Chemistry in Everyday Life

Asphalt - Chemie im Straßenbau

Roads are one of the defining features of modern civilizations, believe it or not. To me and I think most others, the state of the roads in a country gives an idea of the

Last episode of Chemistry in Everyday Life: Cyanide Poisoning

It takes a little bit more than 100mg of cyanide to kill a 75 kg human being. A little more than 100mg and the unfortunate victim will show the telltale signs of “bluish

Why can we digest starch, but not cellulose?

Both starch and cellulose are made of glucose, one of the main sources of energy for the human body. Yet... we can digest starch that we find in things like potatoes or f

Summer Re-runs: Prove It! How do we know what chemicals we have? - Part 2: Analysis

Dear  Chemistry in Everyday Life Fans, I am off this month and as a  consequence, we are looking back on past episodes over the summer.  Today’s re-run is one of the firs

Summer Re-runs: Protection from the Sun Pt. 1 - The Ozone Layer

Dear Chemistry in Everyday Life Fans, I am off this month and as a consequence, we are looking back on past episodes over the summer. Today’s re-run is one of the first e

Summer Re-runs: Breathe in, Breathe Out - Oxygen Transfer in the Blood

Dear Chemistry in Everyday Life Fans, I am off this month and as a consequence, we are looking back on past episodes over the summer. I asked you what is your favourite e

You look radiant today - Radiotracers and Imaging

PLEASE NOTE: During the month of August, I will repeat some previous episodes. If you want to influence which episodes will be played, you can click on the following link

Prove It! How do we know what chemicals we have? - Part 2: Analysis

Have you ever wondered how all these scientists come up with their findings in forensics, environmental science, pharmaceuticals, … cooking, cosmetics, and in soooo many

Prove It! How do we know what chemicals we have? - Part 1: Purification Techniques

Have you ever wondered how all these scientists come up with their findings in forensics, environmental science, pharmaceuticals, … cooking, cosmetics, and in soooo many

Absorbing Fats - Bile in Action

After talking about red blood cells two episodes ago, this episode looks at a different bodily fluid. One that helps in the digestion of fats. We are talking about bile.

Life-saving explosions - Airbags

In this episode I confront the horrible memory of my one and only bad car crash. I only remember fragments, but the airbag was a big part of the memory. If you want to kn

Breathe in, Breathe Out - Oxygen Transfer in the Blood

Oxygen in, Carbon Dioxide out. We learn this basic paradigm about breathing from a very early age on. But how does it work? From a chemical viewpoint this is a lot of fun

Sing this corrosion to me

Why does iron rust? Why does this not happen for stainless steel? How else can we protect materials from corrosion? If you want to know, listen to this episode 😉 If you

The concept of energy in the human body

I always found the concept of energy in the human body very intriguing… or in any organism for that matter. The term energy is very abstract to me. For example, there is

Space. The Final Frontier...

Space. The Final frontier… a friend of mine asked me if there is chemistry in space and how it is different from the chemistry, we observe here on Earth. This is an excit

Distilling the essence - Talking about Distillation

I always tried to avoid making an episode about making alcoholic beverages, because there is already so much great content about it and I did not see the extra value in t

Portable Power - Batteries and their Chemistry

Batteries are ubiquitous in daily life and I took them for granted for such a long time that I felt obliged to write an episode about them. Especially since they work tha

A World of Mirror Images

From winter gloves and people with inverted organs to the effects of molecular mirror images. Chirality can be found everywhere, so it is high time to talk about it. If

Conjugated Systems... no, we are not talking about Latin ;-)

We talked about Glow Sticks, we talked about Fireworks. Now it feels like the right time to look at another big factor in color of compounds, the conjugated systems. If

Glow Sticks - A new year's saving grace

Our 2020 new year’s celebration had to look quite different this year. The Belgian government had to restrict contact, so no extended family, and no fireworks this year.