This week, in honor of the holiday season, we’re offering a toast to chemistry. We’ll explain what makes champagne bubble, and why size matters when you’re talking about carbonation. From all of us to all of you: Happy Holidays. The Element of the Week: phosphorus.
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Show Clock

00:00 Opening Credits
00:32 Introduction
01:03 Element of the Week: Phosphorus
02:48 The Science behind Champagne Bubbles
05:57 Quote of the Week: Graham Greene
06:16 Closing Credits

Resources and references

On the elements: Web Elements Periodic Table

Quote: Graham Greene, Travels with My Aunt (New York: Viking Press, 1969) p. 244.

Credits

Our theme music is composed by Dave Kaufman. Additional music was provided from the Podsafe Music Network. This week’s show ID music is North Pole Medley, by The Fabrications. The music for the quotation is Bell Carol Blue, by Jimmie Bratcher.

“Bubbly 3″ photo from stock.xchng, uploaded by ngould.

A couple of our listeners have noted that they were surprised that we didn’t say more about the controversies surrounding phlogiston, particularly where Joseph Priestley and Carl Scheele were involved.  As it happens, my original script included this material, but Priestley and Scheele found themselves off the air as we found out just what fits in our 10-minute format. Other forums have been able to introduce the matter more comprehensively: for instance, the British radio show “In Our Time” on the BBC had a special episode on oxygen a few weeks ago, which is available here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20071115.shtml

And CHF’s “Chemical Achievers,” a series on the famous faces of chemistry aimed at high school students and beyond, includes a little something on Priestley.

Thanks for listening, and I hope you will enjoy the future episodes of Distillations!

Anke Timmermann

After the recent oil spills in the San Francisco Bay and the Kerch Strait, Distillations delves into the reality of cleaning up human-made messes. In this episode, Jody Roberts, the program manager for environmental history and policy at CHF’s Center for Contemporary History and Policy, talks about environmental remediation. Also, learn about how the San Francisco Bay was cleaned up in late 2007 with mushrooms and human hair. The Element of the Week: mercury.

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Show Clock00:00 Opening Credits
00:32 Introduction
00:55 Commentary by Jody Roberts
02:55 Element of the Week: Mercury
04:44 Cleaning up the San Francisco oil spill
09:12 Quote of the Week: Barry Commoner
09:44 Closing Credits

Resources and references

On American environmentalism: Michael Egan, Barry Commoner and the Science of Survival: The Remaking of American Environmentalism (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007).
On the elements: Web Elements Periodic Table
On hair mats and the World Response Group: The OttiMat
Quote: Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle: Nature, Man, and Technology (New York: Knopf, 1971), p. 300.

Credits

Special thanks to Jody Roberts for researching the show.

Our theme music is composed by Dave Kaufman. Additional music was provided from the Podsafe Music Network. The background music for the end of the commentary is Silent Death by Wolves, by Rob Lundy. The music during the show ID is string groove, a.b.e. (anthems of a bygone era). The music for the quotation is The Ocean, by Dave Kaufman, from merple.com.

“Beautiful Poison” photo from stock.xchng, uploaded by mrsingh816.

How do scientists explain what they do to the larger public, and how can historians help? In this first episode of Distillations, we explore this question by looking at phlogiston, an obsolete element once thought to explain combustion. We also talk with Paul Smith, director of laboratory demonstrations at Purdue University. For more than 15 years, Smith has been performing reenactments of the 19th-century chemist Michael Faraday’s Christmas lectures, complete with period costume and language. (That’s Paul in the picture.)

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Show Clock

00:00 Opening Credits
00:42 The periodic table
01:52 Element of the Week: Phlogiston
04:02 Interview with Paul Smith, director of lecture demonstrations in the department of chemistry, Purdue University
09:16 Quote of the week: Primo Levi
09:43 Closing Credits

Resources and references

On the periodic table: Eric Scerri, “Mendeleev’s Legacy: The Periodic System,” Chemical Heritage 25:1 (2007), pp. 22–27.
On phlogiston and the discovery of oxygen: Material on Georg Ernst Stahl, Joseph Priestley, and Antoine Lavoisier on CHF’s Chemical Achievers Web site.

On scientific demonstrations: Iwan Rhys Morus, Frankenstein’s Children: Electricity, Exhibition, and Experiment in Early-Nineteenth-Century London (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).

Quote: Primo Levi, The Periodic Table, trans. by Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Schoken Books, 1984), pp. 57–58.

Credits

Special thanks to Anke Timmermann for researching the show.

Our theme music is composed by Dave Kaufman. Additional music was provided from the Podsafe Music Network. The background music for the phlogiston segment is J. P. S. Bach’s Fugue in C-minor, BMW 847, performed by Steven Kreinberg. The music for the quotation is the second movement of Arise for chamber ensemble, by Jeff Vidov.

Photo courtesy of the Department of Chemistry, Purdue University.