How do glowsticks glow?
Oh, hello there. Don't be frightened. Once a year spookiness takes over your faint little Chemistry podcast, but not to worry. I won't be here long. And You look like you could use some spooky in your day.
Vampire:So sit back, relax, Get in the spooky spirit, and let's listen together. Perhaps over a nice
Melissa: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, spooky edition.
Jam:The podcast that very spookily helps you understand the chemistry of your very spooky life just this time of year?
Melissa:Jim, it's Halloween.
Jam:Yes?
Melissa:You know how much I love Halloween?
Jam:I do know how much you love Halloween.
Melissa:Last year, we did that crazy cool fire, flamethrower, and Green fire pumpkin situation
Jam:Oh, yeah.
Melissa:Is great.
Jam:And I think last year, not quite as chemistry related. I think you got Me. I don't know if anybody else hadn't seen it. I'd never seen the movie Hocus Pocus, and you got a lot of us to watch that. So that also helped me Understand your love of of Halloween and how much you want To spread that love to other people.
Melissa:Yes. It's just fun. It's just a fun holiday where you get to do fun stuff, and I like to bake. Usually, I bake a Halloween cake. Although this year, I'm doing a no sweets situation, so I don't know if I'll be able to.
Melissa:And
Jam:There's gotta be
Jam:some other it.
Jam:Halloween themed things you could eat that are, like, not sweets. Right? I mean, come on. We gotta be able to find some some healthy Halloween.
Melissa:But I just like to make cute little cakes. You know?
Jam:Yeah. So Totally.
Melissa:So I just love Halloween, and I'll post some pictures of my pre Previous Halloween cakes that I've Oh, yeah.
Jam:That's a good idea. Those are yeah.
Melissa:That's what I'll do.
Jam:Melissa hasn't had a lot of opportunities to talk about how good she's at baking, But this is a good opportunity for you to shred your stuff because I've been on the both tasting and seeing side of some of these cakes, and I'm like, how'd you do that?
Melissa:Well, my Halloween ones are pretty simple. 1 was the first Fancy cake I ever tried to make?
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And one was I just got creative with sprinkles because I was making a box cake at the last minute, but I just like to make a Cute Halloween themed cake. So I'll post some pictures of those. This year's maybe gonna be a little bit weird, but I still wanna do a Halloweeny theme.
Jam:Mhmm. Okay. Okay.
Melissa:So we're gonna be talking about glow sticks.
Jam:Oh, nice. Okay. Sweet.
Melissa:So how do glow sticks work? What's going on? That's definitely chemistry. Okay?
Jam:Okay. Great. So I'm
Melissa:gonna give you that lesson, and then I have some fun facts for you about glow sticks at the end.
Jam:Excellent. I love this idea. I love fun facts. I love all of it. And I'm kinda coming around to loving Halloween, maybe.
Jam:So
Melissa:Well, if nothing else, it's a good reason to see little kids dressed up in cute outfits, which I think is really fun. Yeah. And, normally, we get to give them candy and stuff. I don't know what the deal for social distance trick or treating is gonna be this year, so I'm kinda sad about that. It's gonna, I think, Be a low key Halloween, but
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:You know, maybe next year.
Jam:Yeah. I've seen some people post some ideas about how to try to get Candy took the kids and stuff like that, but it does end up kinda removing some of the fun interactive parts where you get to say, oh, I love your costume and
Melissa:Yeah.
Jam:And all that stuff. So I think that it's a little bit of a bummer. But
Melissa:Yeah. Definitely.
Jam:Can't be helped.
Melissa:Okay. So a long time ago, we talked about how within molecules, electrons will absorb energy and emit energy.
Jam:Okay. Right. Right.
