Bonus: Why does tupperware stain from pasta? (and other questions)
Hey. I'm Melissa.
Jam:I'm Jam.
Melissa:And I'm a chemist. And I'm not. And welcome to chemistry for your life.
Jam:The podcast helps you understand the chemistry Have your everyday life, a bonus edition.
Melissa:Sojam?
Jam:Yes?
Melissa:Are you ready for this week's bonus edition?
Jam:I am. Give me this month's.
Melissa:I knew you're gonna say that. There's something your listeners don't know that we can just tell them right now. I always say this week's bonus edition because for a long we did a bonus edition every week.
Jam:And also she because we also say this week for everything else, you know, like this week's episode or whatever. Yeah. Melissa always wants to say it for the this For the monthly rerelease, rebroadcast episode? Like, for this week's rebroadcast, that'd be quite a bit to rebroadcast for every week. That would be a little Insane.
Melissa:So that's something that's something that that's a little behind the scenes action for y'all. Now you know. Yeah. So are you ready for this month's rebroadcast.
Jam:I am ready.
Melissa:Are you ready for this month's mini bonus episode? What are we what am I saying?
Jam:I'll tell you this. You know what? Whatever it is, I'm ready for it.
Melissa:Okay. You're ready for
Jam:it. Yeah. Great. I'm ready.
Melissa:Just like Taylor Swift, are you ready for it? Yes. Exactly. I
Jam:tell you that.
Melissa:Well, I'm actually gonna start with a little correction corner before you do any, question asking.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:This is from Avishai. And after the bread episode came out, he sent me a message, and it unlocked a little memory in my brain. He said short amino acid chains are called peptides, not proteins.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:But I will say, for whatever reason, in the papers I read about the bread, the The single chain I mean, or shorter chain amino acids were called proteins. I'm not sure why.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:But he said they're called peptides, and they have various roles in the cell. Also, there's an amazing course by Harvard University available for free on edx.org, so that's edx.org, about the physics and chemistry of food. And I thought that was really cool because Mason has also been using edx.org to learn something about coding, And he's really liked it too. And I wanted to take his food science course for a really long time. So I was excited to find out that there's food science on there, and I'll definitely be Starting that up soon.
Melissa:So thanks for telling us, and I just I guess I just wanted to share with our listeners who I know love to learn.
Jam:So Seriously. That's awesome.
Melissa:Okay. Now you can start with the questions, Jim.
Jam:Okay. This first one's a heavy hitter, so I just hope you're ready. Brie asks I hope you guys are ready too at home. And just before just, are you sitting down? Just wanna make sure you guys are sitting down for this one just because it's gonna it's a tough one.
Jam:What's your favorite chemistry pun slash joke?
Melissa:Well, jam, my favorite jam and brie. My favorite chemistry pun or joke is The chemistry sweatshirt. Ah, yes. It was obviously a pun before you made it into a sweatshirt. Yeah.
Melissa:But Yeah. So the chemistry that has the, like, little things and, actually, Bree sent me a message with a with a chemistry with test tubes and flasks on it on Twitter, like, The real version of what we have on the sweatshirt. Uh-huh.
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:And she asked if I'd ever had a chance to make one in the lab, and I could have probably done it in the lab I was in in, grad school, but Uh-huh. You know, I let out was a Sad grad student at the time and didn't have a lot of excitement for messing around, and probably would've gotten in trouble for Wasting solvent or something, so I never did anything fun like that.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:But there are really good ones online. So that's probably mine. What about yours, Jim?
Jam:Wow. What a tough question for A, armchair podcast, chemistry student. So As Melissa, you know, and as listeners, if you listen to a few episodes, you know that if if there's a opportunity, I do make dumb jokes about the How much your content? Something like that. And one of the ones that I really like that is really dumb.
Jam:So it's, like, I'm proud of it, but it's Not actually gonna blow out any of y'all's minds or
Melissa:not that. Oh, no.
Jam:But one time we were talking about distilled water and just the different kinds of water, what's In
Melissa:Oh, yeah.
