water, are fermented, with yeast being added to kick off this process. After this, the rum is distilled to concentrate the alcohol and aroma/flavour compounds. After this, the rum is aged, in barrels. These are often charred oak barrels from the bourbon production industry, as regulations surrounding the production of bourbon dictate that barrels can only be used once.

The ageing of rum is usually somewhat shorter than that of whiskey. This is in part due to the climate in areas where rum is commonly produced. Warmer climes lead to greater evaporation of the spirit as it ages. Whiskey experiences this too, with the amount that evaporates being about 2% per year (known as the ‘angel’s share’). By comparison, rum’s ‘angel’s share’ is around 10% per year. After ageing, the rum is blended with other distillates in order to produce a balanced and consistent product. In the case of white rum, it may also be filtered to remove colouration.

So, what is it that makes rum rum, on a chemical level? In terms of the aroma, ester compounds have a big part to play. You might have come across esters in chemistry class – they’re relatively easy to make, by reacting an organic acid with an alcohol, and are characterised by their range of different aromas. Some smell fruity, some smell medicinal, some smell like glue.

There are a whole range of ester compounds found in rum; they’re often the dominant class of organic compounds found in the spirit. The range of esters adds the fruitiness to rum’s aroma; particularly important contributors are ethyl propanoate which contributes a caramel-like, fruity aroma, and ethyl isobutyrate which has a butterscotch-like aroma. Rum has a higher short-chain carboxylic acid content compared to other spirits, which may also help explain why its ester content is higher than other alcohols.

It’s not just the esters that contribute to the aroma and flavour, however. The acids that help to form the esters can, themselves, have an impact. Additionally, higher alcohols (that is, those with more carbons than ethanol) also contribute. Phenethyl alcohol adds a floral aroma, and is actually also found in the aroma of roses and several other flowers. Isoamyl alcohol adds a more malty note.

The afore-mentioned compounds derive from compounds already present in rum. However, during the ageing process, compounds from the barrels the rum is contained in can also end up in the mix. These include a number of phenolic compounds, which can impart medicinal and smoky notes. They also include compounds like vanillin, the major flavour and aroma component of vanilla. Oak lactones are also found in rum, though to a lesser extent than in whiskeys which tend to be aged for longer.

The type of rum can of course impact the precise chemical composition of the spirit. Dark rums tend to contain more flavour and aroma compounds than lighter rums. White rum is filtered, often through charcoal, to remove compounds that cause colouration. However, this filtration can also remove compounds that impact the rum’s flavour. A specific example is beta-damascenone. This is one of the most impactful odorants in dark rum, but its impact is much reduced in white rum, presumably due to the dip in its concentration after filtration.

It’s always worth clarifying that alcoholic spirits are very complex mixtures of compounds. Just mixing the small number of compounds mentioned here wouldn’t get you anywhere near the flavour or aroma of rum; many other compounds make contributions, however small they may be, and it’s the sum of the myriad component compounds that makes rum taste and smell like rum.

The allure of this spirit’s particular mix of compounds made it a big hit when it was first produced in the Caribbean, and though it suffered a dip in popularity during the Revolutionary War, today it is again one of the most popular spirits available. The stereotype of pirates being partial to rum is by no means a fabrication; there are also a couple of somewhat macabre tales concerning the spirit.

The first of these actually concerns a brand of rum available today, known as Captain Morgan’s. It’s name derives from Sir Henry Morgan, and English privateer made famous by his numerous raids on Spanish settlements in the Caribbean. He was partial to the odd glass of rum, to say the least; in fact, the cause of his death, in Jamaica in 1688, was put down to alcohol-induced liver damage.

Another tale in which rum may have played a part was in the death of Admiral Horatio Nelson. His death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 is well-known, and supposedly after his death his body was placed in a barrel of spirits to preserve it until the ship returned to port. Most accounts suggest that the spirit in question was in fact brandy, rather than rum, but the practice was more commonly carried out using rum. Supposedly reports at the time even criticised the choice of brandy over rum, even though the preserving effect would be identical.