Melissa:And the way I think it's best to describe it is if you imagine 2 electrons hanging out on the bottom step of a ladder
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And then one of them accepts energy and jumps up to a higher step on the ladder. And then once it gets tired of hanging out at that higher step, it falls back down to the original step.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And in that process, releases energy.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:So in chemistry, we call the bottom step the ground state
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And the higher step, the excited state.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So we'll say electrons will absorb energy and go to the Excited state, a higher energy level, and they give off that energy and come back down to the ground state.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:I tried to think of a good analogy for that, but I feel like it was kind of hard because we use energy to go up. We don't accept energy to go up. And then we stop using energy, you know, for climbing up a rope or a rock wall or something To get to the next level, you're using your energy, and then you kinda give up, and you're not using energy anymore when you come down. So it's kinda different. I thought maybe you could come up with a good Analogy for that.
Jam:Yeah. We I mean, we've used the sugar rush analogy before,
Melissa:Which is Yeah.
Jam:A little bit like that because you and so I didn't come up with that, obviously, but you accept energy by eating lots of sugar, And then you are hyper, but the downside of that analogy is, I guess, that you and your hyper as a kid or whatever, you are also expending the energy. But that might be kind of like like it because you start to come back down as you expend the energy.
Melissa:Yeah.
Jam:But that That's what immediately came to mind again. I had forgotten completely about us talking about that before, and then you started saying the latter thing, and I thought about sugar and kids and because Halloween.
Melissa:I was writing this episode over. I was with my significant other. He was working on something else. And I tried to think of something, and I kinda bounced some ideas off him. And the thing we came up with was eating food.
Melissa:So that's pretty similar to the sugar rush. So you eat food, you have this energy, and then you expend that energy to go back to a state of Being hungry.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Especially whenever you are really, really hungry already, you do feel, like, low energy. I mean, you feel like you're in a Ground state.
Jam:And then as long as you don't overeat and then get, like, tired from eating, I feel like that is what happens. We feel like a boost, like, revitalized by having just Yeah. Accepted energy in the form of delicious food.
Melissa:Yeah. When we're sleeping when we sleep, we accept energy, and then we're awake in awake state, excited state, and then then we come back down and need sleep again?
Jam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That works.
Melissa:But I feel like the normal state is a ground state, and then we don't think of ourselves as our normal state sleeping. So
Jam:Yeah. That's true. That's true. Ours is more reactive. It's like, okay.
Jam:We can use a lot of energy. We gotta Do this so we can get some back.
Melissa:Right. But I think those kind of that explains the the general idea of what we're talking about here, where it accepts this energy, and then it comes This elevated state where the electrons are excited and they have this energy, and then they release it to come back down.
Jam:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Melissa:So, essentially, what's happening in glow sticks is you have a dye. So that's an organic molecule that usually has a lot of alternating double bonds, so it has that color.
Jam:Mhmm. And it
Melissa:has the ability to absorb energy, but then release it as light. And that is what's known as a fluorescent dye.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:Okay. So that's the short answer is what's happening in a glow stick is your You see a molecule accepting energy and then releasing that energy back in the form of light.
Jam:K. Okay.
Melissa:That's what fluorescence is. That's a fluorescent dye is it releases that energy back in the form of light. But then the question is, Where does the energy come from? Why do we snap that thing?
Jam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And also just it's kinda weird to think of, Like, light is already how we see stuff in general. Like, it's
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:The things that don't glow. You know what I mean? So it's weird to think like okay. It's different though. Like, it's releasing energy in a way that's obviously different and glowing, not just a color that we see, Right.
Jam:A light, like, is emitting, which is just trippy still. If you really think about it more, I think it gets trippier to to me, anyway.
Melissa:Well and energy abs is absorbed and released in specific packets, like, the specific amount. The way it was described to me is, like, you can only get 1 can of soda. You can't get, like, a can and a half of a soda. Right?
Jam:Okay. Right.
Melissa:Because then it's then it's, It's not really soda anymore. It's like half a can. It's, like, slashing around. You can't buy that at a vending machine.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:That's sort of how energy is absorbed and emitted in these specific chunks.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And the the energy that's admitted as light has this the wavelength that comes as light, and it has that color as well. So that's a little maybe too far in the details. We don't have to get into it, but that's if you're really wondering and you wanna know more, it's like These specific packets of light that happened at of energy that are released as light at this specific wavelength.