Jam:Stuff. And, and I was like, Melissa, do you know why they call it distilled water? And she was like, I mean, I think you could tell. I was probably afraid
Melissa:of it. Yeah. You can usually tell.
Jam:Yeah. She's like, yep. No. I don't. Why do they call it that?
Jam:And I was like, well, because I took water, and they did all the stuff that they do to it, which I can't remember what they did, but you explained it.
Melissa:They just boil it and capture the steam and pull it back down.
Jam:Right. Take to take a lot of things that are dissolved in the water out, and then it's removed. And it's basically a lot less complex version of water. Correct?
Melissa:Like Right. Yeah.
Jam:Yeah. Mhmm.
Melissa:It's like more pure.
Jam:And they did all that stuff, and then they were kind of checking it out and observing it. And they're like, I guess distill water.
Melissa:I hate it.
Jam:And that's why I call it distilled water.
Melissa:Yeah. I hate it.
Jam:Because even though I did all those things, Distill No. Water.
Melissa:No.
Jam:You know?
Melissa:Distilling is the is what it's called when you boil something Uh-huh. And you capture the steam and condense it back down in another flask
Jam:or something. Got it.
Melissa:So that's it. That's actually why it's called it, not because it's still water.
Jam:I mean So we could agree or disagree on this.
Melissa:Yeah. Okay. I also like this isn't really a joke. I guess it's more of a pun, but The one that Jam came up with where, like, a polymer is a like, a molecule made up of a bunch of small molecules. It kind of is a pun.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah. It is kind Pun.
Melissa:But it's also a definition, and it's very accurate, so I like it. But small molecule's not a real there's not no such thing as a small molecule. So that's up there too.
Jam:But there I thought what's nice about chemistry is there really is a lot of room for jokes and stuff. There's the symbols of different elements. You could kind of do some stuff with that. I don't know. It's just, I feel like there's Maybe every field is that way, but I feel like it's opportunities everywhere.
Jam:The little jokes and puns and stuff.
Melissa:David Miller sent me one. He's He's a professor, I think, and he emails us quite a bit. Uh-huh. And he sent me one that was like a one eyed what is that? Like, a one eyed something something Flying purple people eater.
Jam:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:But it was like a isopropyl. When it looks as a functional group in chemistry, that made me laugh. I isopropyl people eater, something like that. That was one I hadn't seen before. It's it's hard to get one that I haven't seen before.
Melissa:Usually, I've seen them before. So Good job, David. Good job on the puns.
Jam:And thanks for the question, Brie. And she's got another one, and here it is. If You could talk with any scientist from all of human history. Who would it be and why? And then she said, personally, I'd love to chat with Rosalind Franklin.
Jam:And let her know that her name hasn't been forgotten and that a fair amount of people recognize her contributions to chemistry.
Melissa:Yeah. I feel like Bree is onto something there because I think there are probably a lot of women whose names have been forgotten.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And so they're It's almost like I'd wanna talk to one of them probably. Yeah. But for a name that hasn't been forgotten, one person that I would like to talk to is probably Marie Maynard Daley. She was the 1st black woman to get a PhD in chemistry, and we talked about her on an episode
Jam:That's right.
Melissa:I think in February.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:And I feel like she must have had so much going on, and I would really like to have heard about her experiences, but also maybe get some wisdom on how she persevered. Mhmm. But otherwise, it was hard for me to think of what I feel like there's someone that's probably a really good, cool scientist that we don't actually know about. Yeah. You know?
Melissa:And then I otherwise, I feel like a lot of people who made these really impressive contributions maybe Weren't as nice or as interesting as we think.
Jam:Right. Right.
Melissa:Maybe Albert Einstein. He is people talk about him a lot. It'd be nice Be like, so what does he really like?
Jam:Yeah. That's true. Yeah. I think, like, it's tough because the other thing is that so many of these scientists from history have discovered things that are super important. Yeah.
Jam:But depending on the thing, now it's very understood, very commonplace. So talking to them might be still interesting, but it would be a little bit, like, oh, well, I actually understand what you discovered, and also a lot of things that were discovered After you? Yeah. It's so, like, you know You're like,
Melissa:oh, actually, that's wrong.
