What is silicone?
Hey, Jam. Guess what?
Jam:What?
Melissa:Have you ever wondered, like, what silicone actually is?
Jam:Yes. Like the rubbery kind of stuff?
Melissa:Yeah. Like silicone spatulas or, like, your little reusable Ziploc bags?
Jam:Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah. Yes.
Melissa:You've ever wondered what that is?
Jam:I've wondered many times.
Melissa:What do you think it is?
Jam:I guess I don't know other than maybe a polymer.
Melissa:Well, that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about what silicone is and why silicone is.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:Okay. Let's get into it. 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:And you may have noticed if you listen to our podcast before that we changed it up and we had a little intro before. We just wanted to, you know, kinda give a little sneak peek at the beginning before the music starts. So I'm gonna talk about why we're gonna talk about today now.
Jam:Okay. Great.
Melissa:Okay. So we had our patron, Avishai
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:Who wrote and asked a question about silicone.
Jam:Oh, yes.
Melissa:I think he said something about silicone rubber, and I was like, I don't really know
Jam:what rubber or silicone are. Right. Right.
Melissa:Of them. And so we already did an episode on rubber, and this is kind of rubber part 2, what is silicone? Okay. Because they're they're together in my mind. They feel similar to me.
Jam:Yeah. And I feel like silicone really came on the scene. I can't remember that could win. Some at some point, when I was a kid, there wasn't a lot of silicone stuff that I was aware of. Mhmm.
Jam:And then at some point, there was. Like, I remember my mom being, like, given a potholder kind of thing Yes. Made of silicone that was like yeah. This is not going to melt. Yeah.
Jam:Like, you can grab super hot stuff with it. Yeah. And it was like, suddenly, silicone entered the kitchen.
Melissa:Also, I feel like it's silicone is given to us as, like, this environmentally friendly, healthy, cleaner option.
Jam:Uh-huh. But
Melissa:I was like, I don't actually know if that's True.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:Because, like, we have silicone. I use silicone for so much stuff. So I have, Stasher bags that are reusable bags made of silicone, And I have, like, I use reusable menstrual products that are made of silicone, and we have silicone spatulas in our Kitchen. Mhmm. I feel like there's silicone baby dishes.
Melissa:You know, silicone so much stuff.
Jam:Yes. We have a lot of those same things including, like, the spatulas, the bags, or the use the zip top ones. And we have, I think, even, like, a one of our we have a a metal muffin tin and a silicone one. Yeah. Which I guess you wouldn't call it a tin, but, you know Well yeah.
Jam:A silicone muffin thing. Pan? Pan. Yeah.
Melissa:But tin sounds muffin tin sounds right.
Jam:It's not rigid, so it sounds like pan not even accurate. We have a we have a floppy muffin baking
Melissa:Made out of silicone. Yeah. So, you know, we have silicone in all these places, and I I guess I realized when, you know, Avishai sent that question in that I really wanted to dive into it and learn, like, what is silicone? Is it a plastic? And is it even and healthy for us.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:The way that it's sold to us as being healthy. So that's what we're gonna talk about today.
Jam:Excellent. Okay. Awesome.
Melissa:Another tiny Preview or, preface, I guess, is it was hard for me to find good information about silicone, which doesn't super surprise me because It is so commercially available and and has all these, like, oh, it's green. It's healthy. It's this. It's that. So so many, like, green Washed websites were trying to sell me silicone, and I was like, okay.
Melissa:But I don't wanna buy it. I wanna know really about it. Yeah. Eventually, I did find some good Resources. But it's one of those cautionary tales of make sure that when you're sifting through stuff that you Or make you know where it's coming from
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And that it's a trustworthy source. So one example of this so, you know, I went to Google Scholar to try to find some journal articles, And there was 1. It was a study with silicone menstrual cups. Mhmm. And it was all part findings.
Melissa:But I thought it was weird because it was one particular brand of menstrual cup, and, usually, you'll get a lot of 1 product being tested, you know, from several brands.
Jam:Right. So I
Melissa:thought that was kind of weird, and I so I went and looked a little further, and they were funded by the company who sells that thing.
Jam:Yes.
Melissa:And I was like, oh, we got you almost got me. You had me in the first half. You know? Yep. So you have to be really careful of where you're getting information from when you're looking up something like this that is I don't wanna say overhyped, but it's just so talked about.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:And Companies have a vested interest in us wanting to buy it. Mhmm. And so you just have to be careful.
Jam:Especially when there's other things, I think, too that, like, are clearly more obviously the bad bad guy, so to speak. So, like, there's other players that are more concerning that we're more aware of their problems. Teflon, for instance. Yeah. That I feel like other things that maybe we haven't really vetted fully get get a pass for a little while.
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:Like, we're all worried about Teflon and Styrofoam and BPA and things like that that have been, like are either bad for humans or bad for the environment or both or something like that. And then something that maybe hasn't been vetted very much is just quietly skating by under the radar.
Melissa:Right.
Jam:You know?
Melissa:And we're not saying that silicone is that, but we're saying, I wanna make sure if it is. Kind of Yeah. Similar to how BPA free is touted as being really good, but just replaced something really similar to BPA that we don't even know if it is good. You
Jam:know? Right.
Melissa:So that was where I was at.
Jam:Got it.
Melissa:Okay. And it was hard to find sources. So I just wanna encourage y'all. If you're in a similar situation, you're trying to look something up to be really careful about what information you're taking in, but also It was hard for me too, and my degree is in chemistry. So Right.
