130c Sky Rebroadcast
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[00:00:00]

Jam: Hey everyone. This week, we've got a rebroadcast episode for you guys from our first year of doing the podcast, which doesn't actually feel like that long ago. But I guess it kind of was about the question. The classic question that we've all asked, all wondered. Why is the sky blue now this explanation and this chemistry lesson dovetails really well with the recent rebroadcast episode we did about bleach and the recent episode we did about.

Dying BlueJeans cause all these episodes have to do with color and light and all that stuff. So if you have a listen to it or you have a listen to it in a while, then check it out and enjoy, and we will be back next week with a brand new chemistry lesson brand new episode. See you guys then.

Melissa: Hey, I'm Melissa.

Jam: And I'm jam

Melissa: And I'm a chemist

Jam: and I'm not [00:01:00]

Melissa: and welcome to chemistry for your life.

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

Melissa: Jam, how are you doing today?

Jam: I'm good.

Melissa: I'm dong good, I'm excited for what we're going to talk about today. I've been planning it for a few weeks.

Jam: Me too, I'm excited too. I don't know what it is though. And so I'm also a little bit like cautious.

Melissa: Well it's about this guy.

Jam: Okay.

Melissa: What color was the sky when you walked in today? Did you notice it?

Jam: I'm guessing it was blue because it was like a clear day. Uh, but I did not notice it. No.

Melissa: Well, today, we're going to talk about why this guy is blue. It is blue today. I noticed it, but only because I knew we were talking about. We're going to talk about why the sky is blue, but also we're going to talk about why sometimes during the day it isn't

Jam: Ah,

Melissa: sunrise and sunset. Maybe

Jam: yeah. Interesting. That is weird. It's not,

Melissa: always blue.

Jam: I like that. We're talking about this because it is like the classic [00:02:00] question that people ask, like, why is this guy blue?

Melissa: Yeah.

I, have a

cute

Jam: mom, dad,

Melissa: you about a professor teaching his daughter. Why this guy.

is. Taught her the real reason. Yeah, it's cute, but we're going to save it. Okay. So we've talked a lot about light and waves

Jam: Yes,

Melissa: So the very short answer. The very easy answer for why the sky is blue is that the light blue light is more efficient and traveling so we can see it. The sun slight is white. And so it's made up of all the colors of the rainbow. We've seen that.

you can separate out into all its colors, like in a rainbow, you can do other things to the light, like scatter it. And when it's scattered, the blue light goes the most [00:03:00] efficient, that's the basic boil down answer of why the sky is blue is because the blue light is the most efficient.

Jam: So it's, it's not that something is blue necessarily, but that blue light just travels better. So we see it, but it doesn't have much to do with our eyes, it's more like the light itself. So the wave length and frequency. Of blue light.

Melissa: There's a teensy bit about your eyes, but we'll dig into it.

Jam: Okay. That's weird. So the sky is white. It's supposed to be

Melissa: I don't think so. Well, supposed to be as a big word, but let's talk about why blue light travels the way it

Jam: okay. I also don't know what to ask. I feel like there's ways in which this question so simple. Not that the answer is simple, but the is so old and simple in common and kind of funny, [00:04:00] like, like it's one of the classic, you know, kid asks parent parent can't answer or it's like, it just is okay.

Like that kind of thing. But here we are helping parents around the world. Know what to tell their children and depending on the child, probably will not understand, or we won't be satisfied. They'll have more questions. They'd be like, okay, so wavelength, mom, what is wavelength and why?

Melissa: Okay.

so I'll dig in more. Maybe you can ask some questions as we go.

Jam: Okay.

Melissa: So yeah, sunlight made up of all the colors of the rainbow when it encountered something new, like what we talked about with the rainbows, like a raindrop, the object that it is encountering does impact the way the light travels. It goes through a prism, it breaks up the light.

It changes the speed.

Jam: Right, right.

Melissa: So the same goes for when sunlight [00:05:00] enters into the Earth's atmosphere.

Jam: Okay.

Melissa: So the earth is surrounded by all this like baby, baby.

Jam: All these like little baby

clouds. I don't know.

Melissa: basically like a blanket of air was what I was going to say a baby.

Jam: Yeah.

