65 Fall Leaves Rebroadcast
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Jam: Hey guys. So recently, quite a few of you have requested an episode about why leaves change colors in the fall. And we have really good news for you.

Melissa: We've actually done that episode already, but we love fall candles. We love the fall season and we love y'all. So. We decided to give you a little fall-into-the-holidays gift of learning about why the trees are changing around you from past Melissa and Jam.

Jam: So enjoy learning this cool thing that we already taught you guys. It's a cool one. I like This one a lot.

Melissa: This is one of my favorite ones.

Jam: Yes, it's really cool. And we'll be back with a new chemistry episode next week.

Melissa: And now onto the show.

Hey I'm Melissa.

Jam: I'm Jam

Melissa: and I'm a chemist

Jam: and I'm not

Melissa: and welcome to chemistry for your life.

Jam: the podcast helps you understand the chemistry of your everyday life

Melissa: Jam, I don't have to ask how you're doing today because I saw you in person

Jam: when,

Melissa: this morning.

Jam: oh, it's weird that you me. I didn't see you.

Melissa: Yes, you did. Don't make our listeners think I'm a crazy creepy person.

Jam: I was just, I was right behind the car hiding behind the tree.

Melissa: we went for an outdoor social distance walk with a little bit of coffee this morning and it feels so nice when we get to see each other in person. And then record

Jam: yeah.

Melissa: almost as if it's old times.

Jam: Yeah, seriously, seriously. I'm like ready for it to not be old time fit to be current times again, at some point.

Melissa: times. Yeah. Somebody said think as my roommate was said, remember when times were precedented

Jam: I like that. That's

Melissa: I missed that. Okay. So I tease this a little bit. Last week. This week, we are talking about why leaves change color in the fall.

Jam: awesome.

Melissa: I have had this episode planned for honestly, and truly one year I thought of it after we had recorded all of our fall episodes last year.

Jam: Oh yeah. Yeah. I remember that.

Melissa: So I've just been waiting for the prime opportunity, plastics, you know, slid in there and, and took the first fall spot.

But now that the plastic series is over, we're going fall, baby.

Jam: And in Texas, at least it's a little delayed. The fall stuff doesn't really happen, you know, right at the beginning of the technical first day of fall. So, but I'm excited about this. We get to see a little bit. What fall is like on schedule in Indiana. And it's always, yep

Melissa: Your wife sent me some beautiful pictures. Cause she and I both love fall leaves together. We went to Washington together a few years ago in the fall and it was gorgeous, so

Jam: dude. Yeah. It's very, very cool to get to see. It'd be like really, really fall. And we do get that here in Texas. It just takes a little bit longer for.

Melissa: right. And it's short lived.

Jam: Yep. It's like you get like a week of that fall look that you hope for. And then the next week, all the leaves are on the ground and you're raking them for hours and hours

and hours.

Melissa: That's only if you're a homeowner,

Jam: Yeah.

Melissa: I don't have to rake any leaves.

Jam: Yeah. Well, I've got plenty, actually, if you want to get a little bit a of what it's like to own a home. You could come rake some leaves.

Melissa: That's okay. I think I'm good.

Jam: Are you sure?

Melissa: I'm sure

I've also in those cartoons or be able to run and jump in piles of leaves. All I can think about is if that leave pile has been sitting there for a while, there is a very likely, some kind of animal in it.

Jam: or they're just.

Melissa: some snakes, some bugs who

Jam: they're just also dirty. I mean, you wouldn't like really want to jump in a pile of dirt, but dead leaves are not that different. And if it's rained at all and they're wet under there, it gets gross.

Melissa: Yeah,

Jam: Messing with them and I'm not even trying to play in them. And I get very dirty, just handling lots of leaves.

So whatever man, you know, people do your thing jump in the leaves if you want to, but, um, I'm gonna pass.

Melissa: well, here's the answer for why leaves change colors.

Jam: Okay.

Melissa: And it's really the answer for why they're green in the first place. And then also why they're red, orange, and yellow. And the answer is organic chemistry

Jam: it's so simple. What an easy answer.

Melissa: my favorite topic, and my favorite answer. And that's it. That's the end of this episode.

Jam: Nice. All right.

Melissa: Just kidding. So what happens is in leaves, there are highly colored organic compounds that hang out in leaves and they make them pretty and. We're going to talk about why they're hanging out in leaves and what they're doing and why in the fall, the colors of the leaves change. But it is all everything that you see, all the colors in leaves are all due to organic compounds.