Jam:Okay. Okay.
Melissa:Okay. So but we have so many more questions. Like, where does that energy come from? Why do we break that thing inside of The glow stick, what is going on with that? Okay.
Melissa:So I'll tell you about that.
Jam:Okay. I'm down. I'm ready.
Melissa:In the glow stick, you have 2 components other than the dye.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:Usually 1, I would say usually The hydrogen peroxide is contained in the glass.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:It's a glass tube inside of your glow stick.
Jam:K.
Melissa:And that whole hydrogen peroxide in there. And then outside, mixed in with your dye is another molecule.
Jam:K.
Melissa:And what happens when you break the glass tube inside your glow stick is the hydrogen peroxide mixes with and oxidizes this other molecule. And the ultimate product is a release of energy as a byproduct from that reaction. And that energy that that reaction releases is absorbed by the dye, And that's the energy that gets emitted by the dye. Okay. Till you have these other things that don't have as much to do actually with the light that we're seeing.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And they mix together. And as a byproduct of their reaction, they're releasing energy, And that energy is basically what powers the glow stick.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:The that energy is absorbed by the dye to go to that excited state level. And then when the electrons in the dye come back down to the ground state, we see them emit light.
Jam:Okay. K.
Melissa:And that's how a glow stick works.
Jam:I think that's crazy.
Melissa:That is crazy.
Jam:Like, when you word like that I mean, obviously, that's That is crazy. It seems more simple, and I'm sure that to a lot of chemists, it might be that way, but it's like, but it's glowing.
Melissa:I know. The key to the glowing is the is the wavelength of the energy that is emitted Mhmm. From the electron. So it really is basically just these dyes have the special ability to emit light. They're just Special.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And they just need energy. So those dyes are you know, they would be able to do that if you shined lie on them from a laser or from something else.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:But it just so happens that we need to empower it a different way for our glow sticks. So we do that by a chemical reaction releasing energy to power the dye, kind of. It might seem a little crazier to you that it emits light? Because usually, things just reflect backlight. They don't emit it in the way that we see here.
Melissa:Right. But the reason for that is because you can't see most of the energy that's given off by excited electrons. So We talked about on the sunscreen episode, it absorbs the sunlight and dissipates that energy by releasing it as heat
Jam:Oh, yeah.
Melissa:In sunscreen. And a lot of times, that's what happens is there's these small, almost imperceptible movements of the Molecule or the electron that allows it to release energy.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And it's very rare for the release of energy to be a photon of light that we can see with our eyes. That is rare. Right. So I think that's why it seems kinda foreign. To me, it seems Like, oh, yeah.
Melissa:Everything just gives off energy, and it just so happens that we can see this one. But I think maybe to Someone who doesn't know all about how electrons are constantly being excited and coming back down and excited and coming back down at the gun state, that could seem more foreign is because You don't see it the same way that I've seen it on when we study molecules and stuff. We use the the ability for electrons to and come back down all the time, and we can observe that in different types of spectroscopy and stuff like that. But You you don't have that same familiarity with it, so that's probably why it seems a little bit crazier. It's like, oh, I didn't even Really know that electrons were doing this, and now we're doing it in a way that we can see it.
Jam:Yeah. And to and so few things just do that on their own that it's, like, It's so novel to be like this is this liquid in this 2 just started glowing, and it was just normal liquid a 2nd ago Mhmm. That just had a color, But now it is both a color and glowing. Just yeah. I think it's part of what's so trippy about it.
Melissa:Yeah. And it even says in my I used a quantitative analysis book to help me prepare for this. It's like quantitative chemistry, and it even says in that textbook that it's pretty rare. You know, textbooks don't say that very often. Yeah.