On a final note, Nelson’s isn’t the strangest story involving a body preserved using alcohol. In 2013, a story came to light of a Georgian mother who used alcohol-soaked sheets to help preserve the body of her dead son in the basement of her house for twenty years.

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NOW WATCH: Here's what alcohol does to your brain and body

You could be forgiven for thinking there’s not a great deal that’s interesting about the chemistry of vodka. After all, isn’t it essentially just a mix of two compounds, ethanol and water? Though this is pretty much the case, there’s more to vodka than you might expect. Here we take a look at some of its chemical secrets.

First, let’s briefly summarise how vodka is made. The method is similar to that for most fermented spirits. Though the stereotypical image most people have of vodka is that it’s made from potatoes, in fact it’s much more common for it to be made from cereal grains, including corn, rye, and wheat. Fermentation of these grains using yeast produces alcohol (ethanol), but only up to around 16% – too low for vodka.

Further steps are necessary to arrive at the finished product, the key step being distillation. Distillation involves the boiling of the mixture; because ethanol boils at 78˚C, it boils off before the water does and it can therefore be concentrated. Unfortunately, a lot of the other compounds produced during fermentation boil off at lower temperatures than water too, so precise control of the distillation process is necessary to ensure that these aren’t present in the final product.

Often, it’s distilled more than once to ensure a minimal amount of impurities remain. To be even more certain of this, many manufacturers filter the vodka through activated charcoal, which helps pull out more of any impurities still present. More traditional manufacturers rely on precise control of the distillation process, however. After all of this the vodka’s alcohol percentage is around 96%. The final step in the process is diluting it with water to bring the percentage down to around 40%.

The final product has little other than ethanol and water present, so in theory all vodkas should be essentially identical in perception and flavour. However, if you’ve ever compared a high quality vodka with the cheapest stuff you can buy in your local supermarket, you’ll know that there’s often a slight but discernible difference. This can be due to a handful of reasons.

One suggestion is that differences in perception could be due to differences in they way ethanol and water interact in different vodkas. As well as existing as individual molecules, the water and ethanol molecules can form structures called hydrates. These are cage-like structures, with a number of the water molecules surrounding an ethanol molecule.

The most common of these hydrate structures in vodka has around 5 water molecules to each ethanol molecule. Researchers discovered that its concentration varied in different brands of vodka. Though their hypothesis has yet to be conclusively confirmed, they speculate that these structural differences in different vodkas could account for slight differences in taster perceptions.

Another factor is impurities. Though most of these are removed during distillation and filtration, small, milligram amounts will still remain. These impurities can include other alcohols, such as methanol and propanol, as well as compounds such as acetaldehyde. Cheaper vodkas contain higher levels of these impurities, which can negatively affect flavour perception, and lead to a vodka that’s less smooth.

The final factor is additives. Though we think of vodka as just ethanol and water, it’s actually permitted in a number countries to add small amounts of other additives. Mostly, these are to improve the smoothness of the vodka, so they’re likely to be found in higher amounts in cheaper vodkas containing more impurities. Compounds used for this purpose include citric acid, glycerol, and sugar.

Vodka isn’t always unadulterated of course, and flavoured vodkas are also possible by adding various compounds or extracts after the manufacturing process. One of the most well-known flavoured vodkas isŻubrówka, which is flavoured using bison grass. Interestingly, this was (and still is) banned by the FDA in the USA, as flavouring with bison grass also leads to the presence of the compound coumarin, which in much larger amounts has been shown to exhibit liver toxicity in rats. A form of Żubrówka is now sold in the US, but it’s one in which the coumarin content has been removed.

So, there you have it — there’s more to vodka than just ethanol and water after all!