Jam:Say someone, like, really early on who discovered some really cool fundamental things about chemistry, for instance.
Melissa:Like the Bohr model of the atom?
Jam:Right. Or like Lavoisier or something like that where it's, like, really early discoveries that Our school and people built upon it was very necessary, but it's going so far sort of backward Yeah. That it'd be might be a little bit frustrating to be like, Listen, dude. Like, we've also discovered, like, so many things after that or whatever. But
Melissa:Listen. All I know though is I would not have been a chemist in the age where there weren't computers because they had to do a lot of, like, little detailed work that me on my ADHD brain would not have. Yeah. I don't know that I would've had it in me. I would've been like, this is too boring.
Jam:Yeah. Right. Right. And they didn't have a lot to to They had to do a lot from scratch.
Melissa:Yeah. They I remember somebody talking about when they would draw molecules. They had to hand draw things to go in their papers. Yeah. And to make sure everything was perfect, they, like, had to measure out the angle of every single molecule, and I was like, I would just wouldn't have done it.
Melissa:I just would not have done Yeah. So I think Props to the that round of people too.
Jam:Totally. Just I think what you said about Einstein is an easy one to, like, Say because I don't know a ton of scientists or whatever. Yeah. But another one I feel like I regularly feel a distant fascination with is Tesla. And there's always
Melissa:Oh, yeah.
Jam:People saying like, oh, actually, Nikola Tesla, he had sketches of this thing
Melissa:Uh-huh.
Jam:Or whatever. Or he made this thing. He didn't know how it could be Applied, but he made a blah blah blah Yeah. And tested it, and it worked. And it's just like people like that where I was like, I think he was, like, Way ahead on a bunch of stuff, and I don't really understand that.
Jam:I'm sure other people do, but I'm like, I'll he seems like he'd be cool to talk to.
Melissa:Also, for some reason okay. I'm sick. People listening at home, so don't judge me. But when you said Tesla, I thought you meant, like, Elon Musk. Yeah.
Melissa:I was like, the guy who made the car, and I was like, oh, oh, right. There was a there was a scientist Before
Jam:the car, there was a guy. Yeah.
Melissa:And that's who the car is named after, not who made the car?
Jam:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:I was like, that's so weird. You mean the guy just bought Twitter that without
Jam:You're alive now. You can live now.
Melissa:Literally. Yeah. I was so confused for, like, probably, like, 2 seconds. Yeah. That was a good question.
Jam:Yeah. Very good question. This next question is from Igor. Igor said, hi. I'm Igor from Brazil.
Jam:I'd like to know more about Melissa's educational research. Well, we just don't know anything about it. So Sorry. Sorry.
Melissa:Well, Igor, we actually did an episode about my education research, which was all about my dissertation right after I defended. And I think it was called why do people hate organic chemistry?
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:Right, Jim?
Jam:Yep.
Melissa:And, so that's a little bit about that. Now I've switched gears a little bit, and I'm doing research in the lab of doctor Jordan Harshman at Auburn University. I work remotely, so I'm not at Auburn.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:But I am investigating Sort of I guess we're trying to build a model for graduate education in chemistry and why we do the things that we do to help develop experts in chemistry, And and maybe how each of those different aspects of graduate education contributes to the development of an expert is Kind of my elevator pitch. It's really fun. I get to interview faculty members, and I ask them all kinds of questions about why we do what we do. So I really like it. I love talking to and interviewing and stuff like that.
Melissa:So, that's what I'm doing now, but there's all kinds of education research. So I tend to focus I guess the thing I'm interested in is kind of changing the system because it seems a little bit broken, which that can be hard to do because there's so many moving pieces. But there's There's research that focuses on how feelings impact learning chemistry. There's research that focuses on misconceptions and, conceptual understanding of chemistry. There's research that focuses on how students, maybe approach problem solving.
Melissa:I mean, there's all kinds of education research. And The type that I'm doing is under the umbrella of what's called DBIR, which is discipline based education research. So, people who are doing the education research also have an expertise in the discipline. So chemists doing education research. But there's also education research Outside of those things, just regular old education research.