Melissa:So it it is not the most common thing. So it makes sense that it's like, wow. Why is it Glowing. But I think that kind of explains it. It's a very rare phenomenon, but it is just a different type of energy being released.
Melissa:But that's going on Secretly without us being aware of it all the time.
Jam:Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. Dang.
Jam:Interesting. I also did not know how they Like, the breaking of the glow stick? Like, the the one I think about the most time are the really long ones that you, like, bend and then kind of Pull your hand along it, and you hear the cracks the whole way down.
Melissa:Yep. I did not It's a glass tube. Yeah. I
Jam:didn't know it's a glass tube. Like, that alone is already like a oh. I just had no idea what it was, and haven't used the glowstick in forever, so, like, I didn't wasn't probably really wondering that much. I was just Mhmm. Let's glow.
Jam:You know? And Mhmm.
Melissa:Let's glow.
Jam:I was just ready to glow, and I that's
Melissa:I didn't see that coming at all.
Jam:That is just so Interesting to me to think about the mechanics of that. Like, okay. We'll put this really thin glass tube in there that has this Mhmm. One chemical. We wanna keep them separated all the way until someone's ready to to glow.
Jam:And then oh, I don't know what else to say there too. They're ready. That'd be in the Halloween spirit or whatever. So that's cool.
Melissa:Yeah. It I think it's cool, and it is pretty simple. I mean, the If you get into the nitty gritty of, okay, this much energy is absorbed, and then this happens, and that's why it can emit light, I think that could get pretty complicated. But the basic mechanics of it, I think, are pretty straightforward as you need a power source so that the power can be accepted by the dye. Get these electrons excited, and then as they come back down, we're seeing the emission of light.
Jam:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Melissa:Okay. So that's it.
Jam:Wow.
Melissa:Oh, also, I was gonna say that different colors come from different color of fluorescent dyes. So they have different amounts of conjugation or whatever that allow them to absorb and release energy in different wavelengths.
Jam:Okay. I remember as a kid there being, like, a few different kinds of glow sticks, like, at least 1 or 2 that you had to shake instead of, like, break. Is this chemistry applied to all of those? Is it probably pretty similar process in all the different glow sticks?
Melissa:I would guess that it's a pretty similar process. I don't know for sure the mechanics of those, but the general idea is that you keep these 2 components that react to release energy separate from the dye and separate from each other so they don't react too soon, and then you let them all mix at the right time.
Jam:Got it. Okay. Got it. That makes sense.
Melissa:Yes. It's very fun. I I knew the sort of basics of The idea behind fluorescent dyes, we actually I'll talk about them a little bit more in your fun facts area, but I did not know how they kept These 2 things that gave energy separate from each other and how they reacted. I didn't know that. I didn't know what the breaking thing was about.
Melissa:It had never occurred to me to wonder about it until Halloween time.
Jam:So should I try to explain this back to you?
Melissa:I think so. I think it's
Jam:time. Okay. So, basically, it sounds like there's 2 substances that when they interact Together in a glow stick.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:They as a byproduct of their reaction
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:A lot of energy is, I guess, not really creative, but, like, changing hands kind of.
Melissa:Yeah. Changing hands is a good way. Yeah.
Jam:So and that's that happens, and then the glowing is sort of the the effect of that. But it'd be sort of like We talked about how we eat food, and that is us taking in energy. And so things are taking in energy all the time. People are eating food all the time. But what if there was a specific kind of food that you ate that did the same thing that's happening all the time, But instead, just made you glow.
Jam:It just felt like
Melissa:That's pretty close.
Jam:You would take in energy, and then as you're expending the energy, just be glowing, and it'd be, like, really freaky to everybody. But it'd still be the same, like, sort of thing that happens in the sense that it's just that I took in some energy, and I'm Expending it sort of come back down from the energy that I have taken in or whatever.
Melissa:The only thing the only tweak I would make to that is the energy. Different types of energy aren't what make fluorescent dyes glow. It's the dye itself that has the capability to emit it. So maybe it's like there's some people who when they eat. Everybody releases energy the same way.