Jam: Okay. I feel like I've learned about just the green color in plants before and like biology and stuff. And I can. That's like my brain wants to know the word really badly and would think it knows it, but I can't muster what that word is.

Melissa: Well, hold on to it and maybe it'll come to you. I'm sure you do know it. And I'm sure people at home are thinking. I know it. I knew it, but we're gonna just wait for just a second.

Jam: Okay.

Melissa: Okay.

So remember when we talked about light and colors on the, maybe on the bleach episode, it was long ago enough that I want to review it. So we talked about how highly colored compound usually absorb light in the visible region and whatever they don't absorb. They reflect back to us. And that's what we see as color.

Jam: Right.

Melissa: And these highly colored organic compounds are usually called pigments or dyes, and they have a lot of alternating, double bonds in a long carbon chain. And that's called conjugation. And if you have a certain amount of conjugation, that is what allows these compounds to absorb light in the visible region and reflect light back to us. Sometimes if you're too highly conjugated, it'll go and out of the visible region region, it just depends basically on the amount of energy that that compounds amount of electrons can absorb.

Jam: Okay.

Melissa: This is the best way I can put it. They have absorb light in specific energy packets, and that really determines the colors that we see. This is a simplified boiled down version. If you want more on it, go back to that bleach episode. So all the colors of the leaves that we see in trees, they're absorbing light in the visible region and reflecting back.

Jam: Okay, right.

Melissa: And the one that you probably know best that's responsible for green that your tongue can't quite remember is chlorophyll.

Jam: Yes. Yep.

Melissa: Yes, that's it. So chlorophyll absorbs the sun's light in all the regions except around the green region. And it uses all that light energy that it has absorbed to feed the plant through photosynthesis.

That's pretty common knowledge. But the reason we see it as green is because the green light is reflecting back to us.

Jam: Right.

Melissa: All of the other visible light, it absorbs and uses carbon dioxide and water to turn into food for the plant.

Jam: Got it. Okay. So for some reason of all the colors, are there all the ranges of energy? It just doesn't absorb green on that scale.

Melissa: It just absorbs energy in the specific wavelengths in more the red and the blue region, but not the green region.

Jam: quick as it's right in the middle to right. Roy G Biv or whatever. It's like, you know, his middle name, Roy's middle name.

Melissa: It is, it is right in the middle. And. In organic chemistry. So in my lab, if you go all the way back to, how do we turn sunlight into energy? In my master's degree research, we looked into how to imitate photosynthesis and you can really put sort of antennas on molecular structures to fine tune where they absorb light.

So it does kind of just depend on the molecule you have in the different structures. I have some suspicions as to why it absorbs in the red and blue region. It doesn't really matter. So that's why we see plants as green is the chlorophyll absorbs the light in the reds and blues, and they reflect back the green to us. But then in the fall, chlorophyll production slows down because plants don't have all the warm temperature and the sunlight they need to produce chlorophyll.

Jam: Um,

Melissa: To while that happens, the chlorophyll starts to break down and the green of the leaves starts to fade away. And two things happen. What we can see the colors of other pigments that have been in the leaves all along.

Jam: Uh, okay.

Melissa: so in the same area of the leaves where. Chlorophyll lives. There also live other pigments, and these are primarily known as flavonoids and carotinoids,

Jam: Flavonoids that's seven familiar word. I think.

Melissa: I think that they're common in foods. They're common in plants and they seem to be a Jack of all trades. They do a ton of things and it was hard for me to narrow down what they did, but the carotinoids have a very interesting function. They live in the same part of the cell. The chlorophyll does they're much slower to break down.

So after the chlorophyll starts to break down, you can still see the color of the carotinoids, the oranges and the yellows,

Jam: gotcha.

Melissa: different color, which means they absorb in a different region of light. And so the carotinoids are handy because they can absorb in the region of light that the chlorophyll doesn't. So they can use sunlight more efficiently in conjunction with the chlorophyll. So the chlorophyll is missing out on that whole chunk of light in the middle of the visible region. Carotinoids come in and act as a helper and can absorb the rest of that light. In case the plant isn't getting enough, it can utilize the sunlight that's hitting the leaf more efficiently.

Jam: It's been that all the time, even when we can't see that color.

Melissa: Yes.