Melissa:I like to share whenever that happens because I'm like, I'm having a hard time, and I Have several degrees where I was researching this stuff. I can't imagine how people without a background are feeling overwhelmed.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah. Totally.
Melissa:So, I just wanted to share that. It was hard to find good information. Eventually, I did find some really good sources, especially a little short article Society of Chemistry. Love them. The chemistry world article about silicone is really good.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And then a few other sources Through similar things like that, but that was really the best one and the first one that I found that I trusted. So Nice. Okay. So we needed to find some terms before we can get into What silicone really even is.
Jam:K.
Melissa:1, silicone or silicone, Not an e at the end. Uh-huh. So sometimes people say it's silicone also, but there's no e at the end. So I say it like silicone silicone silicone, something like that.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:That is an element on the periodic table.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:Symbol s I. Mhmm. It's a very, very Common element. Can you think of anything that you know that it's in?
Jam:Computer chips?
Melissa:Yeah. I meant naturally. That's you're jumping ahead.
Jam:Oh, sand?
Melissa:Yes. It is in sand. And because it's in sand, it is the most come 2nd most common element in the Earth's crust.
Jam:No way. Okay. Cool.
Melissa:It makes up more than 25% of the Earth's crust.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And it's solid. It looks kinda metallic. It's used in technology a lot. Like you said, it's Silicon Valley, solar panels, all that. Silicon Valley.
Jam:Yeah. It's gonna be hard. I'm gonna get the I'm gonna say the wrong one a lot.
Melissa:I know. Yeah. I I wanna just say silicone when we get into the The material that we're talking about, but I wanted to define these terms for you first. Right. And then silica is silicon dioxide.
Melissa:So 1 silicone Silicon. One element, SI, and 2 oxygens. K. And that is sand. Mhmm.
Melissa:It's also quartz and glass, and because it's sand and and a lot of quartz and other things in our Earth's crust, that's why it's so common in
Jam:Earth's crust. Got it.
Melissa:And it's also those little gel packets, you know, that say don't eat. Mhmm. Do not eat this that absorb moisture. It has all the moisture taken out,
Jam:so it's like a moisture absorbing material. Forbidden tea, I think people call it.
Melissa:Yeah. Mhmm. Mhmm. Basically, it's just sand, so you don't have to wanna eat it anymore because It's not fun.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:The reason why
Jam:We're not all, like, constantly tempted to, like, go eat some sand.
Melissa:Yeah.
Jam:You know?
Melissa:I think the reason why it would be really dangerous to eat, depends on the size of the particles. Because if those particles get ground down really fine, you can breathe them in, and that's really dangerous. But also, If if it has no water in it and then you eat it, it will absorb all your water, and that'd be really bad. I think that's part of the problem.
Jam:Isn't that why they're even included in the 1st place? They're trying to decrease moisture in Yeah. Those yeah. Okay. Mhmm.
Melissa:Interesting. Yeah. It is funny though that you want to eat it so bad when you're just like, it's just sand. Yeah. Yeah.
Jam:Now and now you told me not to. I really want
Melissa:to. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. And then last but not least, Silicone.
Melissa:That's what we're gonna talk about today. So from here on out, unless I clarify that it's the element, I'm talking about silicone, The rubbery stuff that you may know and love. K. Okay. So silicone is a polymer.
Melissa:You guessed it. Right?
Jam:Nice.
Melissa:But and I know a lot of you already know this, but I always like to take a moment to say a polymer is a large molecule made up of several small molecules beating or several repeating units. We call them a large molecule made up of small molecules. Mhmm. And a good, reference for that is like a A bead on a necklace. You have a bead that repeats over and over and taken as a whole, that's a necklace.
Melissa:So That's a polymer. That's what silicone is. But a lot of the other polymers we talked about are carbon based. So the repeating units are either just Carbon or carbon and oxygen, and that's what plastic is. It's carbon based.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:But silicones, the difference is instead of carbon, they have Silicon.
Jam:The Okay.
Melissa:So instead of carbon, oxygen, carbon, oxygen, or carbon, carbon, carbon, carbon as the repeating unit Uh-huh. It's silicone oxygen. Silicon oxygen. Silicon silicon.
Jam:Okay. Okay.
Melissa:So that's the difference.
Jam:Got it.
Melissa:Is instead of it having a backbone of carbon, it has a backbone of the element silicone.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So that's What makes it a a silicone.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:It's just the silicone. Makes it a silicone. Okay.
Jam:I'm I'm glad it's that because if it was gonna be, like, some sort of misnomer like that. I was gonna be really annoyed. It's like, why are they calling this thing silicone? And it's like in our daily lives now, if silicone is not a pretty big reason why.
Melissa:Yes. It is a big reason why.
Jam:So glad. So glad. I know reason to believe it wasn't, but I just was like, if it's one of those things?
Melissa:Yeah. It's not. It's not. Luckily. It can have carbon branches attached.
Melissa:It has silicone is just under Is it just under carbon on the periodic table? Let me just double check that real quick. But it has similar bonding. It is just under For some reason, suddenly, I was like, oh, no. Am I wrong?
Melissa:Okay. It has very similar bonding. It likes to make 4 bonds. So it's similar to carbon, but the backbone is silicone, but can still have carbon functional groups or branches attached. So that's, like, Little groups of elements that will make it act a certain way.