Melissa:We all have our our base level of metabolism rate. But for some reason, they glow after they eat.
Jam:Yeah. So it's not the food itself. It's not like there's some magic thing about the food. It'd be Happy about the people in their way of being able to emit the energy in a wavelength that is within The region of, like, emitting light instead of just, like, color or whatever?
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:Okay. Okay. Ma'am, where are those people?
Melissa:I don't know. Sometimes when I get excited, my face gets really red and hot, but it's not, like, light. You know?
Jam:Interesting. That should be a kind of an interesting analogy to think about, like, when we when like, those of us who blush or whatever. Mhmm. I think all of us get, like, a red face because people that happens way more often than others. Yeah.
Melissa:It you always know I'm either mad or embarrassed or Really upset if my face is red, and my neck gets kinda, like, splotchy.
Jam:Dang. That's a bummer because it's you can't control it. But
Melissa:Yeah. It's also kinda funny. Teaching a class too. When I was new to teaching, there'd be, like, 200 people looking at me, and I Knew I made a mistake. It
Jam:was Oh, dang.
Melissa:Very scary. Okay.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:Well, I think that that is a pretty good representation. You did say they're emitting light instead of just color, but normally, things don't emit color. They just reflect color
Jam:back to
Melissa:us. Like it.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:So they're emitting light instead of just emitting energy with these small movements or even heat or something that's not visible. The difference is they're emitting energy visibly, which is not The norm.
Jam:Emitting energy visibly instead of just having energy in the form of light hit it and reflect in the form of a color. So
Melissa:Right. Mhmm.
Jam:Introduce like, lights flowing around all the time from everywhere or whatever. But these guys, in this case, are emitting light.
Melissa:Yes. Yes.
Jam:Their energy that they're giving off is in the form of light they're putting out, not just reflecting.
Melissa:Yes. I think you got it.
Jam:That's interesting. That is like yeah. That's just kind of crazy, and I'm still pretty fascinated by Glowing. I mean, I think it's still really cool. It's It is really cool.
Jam:Where I was always tempted to like, if I had the thing of glow sticks, I was always tempted to use them all, like, all at once And just like, it's just hard to
Melissa:save it. Saved it. I wanted to save it. I was trying to save it for a good occasion, and then it was, like, too late. So
Jam:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:Okay. So here's some fun facts. I think it's about to get even crazier for you.
Jam:Okay. I'm ready.
Melissa:Okay. 1, Rates of reactions can be controlled by heat. So we've talked about that with the onion episode. If you put some onion in the fridge, the reaction that happens that makes it hurt your eyes slows down. So Mhmm.
Melissa:Because it's colder. Theoretically, if it was hot, it would be going faster because you're putting more energy in.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So if you wanna save your glow stick, putting it in the freezer is an option because it slows down the reaction that gives off the energy that it emits the light in the end. It's not about the dyes running out of the ability to absorb and emit light. It's that that reaction runs its course, and then there's no more reaction to happen. So there's no more energy.
Jam:Got it. Okay. Okay. Got it.
Melissa:So putting it in the freezer slows it down. Okay. And then if you put it, for example, in a pot of warm water, You would have a much more intense glow because all of the energy would be being released at once, but it would have a much shorter lifetime.
Jam:Okay. Yeah. Dang.
Melissa:That's one fun fact.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:2nd fun fact. So in this case, The way the energy absorbed from the 1st reaction into the dye is something a little bit different. It's not in the form of heat or light. It's absorbed in something that's known as an energy transfer. So there's these systems known as donor acceptor systems where 1 molecule is already Guided.
Melissa:Its electrons are already in the excited state, and they transfer that energy from that donor molecule to the acceptor molecule.
Jam:K.
Melissa:It's a direct transfer. And in my research, we saw that Same kind of energy transfer. Sometimes they call it excitation energy. It's the energy that it took to excite 1 electron. They just pass that excitation energy along.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And they don't it doesn't ever necessarily get emit emitted as heat or light.