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NOW WATCH: Here's what alcohol does to your brain and body

Mars used to be a lot more like our own planet, with lots of oxygen in the atmosphere and water in the ground. That's according to new research by NASA scientists, who analyzed data from the space agency's Curiosity rover and discovered a few things that may complicate our search for extraterrestrial life.

The rover found high levels of minerals called manganese oxides in its current study area, the Gale Crater, which provided an important clue to the Red Planet's past. 

"The only ways on Earth that we know how to make these manganese materials involve atmospheric oxygen or microbes," planetary scientist Nina Lanza of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said in a NASA press release. "Now we're seeing manganese oxides on Mars, and we're wondering how the heck these could have formed?"

Manganese serves as a good marker for the development of an oxygen-rich environment — our own planet's geological record shows the same thing when it happened on Earth.

"These high manganese materials can't form without lots of liquid water and strongly oxidizing conditions,"Lanza said in the release. "Here on Earth, we had lots of water but no widespread deposits of manganese oxides until after the oxygen levels in our atmosphere rose."

Although this finding joins other Earth-like Curiosity discoveries (like evidence of ancient lakes), this addition of oxygen probably didn't make Mars any more habitable for humans or similar creatures: The oxygen increase may have occurred when the planet's protective magnetic field was degenerating, as Mars cooled.

"One potential way that oxygen could have gotten into the Martian atmosphere is from the breakdown of water when Mars was losing its magnetic field," Lanza explained. "It's thought that at this time in Mars' history, water was much more abundant."

While the light hydrogen molecules in the water were sucked into the vacuum of space by solar wind, the comparably heavier oxygen molecules remained on the planet. A lot of this oxygen went into Martian rocks, giving them (and the planet) their characteristic rusty, red color.

This finding also offers a new explanation of how a planet becomes oxygenated. Previously, an oxygen-rich environment was treated as a potential sign of extraterrestrial life, but this process on Mars occurs without the help of life forms (much of Earth's atmospheric oxygen is the product of photosynthetic plants converting carbon dioxide).

So while the discovery may make the search for aliens a little more challenging, these manganese deposits show that Mars wasn't always the bleak, copper-hued desert world we know.

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NOW WATCH: NASA’s Mars rover has measured something in the air that scientists can’t explain

In Taiwan, men catch fish with fire.

It's an ancient practice called "sulfuric fire fishing." Here's how they do it:

SEE ALSO: The dangerous and unbelievable lives of fisherman on Alaska's Bering Sea

There are only a handful of boats that still fish with fire. This is one of them.

Source: Fisheries and Fishing Port Affairs Management Office of the New Taipei City Government

The fire fishing season only lasts a few months every summer in the Jinshan District of New Taipei.

Source: Fisheries and Fishing Port Affairs Management Office of the New Taipei City Government

So few people practice this method that the Taiwanese government recently deemed it a cultural asset.

Source: Fisheries and Fishing Port Affairs Management Office of the New Taipei City Government

As you gear up to watch fireworks this Fourth of July, you might wonder: How exactly do fireworks work?

How is it that there are fabulous, colorful explosions in the sky that come in different shapes and sizes?

Well, we're here to help you out. The short answer: It's a whole lot of chemical reactions happening all at once.

The explosion

Simply, a firework is a container — typically a tube or a ball shape — that holds explosives hitched up to a time-delay fuse.

The explosives are where the fun happens. They typically contain little balls of colored explosives called "stars." These are filled with colors that blaze brightly in the sky, but after only a certain amount of time has passed. This is why fireworks can get up high in the sky before exploding into brilliance.

When the fuse gets low enough in the firework, it reacts with a bursting charge, which in turn lights the explosives that will disperse the stars. The ignited explosive creates a high-pressure gas that blows the colorful stars outward.

Here's what that looks like:

The colors

The colors that sparkle in the sky are chemical reactions happening right before your eyes.

Inside every star is an oxidizing agent, fuel, a certain metal that acts as the color, and a binder that holds it all together. The fuel and oxidizing agent are the parts responsible for the intense heat and gas of the explosion, according to the American Chemical Society.