Jam: it. Okay. It's it's there. We don't see it, but we know because when we do see it, we know that it's absorbing different ranges of energy, of light than the chlorophyll.

Melissa: yes. And there, it was a beautiful graph from one of our references. And if I can remember, I'll probably screenshot it and post it on our. Social medias. And he shows on the graph, the it's called the absorption spectrum. So that demonstrates where it's a light is absorbed and he shows it for chlorophyll and how it kind of misses this one region.

And then for the carotinoids and how it comes in and covers that one region.

Jam: Oh, interesting.

Melissa: beautiful. It's pretty satisfying.

Jam: I think that's cool.

Melissa: Well, here's, what's cooler. They do something else too. So, if there's not enough sunlight, they can help the plant use the sunlight. That's hitting it more efficiently, but also if there's too much sunlight, they almost act as a blocker where they can absorb the light and deflect it away from the chlorophyll.

So the tree is not getting too much sun.

Jam: The opposite problem.

Melissa: They're almost like a body guard where they give a helping hand or they protect when necessary. They do two, almost exactly opposite functions at the same time.

Jam: So the carotinoids do that and the flavonoids do something else.

Melissa: the flavonoids might also do that from the papers I could find. They seem to play a variety of roles in all kinds of plants, and they definitely have the same yellow and oranges as some of the carotinoids.

Jam: Got it. Got

Melissa: I found a very in-depth article written by someone at Appalachian state university and we'll link to it.

And he went in depth into the rule of carotinoids, but I couldn't find a similar article on flavanoids. it.

was hard to find, so they might serve a similar function. It's just hard to tell. It was hard for me to find information. So if there's a biologist out there that knows the specifics on that, Pigment the flavonoids versus the carotinoids.

And if it does the same thing or different things, let me know. But they're in a lot of stuff

Jam: Interesting.

Melissa: and too familiar, kind of pigment myths that are responsible for these colors. One is beta carotene

Jam: That's familiar.

Melissa: that gives carrots it's orange color. It can also be yellow if it's a little diluted, so it can do. And Lou tin or lutein, I'm not sure how to pronounce it, which gives egg yolks, their yellow color.

Jam: Oh,

Melissa: So that's where the oranges in yellow has come from, mainly from carotinoids and flavanoids. So that's the first thing that happens when chlorophyll starts to the production starts to get reduced and the chlorophyll breaks down. The other thing that happens is that new pigments are generated, and this is kind of bizarre

because. This tree is starting to break down and conserve energy. So why would it waste energy producing new pigments, right? When things are getting colder and they're going to have less energy, it's kind of weird.

Jam: Yeah.

Melissa: This is a little bit of mystery, which I love, but I dug into it a little and it seems that this class of compounds they're known as anthocyanin.

There the bright red, beautiful color. So you see the bright red stark red leaves that are clearly red. That class of compound seems to be generated as a sunscreen for the plant. Because if, if you didn't have that, which one scientist and made mutant trees that didn't have the ability to produce anthocyanin.

The leaves fell off while they were still green. And they were still able to get energy if they were exposed to bright, light and cold weather. So by having anthocyanins, the trees can basically hold onto their leaves longer because they have this pigment that sort of protects them from the sun. And so it exists as a defense mechanism where the leaves won't fall off as fast.

If it's cold and bright weather.

Jam: Oh, interesting. Okay.

Melissa: So if it's a colder, brighter fall, you're going to have more of those beautiful red leaves. And if it's a cloudier fall, the tree won't have to produce as much of that to protect itself. So you'll have less of those crazy bright red leaves.

Jam: it's kind of responding to conditions, not just trying to predict conditions. Right. So it's not like let's be ready just in case. It's more like, okay, it's really bright, even though it's getting cooler. let's do some red.

Melissa: Yes. And there is one they're doing more studies on this. They haven't confirmed it, but one scientist theorize that there seemed to be more of those red leaves produced the anthocyanins produced in nutrient poor soil. So if it's going to be harder for the plant to get nutrients, once winter hits it'll make more of those anthocyanins.

But if it's very nutrient rich, it maybe doesn't need to protect its leaves as much. And it makes a less of them.

Jam: Interesting. So it's a little bit of a sign of like, okay, the soil, like there's all these beautiful red trees over there, but that may also mean that the soil that it's in is not like the best for it. Or something.

Melissa: Yeah. maybe it's lacking some nitrogen or it's just not as, as nutrient rich. So the tree needs to hold onto its leaves longer to stock up energy for the long cold winter.