Melissa:So that's a little bit about it. I really love it. There's, A really sweet community of people who do chemistry education research, and I've learned so much. And I think it sort of distilled the things I loved about research, is, like, learning new things and, sort of contributing to our body of knowledge together with, teaching, which I also love. So I get to learn about the best ways of teaching, and I get to learn about how students are learning, you know, so that not only could I be a better but everyone.
Melissa:Or not only can we make better programs, but everyone could or, you know, things like that. So it's not I think Sometimes people think it's just about teaching, but it really is like a statistics, education, research. Like, there's methods. There's All kinds of stuff, that goes into really learning about how students are learning chemistry and what we can do to make that the best practice. So that's a little bit about it.
Jam:Yeah. And even more in that episode, like Melissa mentioned, why do people hate organic chemistry?
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:But then also, is should our honorable honorable mention. We did do an episode as well about what you studied in your master's, even though it's not about educational research. Mhmm. Which that's kinda cool. So you can kind of trace some of the, like, The arc of of what Melissa has studied and researched about, and that was about solar cells.
Jam:Correct?
Melissa:Mhmm. I think the episode is, like, How do we turn sunlight? I think the title was, how do we turn sunlight into energy?
Jam:That's right. That's right.
Melissa:And now Jim has solar panels on his house. Mhmm.
Jam:Yep. More on that later.
Melissa:Full circle.
Jam:Yep. It's full circle.
Melissa:Okay.
Jam:That's a good question. This next one is also a good question From Abe on Instagram asked, why does Tupperware stain from pasta?
Melissa:Okay. This is chemistry off the cuff. I didn't look it up. But here's here's how I you get a real time look at how I think about this question. So I'm thinking Plastic.
Melissa:Tupperware is plastic, and glass doesn't stain from pasta, so there must be something in the plastic in the chemical makeup of the plastic itself that makes it prone to that. Mhmm. And I'm thinking that maybe plastic is porous. Possibly, like, things can leach into the plastic. Uh-huh.
Melissa:And I think what would be happening if you zoom in to the molecular level is Plastics are polymers, so they're just like long strands of repeating units of molecules, and I think they're primarily carbon.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:We learned plastics come from crude oil. Remember? Yeah. In our whole in our recycling episodes. So I'm assuming that In the pasta, something that makes it red must be able to bind to and incorporate into because not like on top.
Jam:Right. Right.
Melissa:I think it must some red molecule, must be able to Get in there and literally bind to the plastic.
Jam:Yeah. That makes sense.
Melissa:That's what I think. I think, basically, Little red molecules wiggle their way into the polymer. They must be similar enough to the chemical structure of the polymer that usually after you heat pasta sauce in there.
Jam:Yeah. I was gonna say, anecdotally, it's only ever happened to me if I have heated it in the plastic container.
Melissa:Yep.
Jam:But just carry in there and, like, jump on a plate. I don't think it has happened for me.
Melissa:So I think there must be enough energy when the heat is put into the molecules, then the molecules move more, and they must be able to use that energy to wiggle their way in and bind to the plastic. That's what I think happens. Interesting. Just made that completely up. Yeah.
Melissa:I mean Yeah. I guess I didn't make that completely up. Like, polymers are that way, and that was based in chemistry, but I didn't it up at all. Yeah.
Jam:It's like because it almost sounds like but don't trust anything I said because it's not even what plumbers are. It's not even how it would
Melissa:you know? Yeah. Do trust what I said as a best guess of someone who Doesn't study plastics or pasta.
Jam:That is so funny. But also that's such a good question. I mean, like Yeah. I've wondered that so many times.
Melissa:Yeah. I feel like maybe I could look it up and do a whole episode on it, but that's what I think off the top of my head. So we'll see.
Jam:And then nonchemist, opinion off the cuff, switch your Tupperware to glass. That's what we did. The lids are plastic, Yeah. But that's okay. They're not saying you don't heat them.
Jam:You don't heat it with the lids. But we have these these glass Tupperware things that we love, And they're great.
Melissa:Yeah. We do too. We have glass. We call them glass Tupperware. I guess, technically, they're glass like
Jam:Glasserware.