Melissa:It can still have those bonded to carbons, but the main backbone is silicone. So it's not like it's a carbon free Something. Yeah. Oftentimes, it can be made by mixing So you can have hydrocarbons in there, but it's like the main backbone is this silicon element instead of the carbon element.
Jam:Got it.
Melissa:And what's crazy is with just that swap out, you know, it's considered by chemists, so not just by the public, to be relatively low toxicity. It is not very reactive. It is resistant to heat. So like you said, you can use it you can't use plastics in the oven, but you can use A silicone baking pan in the oven, or you can use a silicone hot pad for taking things out of the oven. Right.
Melissa:Or we have a silicone Popcorn popping bowl, you know, that doesn't, like, melt in the oven or in the microwave. So it has a Good thermal stability. It doesn't melt when you heat it up. It doesn't really break down when you heat it up over and over, so you can use it repeatedly. Mhmm.
Melissa:It has good gas permeability, and that'll come into play a little bit later when I talk about one of the other applications. And it's UV resistant, so it doesn't break down in UV the way some plastics do.
Jam:K.
Melissa:So all those things really do make it Good to use over and over, unlike plastics, and the relative inertness, like, it's not very reactive. It doesn't really melt With plastic, in heat, the way plastic does, it doesn't really break down as much in the sun as plastic does. All that means that it really is I'm I'm not gonna say not toxic at all, but less Okay. Than plastic. And we'll talk more about the healthiness of it later, but that Just that one swap out for having instead of carbon as a backbone, silicone as a silicon as a backbone, It does change all these properties as compared to to regular plastic.
Jam:Got it.
Melissa:And I really like that because I think it really shows you how if you're just, like, looking at these elements, you think, oh, that's not much of a big deal. You know, sometimes people who are trying to Make you scared of of chemicals. We'll say, it's 1 element away from plastic. You
Jam:know? Right.
Melissa:But that doesn't really mean anything because it is 1 this is 1 element away from plastic, it's totally different in behavior.
Jam:Yeah. Or it's like, what if you, swapped out the oxygen chlorine Yeah. Project. Yeah. I was like, okay.
Jam:That's a problem. Yeah. It's probably so any other from from one to another, you could have A very different situation.
Melissa:Very different situation. Absolutely. Yep. Okay. So some of the good ways that it's used that I think are fun that we've talked some already.
Melissa:Is it is used in, construction Mhmm. Electronics, waterproofing, Food and pharmaceutical products, beauty products, like shampoo has some silicones in them. And this was the most surprising to me. Breathable contact lenses are made of silicone because they have good permeability To the gases. So that's why they're breathable.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:Which I've never thought what contacts lenses were made out of. I'd like To now do an episode about contact lenses. Yeah. Yeah. Like, how do they help you see actually?
Melissa:Yeah. So that was really interesting. Another place that they're used, and I wanted to shout out, Steven b, one of our patrons who works at a dry cleaning place. I think he asked me about this, but a liquid form of silicone that is Considered better for the environment than traditional dry cleaning solvents is Siloxane. Oh.
Melissa:I'm pretty sure he asked about he was like, there's a solvent that you know, it's called this, and have you heard of it? And I was like, no. I haven't. When I read that, I immediately thought of him. So
Jam:Dang. That's cool.
Melissa:So silicones are everywhere. They can be liquid. They can be rubbery. They can be solid or resin forms.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And, I just lost my spot. Okay. And the only difference is the The carbon swapped out for silicone, but I do think that it's important to talk about where we think the differences and properties Come from.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:So we've swapped out a carbon oxygen bond for a silicon oxygen bond. And you'd think that that would be very similar because Their structures are similar where they have 4 electrons on the outside ready to bond.
Jam:K.
Melissa:But I'm gonna talk about This is your chemistry lesson, so I'm gonna talk about the atomic radius. How big are these atoms actually and why? K. And most people who've taken a chemistry class may have learned this already, so this is just jogging your memory. But I want you to visualize a carbon atom as having, you know, like, a Core center of protons and neutrons.
Jam:K.
Melissa:And then around it, you can picture it as a sphere. They're not all perfectly sphere, but I think for this use, it'd be fine. Around it, there's a layer of 2 electrons.
Jam:K.
Melissa:And then for carbon, the carbon has 6 electrons total, but the next layer has 4 electrons in it.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And all 4 of those electrons are trying to bond.
Jam:K.
Melissa:And so they're gonna be out and about. They're trying to make bonds, so that's why carbon likes to have 4 bonds.
Jam:So it has it has you said carbon has 2 and then in the 1st layer Mhmm. And then 4 in 2nd layer.
Melissa:Yeah. 2nd layer is not really spherical, but that doesn't really matter.
Jam:Okay. Okay.
Melissa:You you can We can have the wrong model of the atom for this purpose.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:But I just don't hold me to it. Yeah. And then Now silicon has the same core
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And it has 2 electrons, and then it has another layer With 8 electrons. Okay. So it has 2 and then 8. Mhmm. Is that right?
Melissa:Let me make sure. Yeah. And then on the outside, it has 4 more.
Jam:Okay. So that's 3 layers?
Melissa:It has 3 layers.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So carbon has 2 layers, the 2 and then 4. And then this has, like, a full layer in between.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:Okay. So it has 14 electrons.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:Let me make sure I wrote this down.
Jam:Well, good for it, obviously. Like, that's I'm really happy for it.