Jam: Yeah. Dude that is crazy. Gosh,

Melissa: I know.

Jam: I guess I just didn't really think about how much they're responding to like current situations and they're playing it as it goes that it doesn't

Melissa: really. is alive. You just kind of sometimes forget.

Jam: Yeah. I really think of it more like. It just happens to it. You know what I mean? That just is kind of how I've gone through life.

Thinking about plants a lot of times with some few exceptions where you think, oh, wow. That plant is like, you hear about something cool. Or you see a plant, like leaning toward the light and you're like, oh, it's responding to stuff. Right. Right. Right. But most of the time, I just think of them as just time of year comes andall it's leaves fall off, you know, it just doesn't seem like

Melissa: and that sort of is what happens when the chlorophyll fades out. And you can just see the yellow colors that were already. But the production of the new anthocyanins is pretty amazing to me.

Jam: And does it ramp down the production of the chlorophyll on purpose?

Melissa: I think it just isn't able to produce as much. There's not enough sunlight or S or something. I don't know. The in depth details about the plant's decision to produce less chlorophyll. It might not have the resources or it might be. I think I read that the leaves drop because once it hits winter, too much water can evaporate from leave.

So basically becomes inefficient for the plant to still have the leaves on there. So I suspect it could have something to do with that. It's basically stocking up and preparing all of its energy. And once it hits that point, then the leaves are free to go.

Jam: Oh, wow. Wow.

Melissa: for me to know for sure. Cause I'm not a biologist that it was a lot of speculation.

Jam: Yeah.

Melissa: And we have biologists who listen, who know more about trees, please lay it on us.

Jam: Yeah. Dang. This is crazy, dude.

Melissa: it. That's the story of why leaves turn color in the. The short answer is all organic pigments. So if you want to allow someone and not give them all that, you can just say organic pig pigments, but for you Jam, you've got to give me more than just the short answer.

Jam: Yep, man, this just, it's a hard thing to think of an analogy for, you know what I mean?

Melissa: Yeah.

Jam: I think the one thing that comes to mind, it's not a perfect analogy. It's just what we, as humans do, we, the seasons start changing and we start making conscious decisions about what we're going to do. It's not like the first day of fall, the first day of winter.

And we immediately bundle all the way up, especially not here in Texas. We don't go, but don't go fall all at once. And that would be dumb. You had some time even. So we also look at the weather every day. And look at what we should, what decision we should make about we were that day. And. One of the reasons we do that as comfort, but really more importantly, behind all of that is survival.

We make a decision about what to wear, to stay warm or to stay cool because we want to survive and conserve energy. If we're sweating like a pig, we're wasting energy and we're uncomfortable. If we're really cold, then we are also, you know, wasting energy and uncomfortable and also might not survive if you're out in like Sub-Zero temperatures or something with no clothes on.

So does.

Melissa: Definitely don't do that.

Jam: So it seems like the plant is kind of doing the trees are kind of in the same thing. They there's a change happening in their environment. And maybe it's that some of this stuff happens to it, maybe not, but there's certainly some on-purpose decisions that plants are making changes. Plants are making really, because they're trying to survive just like everything else.

So whether it's like the first thing, just being that there's going to be less sunlight. And cooler temperatures. And so it starts to make changes to stay alive and keep trying to get energy while it still can. So one of the things being that it creates is new pigments to still be able to take advantage of the sunlight during this weird transitionary time.

But also one of the things we're seeing too is just the fact that because the chlorophyll production is going down, we see these pigments that were already there because chlorophyll specifically absorbs light in the regions that are not green or reflects back. So the chlorophyll is gone and then we're seeing the other things, the other payments that were already there, the flavonoids and the.

Car.

Melissa: it's kind of like carrot.

Jam: Wait, what is it?

Melissa: It's Carotinoids it's like carrot.

Jam: when you said care, I thought beta carotene and I was like, what's the other one then? Carotinoids man, there's a lot of carrot related stuff going on.

Melissa: I think, although I don't know that that is on purpose. Carotinoids hold classes of compounds like beta carotenes, but I tried to get some clarification on.

where the line was drawn between flavonoids and carotinoids and. I couldn't really, and I didn't seem relevant to dig in for this episode,

Jam: Uh, huh?

Melissa: there are similar classes of compounds in my mind.

They're highly colored and they're found in plants.