Jam:Okay. Okay.
Melissa:So it's just transferred. Almost as if you just give someone money from your bank account to another bank account. You don't spend it, and then someone else gets it. It just is transferred.
Jam:Got it. Got it. Okay.
Melissa:So in my research, we used donor acceptor systems with that same kind of energy transfer To try to mimic artificial photosynthesis and keep electrons excited so that we could transfer sunlight into Usable energy for a
Jam:solar cell. Nice.
Melissa:Not only that, but this kind of energy transfer Also used to label something, I was a little fuzzy on the details, in DNA sequencing. So they used lasers to, let's call it, laser induced fluorescence to label or mark, I wasn't super clear, DNA when they were sequencing the human genome.
Jam:Wow.
Melissa:So in your hand, you hold a chemical reaction that generates the same kind of technology that's used in some types of solar cells and that's used in DNA sequencing.
Jam:Dang. That is complicated stuff. Jeez.
Melissa:I know. And we use fluorescent dyes in a lot of stuff. They they're really interesting and useful in research. So it's more than just that, but those are 2 that 1 that I knew personally and another that in one of my organic textbooks, it actually talked about
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:The DNA sequencing. So if you're a biologist and you know more about how they sequence the human genome and you wanna tell us exactly the role that The laser induced fluorescence used? That would be awesome.
Jam:Dude, yeah, that sounds very fascinating. And one of those things I remember being, Like, talked about, like, maybe we'll have this done at some point. Like, maybe we'll sequence the human genome, like, whenever we were kids. Then it's like, yep. They did it.
Jam:Mhmm. It's just like okay. That's crazy.
Melissa:I know. It's wild. And you can interact with and see The same kind of technology. But also it's just cool because you're really and truly seeing the energy being emitted from a molecule. So, yeah, that's the chemistry of glow sticks.
Jam:Dude, awesome. I love that. That's very cool.
Melissa:Me too. I was very excited to do this episode for Halloween. Yeah.
Jam:So while you guys are glowing, if that's part of your costume or whatever, And doing whatever you're gonna do for Halloween this you're you're you're doing chemistry.
Melissa:You are. And glow in the dark is another thing. I'm pretty sure I know what it is. I'll have to double check, so I'm not gonna give you any spoilers or anything, but I think I'm gonna save that for next Halloween.
Jam:Nice. Okay. Cool. Cool. Also, what's cool about this is that even though so, like, if you guys did not listen to the green fire Episode from last Halloween, you definitely should.
Jam:The cool thing is that the in this case, this is something that you can do all you want. You can use glow sticks and stuff all you want. Yeah. Green Fire was super cool, but not safe for me or any other nonchemists to be doing.
Melissa:Yeah. Yeah. That's true. In some they have some experiments where you can change fire colors on the American Chemical Society website. But even that takes a lot of safety preparation, and you need to have your parents there and all this stuff.
Melissa:But glow sticks, they're pretty safe to use. As long as you don't put the dye on your hands. You're in good shape.
Jam:And I will not tell any stories about how I did that as a kid.
Melissa:Do not because it's not good.
Jam:And I
Jam:yeah.
Melissa:Alright. Well, I hope glow sticks make you happy. But in the meantime, was there anything that happened this week that you wanna share? Something you wanna share from this week?
Jam:Well, I don't have, like, a clear happy thing, but I did Think of another in our, like, never ending quest to use less plastic and that whole discussion from our plastic series. Mhmm. I saw of another tip that I am kind of bummed I didn't share, and our friend, doctor Moon, reminded me of this, when she she was catching up with the podcast and commented on one of our posts. And, there is a company so it's like, You know, just a tip for you called The Grove, I think. And they do a a lot of, like, more eco friendly, lower plastic use Things that they either make or sell themselves or just direct people to different, you know, companies that do that.