Melissa:Good for it. Yeah. But so what that ultimately means is it's just bigger than carbon.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So we talk about these atomic radius Trends in if you remember when you took chemistry. As you go down the periodic table because they have extra layers of electrons, They get bigger and bigger for each row
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:In the periodic table.
Jam:Right. Right. Right.
Melissa:So silicone being directly below carbon on the periodic table is a little bit bigger than carbon. And that along with the few other things means that if you have a carbon bonded to an oxygen or a silicone bonded to the oxygen, The silicone oxygen bond will physically be longer because the silicone is bigger.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So it's like okay. If we let's be a bond real quick. If you're not watching the YouTube okay. So you keep your hand where you are. You're carbon.
Jam:K.
Melissa:So say this is the carbon I'm gonna speak into my mic. Yep. This is the carbon oxygen, and this is a silicone oxygen. So I just had my arm bent, and then I stretched it out a little bit.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So we were further apart when I stretched my arm versus when it was bent. So it's being a shorter bond and a longer bond.
Jam:Okay. Okay. Okay.
Melissa:It seems like Scientists think that the longer bond length is what gives all those properties that are different than plastic.
Jam:Interesting.
Melissa:That's the biggest thing that they are attributing these properties to.
Jam:The Okay.
Melissa:The heat resistance, the UV resistance, The gas permeability is because these bonds are longer, so they're a little bit more flexible. And, also, this is kind of complicated, but a slightly different angle of bonding than carbon. And so it seems like it's believed that that Length of bond between silicone and oxygen being slightly longer, majority because of the radius of silicone being larger, Makes silicones relatively temperature resistant, and they let air through because they are flexible and, you know, some of those other properties we talked about.
Jam:Wow.
Melissa:And that is so simple, and it's literally something that people learn in most atomic radius trends are something that people learn in most chemistry classes, And it seems really boring when you're learning it, and then there's these super cool then implications of that. It's like, it's so boring. Why do I need to know that silicone is larger than carbon? That doesn't matter to me at all. Yeah.
Melissa:But then then you learn something like this and realize that just that slightly larger thing can cause So many different properties in the end result.
Jam:Oh, yeah. That is crazy. I would have never guessed that. I would have I don't know what I would've guessed, honestly. If you'd had me, like, think about the differences, I probably couldn't have come up with something Yeah.
Jam:Significant, but the bond length wouldn't have occurred to me.
Melissa:Me neither.
Jam:And they it did say it I do wanna point out. It said it's believed.
Melissa:In the papers I found, the It's believed. We don't know everything. I'm sure there's other things happening, but the bond being longer and there being a slightly different angle of bonding is the biggest thing that They think and there can be a number of reasons bonds are longer. It also has to do with how attractive, how willing to pull the 2 atoms are to get closer together, but atomic radius is a part of it for sure. K.
Melissa:So that's your chemistry lesson.
Jam:Damn. It's
Melissa:so simple in terms of it's just shorter. Yeah. But it's because of having this extra layer of electrons makes it larger, and then I want you to think about that, explain it back to me, and then we can talk about some other things said about about the chains and the polymers and things like that.
Jam:Okay. So the that one of the types of polymers we're used to knowing and interacting with and that has been around for a long time, the carbon based ones Mhmm. Where carbon is sort of the backbone of this Mhmm. Polymer.
Melissa:Carbon and oxygen.
Jam:Carbon and oxygen. And carbon is a smaller atom on smaller end, and, it makes these great powers. We obviously used tons of them, but then the extra the difference once someone's figured out to swap out silicon instead
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:It is a larger atom.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:Has more layers of electrons Mhmm. That's bigger, but it still has those 4 on the outside. Mhmm. That is what it's bonding to other things with and
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:Exchanging with or whatever. And just like carbon does. Mhmm. But whenever it does do that, it makes these these chains, these polymers with oxygen. It's doing that in a really similar way to carbon, but because it's larger, it's sort of further away from the oxygen, but still bonded to it.
Jam:Mhmm. And because it's a little further away, but still bonded, it still makes a really good polymer. Something about that is what allows it to have fairly different properties from the carbon oxygen polymers.
Melissa:Yes.
Jam:Like the heat resistance, the UV resistance. The flexibility, did you say that was part of it? Breathability?
Melissa:Breathability. The way the gases can pass it relatively easily.
Jam:Yes. That's crazy. I wish I could think of, like, a good analogy for that because it seems like it because it's not intuitive, I can't, at least at the moment, think of something that'd be, like, strong not necessarily stronger, but have benefits to it Yeah. When it's further apart. Like, I think it'd be easier to think of something being stronger when it's more sort of dense and, like, heavier and Yeah.
Jam:Impermeable. You know?
Melissa:Yeah. So
Jam:I'm kinda struggling with that. I don't know.
Melissa:Yeah. I don't know. It's hard for me to so similarly, I'm like, oh, interesting. The bond length is longer. I know why the bond length is longer, and we can talk about that all day.
Melissa:But it's hard for me to intuitively say, so that's why it's heat resistant.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:Because that seems weird to me. You know? Yeah. And there are other things like, Like, Teflon is relatively inert just by itself, but if you heat it up, I believe the florins Will break off and they'll form radicals, and so I'm like, we I don't know that we could've anticipated this.
Jam:Right. Right.
Melissa:I think It might be one of those things where it turns out that this happens, and maybe really good theoretical scientists could have predicted this, But I was surprised to learn that too.