Jam: Got it. And it's just crazy. How much of this is , really it just does it boil down to. Regions of visible light energy, does this thing absorb, and then what it does, what it does not absorb is what it reflects. And so we could dig away more. I'm sure a biologist could tell us way more about the, what, what the plant is doing on purpose and what is not on purpose or whatever, but just at the very, very basic chemical level, it's that we're seeing literally different substances that absorb and reflect different regions of light and.

Okay. From the chemistry point of view, that's pretty simple. We see everywhere. And for some reason on this large scale, and we see it happening in the world around us, on these trees, it seems so much crazier. And I almost always thought that a lot of it is just like the leaves were dying or something. And for some reason that

Melissa: that is sort of part of it.

Jam: Right. And I thought for some reason when it was dying that it was just like, oh yeah, the colors . Change when it dies, I guess.

Never really. thought that much more about it.

it

Melissa: Well, it is easy to do that with a lot of the things around us. It's always like that. So that's just what happens. And we don't question It.

sort of like the time we talked about fire and then said, wait, what is fire? You know,

Jam: Yeah.

Melissa: you just think I know what that. I know it leaves changing in the fall are, but, but you've never really thought about why that happens.

And it really is just that we're either seeing those pigments that are already there or new pigments are being generated to maybe help protect the plant in certain conditions.

Jam: I was thinking those new pigments are kind of like, like how wardrobe wise we have, especially in Texas, a kind of a short window of fall related wardrobe stuff. You have a light jacket, you know, you might throw on a hat it's a little bit cool or just a scarf for a little bit, but you kind of have this medium region where we're just.

Like getting by for a little bit before we actually have to go full winter mode.

Melissa: Yeah.

that's a great way to think of it. They basically kind of come out and protect the plant for, to help it keep its leaves on for a little bit longer. I was really amazed. I think I forgot to say, but. The scientist who, who made the mutant trees that can make anthocyanins was William hock. And he was the one that observed them dropping their leaves while they were still green.

If it was exposed to cold, bright light,

Jam: Interesting. Gosh, we have a, we had a tree that I'm guessing this is probably something to do with, um, you did some purpose or something's wrong with the tree, but at our old house, we had a tree that's leaves would go through the colors and turn brown and then never fall off.

Melissa: Actually, they talked about that happening too. Is it some trees wouldn't drop their leaves until the new tea leaves came on the next year, but I don't know why. I can't remember.

Jam: it was very strange. I was, felt like a little worried about that tree. And I would, when the spring came, there'd still be all these brown leaves on their side to help them help the tree, get them off, and then it would help it actually sprout new leaves. weird.

Melissa: Well, I think that that is normal for some trees. I did read that briefly. I mean, I don't know, but I read briefly that some trees will hold onto the dead leaves until the new ones come. I

don't know why.

Jam: Maybe I shouldn't have been messing with that tree. Don't let it

Melissa: Maybe it was just, Yeah.

it knew what it was good for itself,

Jam: Yeah,

Melissa: I didn't, I didn't pay close attention to that, but I do remember reading something like that in all my sources. What happens when I write an episode is I, I find as many reputable sources as I can. And I try to find multiple different reputable sources stating the same thing.

So I end up reading a lot of stuff. So somewhere in one of these references, it did talk about that, but it's going to be a hard for me to find that again.

Jam: let me try to wrap my sort of response explanation up in a bow. So we've got chlorophyll, production goes down and we see green because it absorbs light in the other regions, except for green and reflects green goes down. We start seeing the carotinoids and flavonoids. They are already there and they absorb light in a different region and reflect different colors.

So we start seeing those. And at the same time, depending on the conditions, the plant may be trying to conserve energy and protect itself from sunlight by introducing and producing S oh man. I remember that

Melissa: me to tell you?

Jam: one. Let me think one second. Is it SIADH noids what is it?

Melissa: It's anthocyanin.

Jam: Anthocyanins I mixed like two different syllables.

Antho cyan ans. Okay. Got it. And that's the helps it kind of transition further and keep getting energy for a little longer before the full process takes place and it drops the leaves.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jam: And all those things have different colors and we see them differently because of re reasons we've already talked about, which is just energy levels, visible, light, a lot of that stuff.

That's very, very interesting and basic chemistry.

Melissa: That's right. You got it.

Jam: Ooh, dude that's interesting, I'm loving it. I'm all about I'm ready for these leaves to change.