Jam:And so we have bought a few things from them. One of the things I think that is pretty cool is a, we buy our toilet paper online from from them, I believe. And it's a company that, one, uses bamboo instead of traditional trees to make The toilet paper, which is great. But the simple thing that's, like, if you think about it, pretty huge, because everybody uses toilet paper all the time, is that they do not package it in plastic at all.
Melissa:Yeah. And
Jam:so just that that really cheap, thin, you know, layer of plastic is all around the Toilet paper. They just wrap the rolls of toilet paper in paper in, like, the same kind of paper, but just to to shield it. You know? And It just is one more thing that you can remove as part of the thing that in your life that does not use a plastic every single time.
Melissa:That's great. I love that.
Jam:So check them out. Check out that site, and just look for options like that. I think there's a lot of people, probably more than just We've mentioned that are very consciously trying to see little situations like that where you really don't need to use plastic in that situation.
Melissa:Right.
Jam:Many of those scenarios where we have to do some more, you know, advancements or technology or whatever, more difficult to replace with a non plastic option. But there's a lot of these options that I'm like, that's just so easy. Very, very easy.
Melissa:Definitely. Well, mine is also not Explicitly happy. It's a little mixed. So my mom's birthday was this past week, and, you know, she had passed away in March. Mhmm.
Jam:And so
Melissa:it was her 1st birthday without her here, which is sad and hard, you know, a little weird, but I did get to see time spent time with my family. I saw my grandma, who I have not seen in a very long time, but
Jam:Wow. It had
Melissa:been long enough since we'd had an exposure, and we wore our masks, and we didn't hug. So we had the opportunity to go see her, and that was really nice. And then I spent the day with my dad, and Some of my friends were really sweet and sent me really kind messages and little things to say they were thinking about me, and That really meant a lot. Somebody sent me cookies. Friend of the show and reviewer, a Hefner Yeah.
Melissa:Sent me cookies. That was really sweet. And so just knowing how that was a hard day, but also there's a lot of love left in the world and a lot of Good things still going on. It was kind of a nice way to celebrate.
Jam:Absolutely. Yeah. That's really I know what you mean, though. That's like that mix of You you're sad, but you get to spend time with family. You get to be loved on by friends, and that is a really unique feeling that
Melissa:Right.
Jam:Yeah. That's so it's not just happy or sad.
Melissa:Right. It's kind of a, oh, this is A sad situation, but lots of silver linings. Mhmm. You know?
Jam:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Melissa:That was that was kind of a good way to celebrate that day.
Jam:Yeah. Absolutely.
Melissa:Well, thanks, Jam, for coming and learning about glow sticks, being excited about it, And, giving some good analogies sounds really good. I really appreciate it, and thanks to all you listeners as well. We could not do this out without you, and It really means so much to us that you wanna come and learn about chemistry every week over and over again.
Jam:And thank you for teaching us, especially on a cool Halloween ish themed episode. So thanks for teaching us all about the crazy chemistry that's going on in this thing that we all love and are already fascinated by anyway. Molsa and I have a lot of ideas for topics of chemistry in everyday life, but we wanna hear from you things that you're curious about, things that you wonder about, things that you're like, I think chemistry's going on here. We wanna hear those and and turn them into episodes. Some of the best ideas and best episodes, at least in our opinion, are from y'all's questions.
Jam:So Reach out to us on Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook at chem for your life. That's chem, f o r, your life, to share your thoughts and ideas. If you like to help us keep our show going and contribute to cover the cost of making it, go to kodashfi.com/chem for your life, and donate at 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 Colini and Jame 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 V Garza and a Kiwasong who reviewed this And a spooky thanks to Robinson, aka Dracula, our vampire friend.
Vampire:See? That wasn't so bad. Thank you so much for inviting me in tonight. My, Do you feel alright? You're looking awfully pale.
Vampire:Here, why don't you lie back and Twist your eyes a moment. Trust me. I think you need the rest.