Jam:Is it possible that so, like, like a lot of elements, there are some figures out there about if you just had a pure amount of this thing, you could just have the pure amount of carbon, pure amount of silicon.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:This one has, like, you know, a higher melting point or whatever. Is that at play here too, or is it really the bonds that get the credit here? Like, is silicon potentially just more heat resistant already?
Melissa:Possibly. I don't know the answer to that. Yeah. And maybe I can learn more. I would think I was focused more on how the structure impacted the end result Yeah.
Melissa:And less on Why the structure impacted the end result. So I was like, oh, the bond links make it different. And the way it's described is with the breathability, they could move past each other a little bit more easily Mhmm. And they're more flexible so that when they're, like, being impacted by outside factors, it doesn't break them as much as it bends them kind of. That was the picture I had in my mind, but I could you couldn't hold me to that.
Jam:Okay. Here's 1 more question you might not be able to answer.
Melissa:Okay.
Jam:But I feel like so so many plastics are rigid, but you they can make them flexible Mhmm. But a lot of them are rigid. Is that also a bond thing here? Because I don't know if I've interacted with, like, a, like, a silicone that has been rigid.
Melissa:You probably have and don't know because there are resins that are silicone.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So that's kind of what we're gonna get into next. I think, that has to do With 3 things, actually. And that's what I was gonna talk to so you kind of perfectly transitioned me in.
Jam:Perfect. Oops.
Melissa:So besides the bond length, the other features that impact the function of the substance Dense is, 1, the length of the polymers themselves. K. So imagine if you had a really short necklace versus if you have a longer necklace, That could impact the texture, I guess, of the overall, of what your end product is of the silicone. Mhmm. So, like, if we look to how long the polymer is, how many of those repeating units there are, short necklace with less beads versus a long necklace
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:The short silicone chains Give low viscosity oils.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:While longer silicone chains are gonna be more, rubber like materials. They call them elastomers.
Jam:K.
Melissa:And then when they fall between the 2, they they're almost more like the cornstarch and liquid Air cornstarch and water substance that you sometimes make where it can be rolled into a ball, but if you leave it, it sort of flows out. Okay. So silicones can be all of those.
Jam:K. Wow.
Melissa:I know. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. So I thought a silicone's only as, like, the spatulas
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:Or the food Plates or whatever. Yeah. I didn't realize that's why I was surprised by the contacts. You know, that's surprising to me. Yeah.
Melissa:And I And I didn't think about them being also in shampoos and conditioners, and then in that way, they're like liquid.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:You know? So they're all over the place, And so the chain length matters, but the other thing that matters is if they're cross linked, which is something we talked about in rubber. Remember, vulcanized rubber had the chains using sulfur? They they stuck the chains together, and then it made the much more rigid rubber that we think of associate with Tires?
Jam:Yes.
Melissa:So same kind of thing here. Your silicones are gonna be it's a huge class of compounds. It's not just those rubber spatulas. Mhmm. So it can be cross linked or not.
Melissa:And I very briefly mentioned this at the beginning. It can be bonded to 4 things. So it's bonded, you know, to an oxygen, Silicon oxygen, silicon oxygen in a chain. So it has bonds on either side, but there's also functional groups coming off of the silicone. You can think of it as up and down too.
Melissa:So side to side, it's in this long chain, but each silicone atom can also have something sticking up Or down from it too.
Jam:Got it.
Melissa:Because it can have 4 bonds. You know? So kind of like if you imagine each bead in your necklace could have 2 attachments Dicking off the bead to make it more flexible or Right. Different Right. Work for different outfits.
Melissa:You know?
Jam:Yeah. Some pendants, some decorations and somethings.
Melissa:Yeah. It's like extra pearls or you know? Yeah. Yeah. You can have extra things attached to it.
Melissa:So that's probably the easiest way to visualize it. Okay. So it's not just the length of the bond is why silicones are the way that they are. It's there's other features that we're looking at too that impact All polymers. Are we cross linking these or not?
Melissa:Are the chains long or are they short? Are they, do they have functional groups? What are the functional groups like off of them? So all that matters too. So that was a really good question that I did have the answer to this time.
Melissa:Nice. Good way to set me up. It's almost like you knew. So that's all the chemistry for you.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:Your lesson was great. So you taught it you gave it back to me really good. So as a reward, we're gonna talk about the safety of silicone.
Jam:Okay. Cool.
Melissa:Okay. So I'm gonna caveat this and say I'm not a medical doctor. Originally, I wrote I'm not a doctor, and then I realized that was not true.
Jam:Yes. Yes. I think you've said that before. Like, since getting a PhD, you said not a doctor, and you're like,
Melissa:well, actually, wait. Technically. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not a medical doctor, And I do have a expertise in chemistry, but I'm not a bioactivity expert.
Melissa:So I'm not gonna say, I know how these act in your body. But and it it's hard to find super straightforward information. But from what I've seen and the information I have as a chemist, I feel that medical and food grade silicones are safer than many other plastic counterparts.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:I feel better about using A silicone spatula than a plastic spatula.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:And I feel better about using a silicone Menstrual product than a plastic menstrual product.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:Not very many plastic ones just hang out in your body all day, but I feel better about that, personally. Right. With the information I have. And that information is knowing that they have less reactivity, so They're just not going to do as much stuff. They're not gonna break down.
Melissa:They're not gonna react with sun. They're not gonna react with heat, and so they're going to stay intact more. And then Some sources that I read, although I was like, I want an original source, a primary source on this, indicated that they have low bioactivity. So your body doesn't react with them the same way it would. It's not trying to go into your body and replace carbon.