Melissa: So basically a blanket of air molecules that are kept in our atmosphere. And when light enters that it encounters the particles, dust, molecules, atoms, all the things that are floating around in our atmosphere. And so when that happens and it encounters the atmosphere, it, the light will be scattered. So when the light is scattered, the acceleration changes and the amount. That it accelerates depends on the frequency of the light. [00:06:00] Yes. Of the LightWave. So blue has a much higher frequency than red waves, just in the nature of them and frequency. You can think of it as those little wiggles. It's literally how often it occurs. It's the frequency so the more up and down wiggles. The more often the wave occurs higher frequency.

Jam: How, how fast the snake slithers,

or whatever.

Melissa: So the higher the frequency, the more it accelerates when it's scattered. So red light, lower frequency doesn't scatter as much blue light has higher frequency than any light except for violet. So it scatters more than anything else.

Jam: Got it when it is, but what word did you say again? When it something? Okay.

Melissa: It's just scattered.

Jam: So just anything, whether something like a prism, it can go actually through it of, or just a tree or something. [00:07:00] Some thing that it encounters or does it have to be like a.

Melissa: I think for scattering, I'm not super clear on a lot of this because it gets into physics and wave and math where I'm not great, but I think your options are light can either pass through something and that could change the speed at which it travels and that's called refraction. It can bounce back, which is reflection.

It can be scattered. I don't know if it can be anything else.

Jam: Okay.

Melissa: I think

Jam: So in any of those situations, blue can behave differently than red.

Melissa: which is why you see the rainbow. The colors spread out blue and red are behaving differently. I think in reflection, it might not change the speed, but I'm not positive. I don't know. But I can definitely say when it scattered. It does. So the name for this kind of scattering is [00:08:00] called Rayleigh scattering.

Jam: Like a person name.

Melissa: It is named after a person, a physicist, Lord Rayleigh, R a Y L E I G H. I believe he was a Lord.

Jam: Okay, and be kind of cool. First name is Lord.

Melissa: I think

Jam: People are like

Melissa: that is not his

name.

Jam: history of they'd be like, wow. I was like, and responsibilities and stuff or whatever they, the Lords do in England.

Melissa: So should you name your child? Lord, Lord Robinson,

Jam: Yes, I could.

Melissa: maybe you should.

Jam: It does sound a little bit like yikes.

Melissa: So.

Jam: Those people

take themselves very seriously.

Melissa: So Rayleigh scattering is the name of the phenomenon. It's basically when wave encounters particles that are smaller than it. Light waves, encounter particles are smaller than it. So you can just think of the light being scattered with the acceleration increasing when it's scattered. And that happens more [00:09:00] effectively for blue light than the shorter wavelengths.

So you might notice when you look further away from the sun, it looks. That's because most of the other colors of light have not reached that far. It scattered as effectively.

Jam: You know what? I kind of always thought it was. Well, I did always think like, okay, there's a lot of just stuff between and the sun and space and whatever else you can. On many days in a metropolitan area, look out when you can see far. You can notice a haze to things because of humans and cars and whatever, but it could also just be weather or whatever it is, but it's like, whenever you look further, the, what might not seem like much, if you just had your hand in front of your face, if you [00:10:00] then are looking like three miles.

And there's just like a little bit of particles in the air, but you're saying through like three miles worth of it, they'll start to get denser and denser in terms of having an actual ability to affect what you're seeing

Melissa: So basically you thought, like, I look at my hand, there's a little bit of light, but it's not enough to block it, but if it's really far away, there's so much molecules blocking it.

Jam: in the air.

Melissa: it it's kind of a light blue or something.

Jam: Well, and the blue part I thought was simply because. Um, I guess maybe I always thought that it was just the color of space, which is black being filtered through stuff. They kind of made it look a little bit blue, but just getting lighter and lighter. The more stuff is between me and it

Melissa: Like outer space.

Jam: outer space.

Melissa: Wow.

Jam: Cause sometimes if you look straight up. During [00:11:00] the day, it's the least bright blue. Whereas if you look all around the horizon, it's like really light blue, blue gets darker and darker. The closer up you look. That makes sense. It would actually cause like you're looking through more stuff looking to the left or right.

This is like the kind of stuff that just like makeup assume like, Hmm. That's kind of maybe make sense.

Melissa: Okay. Listeners. So tell us why you thought the sky was blue, either tag us in your Instagram stories, posted on Twitter and tag us comment on our stuff. Tell us why you thought the sky was blue and we'll repost it. I think that'll be fun.