Melissa:To go To go contain or I don't know. Glass storage containers? That's what we use too. Yep. And if I if I stumble Upon a plastic one, I'll just keep it to give food away.
Jam:This next question is from Audrey m. Audrey asks, what's the best tip for attaining information long term?
Melissa:Okay, Audrey. The question you just asked is actually called metacognition. Woah. So sort of. Metacognition is thinking about how you think.
Melissa:And so, Honestly, I guess my answer to your question is metacognition. So I would think about how you're learning and adjust Whatever you're learning to like, whatever you're trying to learn or retain based on things that you learn. So, like, about learning. Mhmm. I became a much better student after I started taking my education classes because I started learning about how to make meaningful connections.
Melissa:So a few things that stand out to me that I learned were, You can only take in so much information. So there's a this thing called the information processing model. And the the visual I always think of is Say that the information coming in is, like, sunlight through a window, but the blinds are half closed. You can't take in everything that's being thrown at you at once.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:So, you know, allow yourself time to process multiple times if you're trying to retain the information. And then the other thing is make Meaningful connections. The other thing is to make meaningful connections to something you already know. So I kind of think there's a there's an idea called a concept map, but I always think I also think of it like, maybe like a spider web. It's like, If you try to make a spider web that's not connected to anything, you're not gonna have a good time.
Jam:Right. Right.
Melissa:Or the spider won't have a good time, I guess.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:But if you can have these anchor points like what we do in this podcast episode or in our podcast episodes, you already know the phenomenon you've seen. You've seen the the staining of the Tupperware. And then I'll usually try to connect it to other episodes where we've talked about these ideas before or use an analogy to help, sort of make those meaningful connections rather than just memorization. So One of the theories that I learned when I was doing my dissertation is this idea of, like, meaningful learning is In opposition, sort of on a scale where one side is just rote memorizing, and then on the other side of the scale is meaningful learning. So you wanna be As far to the meaningful learning where you're actually making meaningful connections and having a true understanding of what's going on, and it's It's anchored to other ideas that you already understand in your mind.
Melissa:So those are kinda my 2 tips, I guess, based on what I've learned. But My biggest tip is you go learn about learning and use that to optimize your own learning process, metacognition.
Jam:That makes sense. It's like just I thought it was just like so meta, dude. I just
Melissa:It is. Wow. I I it is literally exactly meta. You know? Yeah.
Jam:Exact it's literally meta. It reminded me the way you started that answer of that vine that I don't know if you've seen, and I don't know if other people have listened to this, but it's just I don't know where this guy was like, I wonder what I'm thinking about right now. And then it goes into like, kinda goes into his head, and then it's just like, I wonder what I'm thinking about right now. It's, like, perfectly loops. Because, like, it's, like, thinking about thinking.
Melissa:Yes. Exactly. That I mean, that's literally the definition of metacognition, I think, is Literally, awareness and I looked it up. Awareness and understanding of one's own thought process. So learning about learning and then making your thought process be in with that is, you know, metacognition.
Melissa:Yeah. Learn about how to learn and then adjust your Learning processes based on what you've learned. How many times can I say learn in 1 sentence?
Jam:Interesting. That's cool. This next one is asked by Nani. Why does salt preserve things?
Melissa:Okay. Chemistry off the cuff again. Actually, I think it's biochemistry off the cuff. So I'm pretty sure the reason is and biochemists out there, come at me. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Melissa:I think salt pulls water out of cells because of the, You know, I think it's osmosis, technically, but there's this desire for things in nature to be sort of equal Mhmm. From what I've seen. Like, when we talked about the episode with the hot coffee, how it cools down because all the electrons want the same movement. You know?
Jam:Right. Right.
Melissa:And there's this Thing that happens in cells where if there's an uneven balance of salt water on the outside of the cells versus the inside, It will move the water around to try to even out that dispersion to get an equal concentration. So if you put a bunch of salt on the outside of cells, it'll pull the water out.
Jam:Interesting.
Melissa:And so that can preserve things because if the bacterial cells are there and you pull all the water out of them, they will die.
Jam:But I
Melissa:think that's also why if humans drink saltwater, well, they'll die too. I think. Uh-huh. I don't know for sure. But so things, you know, things don't live well if they're surrounded by salt.