Melissa:You know? Right. Right. Radioactive elements, like the a big thing with radium is it Tries to mimic calcium and will literally, like, bore holes in your bones because it's acting like something else. It can't really do that to pretend like it's carbon and mess with your systems Comes from what we know so far.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So it doesn't what I've read seems like it has low bioactivity. It's not gonna react with your body very much, And it's just pretty inert. Yeah. So there's just a lot less leaching Into your foods. If you have, like, a silicone baby bottle tip, it's gonna leach a lot less than if you have a plastic version of that.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:And why are you smiling?
Jam:I just was remembering a a commercial for the the silicone container we have. Mhmm. He was talking about it as less likely to leach, into other to your foods like that. And he was like and you may be thinking, I like these chemicals in my food. And he's like, and if you're thinking of that, please see a doctor.
Jam:Something like that. It was just like just a really funny little bit, but I hadn't thought of that in years.
Melissa:And then it just came back into your mind.
Jam:Yep. Yep.
Melissa:Yeah. So, so it leaches less, and the stuff that it does leach is less bad for us. There seems like it's Less able to play a role that we know of so far. Okay. It might also be an endocrine disruptor.
Melissa:I don't have in my mind, there's not enough negative information that I'm phasing it out. So for me, I feel like some people have told me they wanna hear my opinion even when I don't have all the information because they're like, I wanna know what you think because you're a chemist.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:So for me as as a chemist, Teflon is a no go. I try to avoid it wherever I can.
Jam:Yep.
Melissa:Even though it in itself might be inert, I know the process that make it is really bad for the environment, and I know that it can chip off and we don't know what it's doing accumulating in our bodies. And if you just heat it, it can leach off or it can let off toxic things.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:You're preheating it. So Teflon is a no. Absolutely not. Plastic is a this is probably fine for onetime use, but it's not really very good at being recycled. Mhmm.
Melissa:And you don't really wanna keep reusing it. It's not designed to do that. It can leach into your food, and It's not gonna be terrible for you immediately, but since we don't know a 100% what those things are doing to us, I try to avoid it where I can, but I'm not crazy about it. Mhmm. And then silicone is a little bit closer to, like, a glass for me where I'm like, oh, okay.
Melissa:It's not perfect. Nothing's perfectly safe. Water can kill you. Mhmm. Silica in finally powder form can give you really bad diseases if you breathe it in.
Melissa:Nothing's perfectly safe, I don't think.
Jam:Yeah. So I'm
Melissa:not gonna stand here and say it's perfectly safe, but I feel comfortable using it as an alternative for the two reasons is that, one, it can be reused with relatively Low leaching and breaking down.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And then 2, that it is reused instead of a onetime polymer that gets thrown into Yeah. A landfill.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:Right. I don't think that it breaks down much faster or better than other plastics, Though.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:I think the big benefit of it is that it it is used over and over.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:So, like, a plastic ziplock bag is used once, and then it's there forever, essentially.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:Our silicone bag, We can use that hundreds of times, and it should still be fine. And so that instead of having a 100 little pieces of plastic, there's one. So I like that about it too. Right. So that's where it lays on the scale for me.
Jam:Okay. Got it. That's cool. That's good to know. Yeah.
Melissa:I mean and I could be wrong, and I, a friend of ours, Ronnie, always says open a file on it. You know? Like, have an open file in your mind. And that's how I feel about pretty much all new technology when I when I think about, like, Teflon. I had an open file, and then I learned enough information to To close the file and move on.
Melissa:Yes. So silicone is an open file for me still, and right now, it's in the keep using Pile? Yeah. That's not to say that I might we might learn something that convinces me otherwise, or maybe there's something that they're it's really hard to find papers that represent this one really bad thing about Type of silicone that I feel pretty comfortable and safe having in my house. If I have to have a plastic thing, I'd rather have a silicone version of it.
Jam:Yep. Okay. Makes sense.
Melissa:So that's how I feel about that. I think that's everything I wanted to share with you. Yeah. Oh, I did wanna say if other people Feel differently or if they have other things they want to add. I'd love to hear from our listeners on this.
Melissa:I always love to hear from our listeners and especially from biologists if you know more than I do.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:And I can work on learning more about why the bond length impacts it maybe for a future q and r.
Jam:Nice.
Melissa:So, yeah, That's that's silicone.
Jam:Nice. Very cool.
Melissa:Ever since I've seen all my silicone stuff since I researched this, I finished researching this article about a week ago, I've been really excited about it.
Jam:Nice.
Melissa:Like, I know what that is
Jam:now. Well, we've used it we've all used more and more over time, so it's like, I'm, yeah. I've been interested and never known and never yeah. So now I'm excited.
Melissa:I also think with kids, they really recommend Shifting to silicone over plastic wherever you can. And I don't know. I think I saw that on maybe a doctor's website or something, but there's definitely something I read that was like, if you have the option, go with a silicone toy for them to put their mouth all over
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:Rather than a plastic toy. Mhmm. I don't know if that you know, again, I'm not a medical doctor, and I don't even know that that was in one of the sources I ended up citing. I read so much information that I was like, wait. Where is this in where is this before
Jam:I
Melissa:settled down, but I think using I think the shift is probably a positive one If for no other reason than that it is able to be reused regularly. Yeah. Hard for me to imagine us being in a world where there's no long term polymers.
Jam:Right.