Melissa: Well, and I should say it's, I think anthocyanins may be a type of flavonoid, but again, it was hard for me to. I couldn't find a good resource that said, here is a list of carotinoids. Here is a list of flavonoids. So some, some places seem to conflate them as one and some separated them out. So it could be that an anthocyanin is a type of flavonoid,, but it definitely is a new pigment pigment that gets introduced later on.

So I separated it out from the other ones that were already in the leaf.

Jam: Okay.

Melissa: Just as a disclaimer for any of you biologists out there that know more about this than me. So that's it. That's a story. Good job. We're back to a normal episode after a few, um, that were kind of unconventional. So that was fun.

Jam: Yeah, I did. I was a little rusty on my explanations, but that was a fun

Melissa: Well, do you, do you have, um, something happy from your week? Other fun thing you'd like to share before we wrap up?

Jam: I do actually, we had one that was really fun and happy, but also a little bit hard. We took a road trip with our kid, which is challenging.

Melissa: Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Jam: We went up to see some of Em's family in Indiana. And we did that safely. We'd kind of waited for a while to make sure we could do it safely. And none of them had met our son.

And so it was really good to get a chance to do that and see them, and also to be in Indiana where the weather was nice and fall-like, which is perfect for this episode. And I mentioned that,

Melissa: Yes. Yes.

Jam: I mentioned that at the

Melissa: Lots of pictures, lots of pictures that Emiliee sent me of that. So we'll post some of those fall leaves from Indiana.

Jam: So that was fun and happy and good. And we made it and we survived a road trip with a, with a baby and have recovered from the, the tiring nature of that. So, uh,

Melissa: congratulations on making it

Jam: thank you. Thank you. What about you? What's been happy about your week.

Melissa: well, some of you may know that the Dallas stars did go all the way to the Stanley cup final, which they haven't done since 2000, when I was like nine years old. So it's pretty wild. It was really fun. I watched some games with my dad and brothers a really great time, but one of my former students, current friend, she's a grad student.

Now she started as an undergrad and I actually taught her in her organic chemistry lab. And then she decided to go to grad school. So we got to stay friends and actually get to know each other. After she was my student, she got me a Dallas stars Jersey with. The patch from the Stanley cup final on it. It was such a nice, thoughtful gift.

And it had my name on the back and there's five members of my family growing up. So it had the number five on there and it was really cool and such a nice gift. I mean, it really was so thoughtful warmed my heart. I mean, I could not, I was not expecting it. She said it was sort of a graduation gift. Is so sweet.

It was just a really thoughtful gift and she even wrapped it, which is she had just given it to me, I would have been

amazed.

Jam: right.

Melissa: Um, so that was a really nice gift and I was so honored to receive it that I just wanted to share it. And it has the Stanley cup final patch on it. That's so exciting. So that was a really nice gift.

Jam: that is really nice. Wow.

Melissa: So thanks Ashley for that sweet gift and for being an awesome student, she was an awesome student back in the day when she goes in my lab. So.

Jam: It's still an awesome student right now, right?

Melissa: Yes, but she's not my

Jam: Okay. Got

Melissa: Yeah. She's now she's my peer and not my student anymore. So I'm sure she is still awesome. And that's why she's doing well in grad school, but so thanks to Ashley and thanks to you Jam and all of our listeners for coming and learning about following.

Jam: Anytime. And thanks for teaching us on such a cool topic that just seasonal. And it will be fun to watch this topic play out before our eyes as soon as.

Melissa: I know.

Yeah.

Jam: So Melissa and I have a lot of ideas like this for topics of chemistry in everyday life. But we want to hear from you the things that you're curious about, the things that you wonder about that our chemistry that you interact with every day or every season or whatever.

So reach out to us on Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, at chem for your life. That's chem F-O-R your life to share your thoughts and ideas. If you'd like to help us keep our show going and contribute to cover the cost of making it go to ko-fi.com/chemforyourlife And donate the cost of a cup of coffee.

If you're not able to donate, you can still help us by subscribing on your favorite podcast app and rating and writing a review on apple podcasts. That also helps us to be able to share chemistry with even more people.

Melissa: This episode of chemistry for your life was created by Melissa Collini in Jam Robinson. References for this episode can be found in our show notes or on our website. Jam Robinson is our producer, and we'd like to give a special thanks to A. Collini And N. Newell who reviewed this episode.