But the coolest part is the metals that act as the colors. Some just heat up and cycle through red, orange, yellow, and white, depending on how hot the explosion is. The heat makes the atoms inside the wire move faster and faster, causing the atoms to bump into each other more, which gives off light. If you can control the temperature of the firework, then you can pick the exact time you want that firework to be a certain color.

But more commonly, fireworks create light by letting off specific colors that depend based on what metals you add to the mix.

For a complete display, fireworks often mix different metals and metal salts to give you the vibrant, multicolored effects. Calcium salts will burn orange, while sodium salts will burn yellow.

And if you burn copper, it'll give off light that's blue-green.

The shape

Fascinated by that smiley face or oddly lopsided heart in a firework display? It's nothing more than some careful organization of the stars. If they're just spread randomly, they'll expand out evenly through the sky once they explode.

But, because the explosion will push the stars out in a predictable trajectory, it is possible to organize the stars in a particular pattern on the cardboard cylinder on the outside of the firework. This will create specific shapes.

The sound

No fireworks display would be complete without the ear-shattering booms that freak out dogs and resonate in our chests. That's caused by a sonic boom that happens as the gasses inside the firework expand faster than the speed of sound.

Throw all of these explosives and awesome chemistry together and you get this:

Jennifer Welsh contributed to an earlier version of this article.

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We're obsessed with Vantablack, the blackest material ever made.

Every time Surrey Nanosystems, the company that makes it, releases a new video it blows us away.

In this new video, the researchers coated a sphere with Vantablack.

They then moved the sphere over another square of Vantablack, and it disappeared!

Watch:

They're materials science magicians.

The new Vantablack shown here is actually an improvement over the original Vantablack the company developed in 2014, which was then the blackest material ever made. The new version they made is even blacker.

It's so black because the material absorbs 99.8% of light that our eyes can see. Vantablack is made of carbon nanotubes — rods of carbon that are much, much thinner than any human hair — packed so close together in a maze-like matrix that light goes in, but can't escape.

In May, Vantablack made its space debut aboard a satellite in low-Earth orbit, where it absorbs stray light so the camera systems can image Earth more effectively.

And while the company partners with space-bound agencies, they continue to make entertaining videos for us here on Earth.

Watch the full video on the Vantablack sphere below.

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NOW WATCH: This is the blackest material on earth

Phil Baran, a professor of chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute, refers to the work that he does with the students and postdocs at his laboratory as “translational chemistry.”

“We work on training and educating the very people that end up inventing the society-shaping materials that dictate your life and keep you alive,” Baran told Business Insider. "We work on inventing methods that can be used by people engaged in making agriculture, drugs, and material, to allow access in a faster and better way.”

Bridging the gap

The work that they do bridges the gap between fundamental chemistry and applied science, Baran said. What they invent is fundamental, but at the same time, if the problem is chosen correctly, it can have a tangible and dramatic impact on real life problems.

“We’re working on stuff that can have direct applicability,” Baran said. “To think that we can use our chemical skills to be able to impact human medicine doesn’t get any more exciting.”

Now, Baran’s work on translational chemistry has earned him a place as one of three 2016 Blavatnik National Laureates, an award given by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and administered by the New York Academy of Sciences to honor “the nation’s most exceptional young scientists and engineers.” As a laureate, he won $250,000, which is the largest unrestricted cash award given to early-career scientists.

“It’s a great vote of confidence that we’ll do something good and it’s a pat on the back to all the students and postdocs who came to lab and contributed their efforts,” Baran said. “It’s certainly something that will keep us with our heads down, working as hard as we can.”

A rocket ship to better medicine

According to a Blavatnik Award press release, Baran established a new breakthrough approach for efficient, commercially-scalable syntheses of biologically active natural products. In the process, he has invented “new reagents and reactions that have swiftly found widespread use in pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries seeking easier, cheaper, and greener chemistry.”