Melissa:And sometimes people will ask straight up, is this plastic? Is silicone plastic? And I I think it depends on how you're classifying plastics. Very broadly, you could maybe say yes. It's a polymer that takes a long time to break down, But I don't think it's in the same category as what we think of when we think of plastics in our day to day life.
Melissa:You know? I don't think of My contacts lens as a plastic thing. I don't think of resins really as plastic.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:You know, I don't think of, like, shampoo and conditioner as plastic. So, The end all, be all. The green is the best alternative. I mean, anywhere we can use materials like glass and aluminum, we try to do that.
Jam:Yeah. Right. Right.
Melissa:So that's my little bit about silicone.
Jam:Nice.
Melissa:I'm out so happy. I really every I'm like, this is silicone on my watch. It's just everywhere, so it's very exciting.
Jam:It really is? Oh, yeah. My watch too. Probably. I would guess.
Jam:This seems like a silicone thing, not
Melissa:And people have silicone wedding rings, but yours is leather. Right?
Jam:No. It's, wood and concrete.
Melissa:Oh, wood. Oh, that's Yeah.
Jam:Probably it's like a really fine concrete of some kind.
Melissa:So wherever you are right now, look around you and see what silicone you can find. I found my watch.
Jam:Probably my watch. Maybe some phone cases. I don't know. They have different
Melissa:My phone case. Oh, no. My phone case is biodegradable.
Jam:That's right.
Melissa:Mason has a silicone phone case.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So listeners at home do the same thing
Melissa:and let us know All the silicone around you. There's a lot in my kitchen. I feel like that's the biggest.
Jam:Yeah. And its benefits make sense. Makes sense that you'd use it there.
Melissa:Those silicone spatulas to clear the sauce out of spaghetti sauce jars to get every last thing out of your pot, those things are useful.
Jam:Eggs kind of they're, like, gentle, but yeah. It's perfect. They're like a perfect spatula for that.
Melissa:And I don't feel like those existed when I was a kid. I really don't. I'm like I don't like you said, you remember when your mom got that
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:That it, like, oven mitt or whatever the And then thinking of the baking pans made of silicone, I'm like, yeah, we didn't have those. Yeah. They just they they're new on the scene.
Jam:Yeah. They are. Yeah. And I feel like it's funny because I'm sure there's people who were like, oh, I always remember having them and stuff, depending on how old they are. But, like true.
Jam:There's definitely yeah. There's definitely a time when it became a thing Mhmm. Which is kinda cool. Yeah. Maybe that all seem like we're really old later when we say that.
Jam:When, like So. Whenever silicone or the next thing is everywhere, we'll be like, oh, I remember whenever we were still using this.
Melissa:We were using plastic spatulas.
Jam:We had these Teflon pans, you know, when I was a kid.
Melissa:I remember so clearly my mom had this Super eighties spatula. It was like a pink handle. It's actually almost the exact same color as my shoes if you're watching the. Uh-huh. It's a pink candle and the then the actual spatula part was white Uh-huh.
Melissa:And it got so brittle over time. It was basically useless.
Jam:Like, I might as well just be using a knife on this right
Melissa:now. Right. Right. So I take a special pleasure in in using those spatulas to get every last drop of something out of the pan. It's so satisfying.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:Okay. Great. Well, that made me happy. Thanks for listening, and learning about silicone. Is is there something that's making you happy right now?
Jam:Yes. I have kind of 2, but I'm gonna go with one of them that's a little bit shorter. But this past weekend, my family was in town, but I'm not I can share about that one. I'm gonna share about this instead. I had been wanting for a while, and then I had been talking about trying to put up some string lights in our backyard for easier lit, you know, evening time hangouts or whatever.
Melissa:Mhmm.
Jam:And the other day, I was just like, I just kinda get this stuff for that. I'm trying to do it and just, like, I'm I'm a little motivated. I'm trying to make it happen. And then yesterday, I spent a good chunk of the day, like, putting the sort of metal cabling Mhmm. From, like, from part of a house to the to 1 tree to another tree to another tree.
Jam:And I'm not, like, good at this stuff or whatever. Like, I have to learn it while I do it. You know? Mhmm. And but just did it all in one day.
Jam:One project
Melissa:start start and finish all
Jam:in one day, and it's all done, and now our backyard's way better lit. I was just, like, so satisfied. That is making me happier. So kinda on that little high of like Yes. I accomplished a household thing.
Melissa:Yeah.
Jam:You know?
Melissa:That's a good one.
Jam:And, like, an optional project. It's not like it was, like, I did the dishes because, like, that's yeah. We should always be doing that. But I started the thing and finished
Melissa:Yeah. That is a big deal.
Jam:Yeah. So We about you?
Melissa:This isn't my happy thing, but a similar feeling was we decided not to buy a house. Jam already knows all about this. So we were on we're trying to decide if we're gonna buy a house or not, and we decided instead of buying a house, What's cheaper than buying a house is just making our apartment nicer, and that makes it a little bit more livable for longer. You know? It's like we're we're in a temporary we're gonna stay here for a little while mindset, so we didn't invest Yeah.
Melissa:A ton. We made it nice to live in, and then we just of left it. We're like, we don't wanna invest too much because we're gonna move out. Yeah. And then we decided to stay, and we're like, okay.
Melissa:If we're gonna stay, It needs to be nicer.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:You know? And one thing that we did was put curtains on our patio. You know how apartments have those little patios?
Jam:Yes.
Melissa:So Mason three d printed a little thing to hold the the dowel rod up.