Jam:Okay. This is an interesting one from our friend, Nikki. Nikki asks, is there a scientific reason why the saying is They had chemistry to mean attraction and not like they had biology.
Melissa:I think it's because Chemistry is all about electrons being shared.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And, like, ionic bonds is something that's positive. It's something that's negative. Yeah. Being attracted to each other.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:So I think it must be that. And, like, chemistry is forming bonds and breaking bonds, but forming bonds, and that's what I feel like it happens in a relationship when you have chemistry. Yeah. But what even is chemistry in a relationship? Is it just, like, infatuation?
Jam:Yeah. Who knows? I guess yeah. I guess you have to kinda ask what what people mean because they might mean different things. Yeah.
Jam:Like, they might people might be be using it differently.
Melissa:But I think it's like that initial attraction, which is, like, molecules can be attracted to each other even with intermolecular forces. You know?
Jam:I've even hear people talk about it in terms of, like like, Departments are like teams at work though. Like Oh,
Melissa:yeah.
Jam:You know what I mean? Like, it's not always romantic necessarily. People like, we have a really good chemistry in terms of our our teamwork together.
Melissa:Intermolecular forces work together, You know? Well, to hold geckos up on walls and stuff.
Jam:Yeah. Also, it's funny about reading this, they had biology. I was thinking, like, Well, no. I have biology already on my own. Like, I got I got biology That's true.
Jam:Right here, just by myself. But then once this was other people, it's called chemistry.
Melissa:That's true.
Jam:That is a good question.
Melissa:Actually, on an upcoming episode, we're gonna talk about a molecule that has chemistry within itself. So Woah. You know, who knows? I mean, molecules our chemistry, but a reaction within itself.
Jam:Interesting. But I
Melissa:don't know. I could have looked up where that came from, but I just thought it'd be more fun to speculate. Yeah.
Jam:Yeah. It's interesting.
Melissa:Okay. And then the last little bit is not a question, but it's from David Miller. And he he's a chemistry professor. We mentioned him earlier in the episode. And he wrote in to tell us that he made it to episode 100.
Jam:Nice.
Melissa:And we did that episode a a while ago, but he said, I did the 1 100th episode quiz while I was proctoring one of my courses exams, which that made laugh because proctoring exams is really boring. You're just watching a bunch of people take a test. It's literally the most boring thing. And even though I teach chem, I was happy to do super well. Even hung it up in my office on campus.
Melissa:LOL. Thanks for the super fun special episode, and congrats on making it to episode 100 and even beyond now. I thought that was fun. Yeah. And I think we're on episode 150 as of now, so it's kinda wild.
Jam:Yeah. That is crazy.
Melissa:They've been doing this for 3 years
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:Now already. So even longer because we do every other week now. So really cool. Yeah. So thanks for sharing that, David.
Melissa:We love to hear about how the show's impacting you or where you are when you're listening, and I really loved hearing how people did on the 1 100th episode quiz. So that was really fun. Yeah. Alright. Well, that's all I have for us this week.
Melissa:Thanks to all of our listeners who wrote in questions. We really appreciate it.
Jam:Yes. And if you want to write in a question yourself, and especially if you want to have priority question asking to, kind of we get a lot of questions. So go a priority question asking, making sure we don't miss it, or even record yourself asking your question, you can do that on by becoming one of our Patrons, joining our super cool community of patrons atpatreon.com/chem for your life.
Melissa:And this episode of Chemistry For Your Life was actually made possible by our financial supporters over on Patreon. It means so much to us That you wanna help make chemistry accessible to even more people and that you write in such cool questions for us every month for our q and r. Those supporters are Avishai B, Brie M, Brian K, Chris and Claire S, Chelsea B, Derek L, Emerson W, Hunter r, Jacob t, Christina g, Lynn s, Melissa p, Nicole c, Steven b, Shadow, Suzanne s, Sam n, Steven b, and Timothy p. Thanks again for everything you do to make chemistry for your life happen.
Jam:We also had to give a special thanks to E Robinson who reviewed this episode.