For each synthesis, Baran hopes to obtain larger quantities of these natural products than can be feasibly extracted from their natural sources.

This puts pharmaceutical companies in a better place to figure out the therapeutic properties, and to make sure the compounds are both stable and safe enough for use in drug development.

“If you think of medicines as planets, our lab is building rockets,” Baran said.

The most exciting thing the lab is working on now, he said, is repurposing the common building blocks of organic chemistry.

The Gordon Ramsey of chemistry

He compared the process to a chef taking their spice rack and repurposing it to make entirely new tastes. Adding salt, or sage, or cinnamon, or whatever spice would taste totally different if they were added in a new combination.

“That would have a pretty dramatic effect on the practice of cooking,” Baran said. “In the same way, we’re repurposing some of the fundamental building blocks of medicinal chemistry to allow for new flavors and new areas of chemical space that were not possible before. And we’re doing it in a very translational way.”

Playing with blocks

Baran said that at his lab, everyone likes to approach problems like an infant child playing with blocks.

“You’re at your most creative because you don’t know a lot of rules and you can therefore make pattern recognition in as many ways as possible, because you’re not told what patterns you’re not allowed,” Baran said. “And then after you formulate these questions and problems, going about solving them using the rules is a lot of fun because it results in essentially a process that requires invention.”

Baran loves that the students his lab attracts are not afraid to ask “What if?”—even if that question is extremely outside of the box or very likely to result in failure.

“They still go forward with a great sense of enthusiasm,” Baran said.

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You've been driving over works of art ever since you got behind the wheel of a car.

Bright white and yellow words on asphalt roads across America — STOP AHEAD, SCHOOL, SLOW, LEFT ONLY, BUS LANE, and other ALL-CAPS phrases— don't get there by some fancy line-painting machine.

A person has to put them there, and to say construction crews "just" paint words on roads is a great disservice to this amazing skill.

Just look at this fancy footwork:

You should watch the full video of the worker (master artist?) that Matt Round shared on Twitter. The guy pours scalding white paint into a hopper that looks like a pooper scooper, shuffles his feet, and turns out a crisp, perfect freehand inscription of "STOP" that thousands of cars will soon drive over without a care:

And here's a timelapse of two other road workers penning "BUS STOP" onto a road in London.

They first trace out the words, then expertly pour out the letters as paint:

And an extreme close-up of the same process:

Sadly, each of these safety-improving works of art lasts a few years at most.

Punishment by tires, summer heat, winter ice, and ultraviolet sunlight work hard to turn even the toughest latex, epoxy, and thermoplastic road paints into dust in short order — some crack and fall apart after just 9 months.

So take a moment to admire these paintings the next time you roll over them.

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NOW WATCH: This amazing road-building machine rolls out brick lanes like a carpet

Gallium, a lesser common element, has some neat tricks up its quickly melting sleeve. It melts in your hand, can be used to make a gag spoon, and can turn a typical soda can into mush. The aluminum on a can amalgamates with the Gallium, and the end result is amazing to watch.

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STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Jean-Pierre Sauvage, J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringa won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for work on the design and synthesis of molecular machines, the award-giving body said on Wednesday.

"They have developed molecules with controllable movements, which can perform a task when energy is added," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement awarding the 8 million Swedish crown ($931,000) prize.

Chemistry is the third of this year's Nobel prizes after the medicine and physics laureates were announced on Monday and Tuesday.

The prize is named after dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel and has been awarded since 1901 for achievements in science, literature and peace in accordance with his will.

($1 = 8.5947 Swedish crowns)

(Reporting by Stockholm Newsroom; Editing by Alistair Scrutton)

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Sometimes you need to find a working battery in your junk drawer amongst a sea of dead ones. If you're in a rush and don't have time to find a battery meter, here's how you can quickly see which batteries are good and which ones are duds.

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