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:And we we bought some UV curtains, and it makes our living room So much, like, so much more livable because we get the setting sun, and it's so hot in Texas. Uh-huh. And the
Jam:light would come in and
Melissa:hit the table and reflect off On your eyes, you know, when you're, like, doing the dishes or anything. Yeah. And so just that one tiny change
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:It's If it it changes everything. And every time you walk past in the afternoon, you're like, oh. Yeah. This is great. And I imagine that's how you feel every time you go Outside at night, it's too late to like, this is exactly what I wanted.
Jam:Yep. Yep. And we've had a similar feeling about it. It was like, we wanna use our backyard more and make it better, so we like it out there more. Mhmm.
Jam:And, obviously, as the kids get older, that'll be more enjoyable too. There'll be more reasons to do that and stuff. So, like, let's just keep making our backyard more enjoyable.
Melissa:Yeah. So So my fun thing is very different. I went to a conference.
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:And it's a lot of people do chemistry education research. And I met a new friend, Safa, who is a doctor doctoral student, and I had a poster about the podcast, chemistry for your life, was up there, and we were talking about ways to determine if it's effective in teaching chemistry or not. And Safa came to visit my my poster and then said, I just found your podcast this week or, you know, really recently because I wanted a chemistry podcast, and I saved it, and I haven't listened to an episode yet. And then later that day, she came back and said, I listened to one those on a walk, and it was so exciting. Nice.
Melissa:Like, that's so cool. And so I was talking to Safa about that, and then another woman, Ronia, came up, and Ronia was like, You know, just sort of joined the circle. And Safa said, she has a chemistry podcast, and Rangya said, that's you? Oh, nice. Was like, wow.
Melissa:This is crazy.
Jam:That is cool.
Melissa:I think it was a warm fuzzy feeling, and it was podcast related. And I was really excited
Jam:That's awesome.
Melissa:Because I haven't really met a ton of people. There were a few at the last conference I went to last summer, but I haven't met a ton of people who already listen to the podcast and then we meet.
Jam:Yep. Yep.
Melissa:And so I thought that that was really fun. So, that was exciting.
Jam:That's awesome.
Melissa:Then sort of like a totally different and much more materialistic one is I got a new car. Yep. Nice Jim already knew that, but I'm really excited about it. Yeah. And we're gonna take it on adventures and go camping, and I'm really excited.
Jam:That is exciting, especially because, like I mean, especially in Texas, in the DFW area where we live, we're using our cars a ton, and we're Yes. Very car dependent. It's a downside of our area, but it does mean that when something like that change, it's a huge deal because it's a daily, multiple times a day, constant thing that you're in Yes. And using that we rely on a little utility thing that we we have to kind of have. Yeah.
Jam:And so changing it out makes a huge difference. Like, multiple times a day, you're like, oh, I have a new car.
Melissa:Uh-huh.
Jam:And this thing is different about it. This is more usable about it or whatever.
Melissa:That was part of our staying in our house. Yeah. Because we're gonna make other things better.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:And it is a hybrid, so it's nice to the environment. Nice. Very exciting.
Jam:That's awesome.
Melissa:We're a hybrid podcast over here. We I all but one of the cars that we collectively own
Jam:oh, yeah.
Melissa:It's a hybrid.
Jam:That's right.
Melissa:Yeah. And one was married in. You know?
Jam:Yeah. So what can you do? Yeah. You can just replace it later.
Melissa:Yeah. Yeah. As soon as it dies, we'll get a new one.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:Great. Well, that was fun. Thanks for, 1, introducing me to the world of hybrids. You really, changed it up for the positive for me, but also for coming and learning about silicone. I was really excited for the question.
Melissa:Thanks, Avishai, for asking it and for getting me to think to finally investigate what is Silicone? Mhmm.
Jam:It
Melissa:was really satisfying to have an answer and to have a little bit of peace of mind that it it is better for It is not as bad as plastic is what it seems like, so that was nice.
Jam:Well, thank you for teaching us, and thank you for being able to explain something I have been curious about and have had no idea what it was. So Melissa and I have a lot of ideas for topics of chemistry in everyday life just like this one that, Avishai asked about. We wanna hear from you. So if you have a question or idea, you can reach out to us on our website at kem for your life.com. It's kem, f o r, your life.com, and to share your thoughts and ideas.
Jam:If you'd like to help us keep our show going and contribute to cover the cost of making it, you can go to patreon.com/chem for your life, or tap the link in our show notes to join our super cool community of patrons. If you're not able to do that, you can still help us by subscribing on your favorite podcast app and rating and writing our view on Apple Podcasts or subscribing on our YouTube channel. Those things help us to share chemistry with even more people.
Melissa:They really do make a big difference. And if you leave a nice review, I'll read it Probably on a bonus episode.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:This episode of chemistry for your life was created by Melissa Collini and Jam Robinson. Jam Robinson is our producer, and the episode was made possible by our financial supporters on Patreon, 2 of whom played a role in today's episode. It means so much to us that y'all at Patreon are Willing to help us make chemistry accessible to even more people. And those supporters are Avishai, who helped come up with the idea for this episode, Bree 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, Nelly s, Steven b, Shadow, Suzanne p, Timothy p, and Venus r. Thank you all again for everything you do to make chemistry of your life happen.
Jam:And if you like to learn more about the today's chemistry lesson, you can check out the references for this episode in our show notes or in the description of the video. Yay chemistry.
Melissa:Yay chemistry.