Jam: That'd be really fun. And it definitely made me feel a lot better about my, my own theory, not feeling so, so [00:12:00] I don't know jerry-rigged together.

Melissa: Uh, I think I've thought it was a pretty good one. That's I mean, there is space on the outside of our atmosphere, so it does make

Jam: there is junk in the air. Even the stuff that we don't put there, it's like, okay, there's nitrogen, there's oxygen. There's these things. I'm like, I don't know what color those would make the space.

Melissa: super concentrated. Yeah. I think that does make sense. So I'm surprised you didn't ask the question, which is. If blue light has a higher frequency, then all the lights except violet.

Jam: Why is this kind of violent?

Melissa: Yes.

Jam: I don't know why I didn't ask it.

Melissa: Here's why two reasons

simply less violet enters the, tthe, the Earth's atmosphere because's less violet and white light.

Jam: Okay.

Melissa: And two, our eyes are slightly more sensitive to blue light than violet light.

Jam: That's

interesting.

Melissa: our eyes do play into it. But perhaps if there's equal amounts of blue and violet and our eyes were equally sensitive, we [00:13:00] would have a violet sky.

Jam: Right. That's kinda what I was getting at, about like the sky isn't blue, it just, it looks blue. Like, I really get interested in that where it's what things can we point to and say, this is only this way because our instruments think it is, that's the readings we're getting, but we're smart enough.

And we know enough about science to figure it out, that our eyes or our ears or our nose or whatever it is we're talking about are not perfect. So our brains have been able to figure out that our bodies are wrong. And that's interesting to me to be like this, guy's not blue. We all think it is.

Melissa: it's perceived to be blue as a result of Rayleigh.

Scattering.

Jam: All of us that can walk and talk and, and suppose and speculate about why things are the way they are. We're all imperfect equally, but it's not.

Melissa: I mean, kind of, it's not [00:14:00] I'm of the opposite camp where I. It looks blue. So it's blue. It feels cold. So it's cold, which is, almost like embracing the subjectivity of life, but that's a little philosophical for this

Jam: That is, I think I like the idea of like, what if we could stop being human just for a second and look around the world and what

Melissa: as perfect robots,

Jam: It's perfect. Something's whatever it is.

Melissa: perfect objective observers.

Jam: Beings, whatever they are and what would be different would be so fascinating. We, one, would probably be like seeing all the ways we don't see, because we only see a certain

Melissa: You'd ultra violet

Jam: We'd see ultraviolet, um, all these things

Melissa: you'd see radio.

Jam: to us seem to make up our universe and our world daily life, um, would seem like such a small sliver of all the things.

Melissa: Interesting. That's that's interesting and overwhelming because it would be hard to see that much stuff I think. And what [00:15:00] even is the definition of the perfect objective observer? What are they looking

Jam: Right. That's why it works philosophically, but.

Melissa: In real life.

Jam: It's like, you can, you can just pretend that one exists then just talk about what if it were it, but you can't get anywhere. So I guess that's why philosophy is not science.

Melissa: And why I got a B in philosophy, because I felt that this, was not super interesting. I felt this conversation was just not that class. Okay. So I'm just not good at those big theory questions. You know, those are, um, I have a hard time sitting and holding on to things that I don't understand. This is just all in theory.

What's the point,

okay. Let's, let's

get back

Jam: why it's not, that's why I don't see the violet in the sky. There's less around and our eyes are less sensitive to it. Okay.

Melissa: Now, why is the sun orange or red when it sets, do you think, [00:16:00] or does it look orange or red when it sets?

Jam: I mean, the first thing I think a lot of us would say it was like, well, it's on fire.

Melissa: it's definitely on fire.

Jam: Uh, so that's one thing. Um, I mean, how much does it have to do with the fact that it's like a, such an extreme angle? Cause obviously there's another of the world where every time the sunsetting somewhere it's super not setting.

Melissa: Yes.

Jam: else. And it's just a normal yellow day there. So is that part of it?

Melissa: That's absolutely part of it?

So when you're looking off at a random point in this guy, when this guy is blue, you're seeing the light that's been scattered away from the sun's light. You're not looking at the direct path of the light. You're seeing lights has been scattered away, but when the sun sets you're more in line with the actual light that's coming from the sun.

[00:17:00] So instead of seeing. The light that's been scattered away. You're left only to look at the light that has not been scattered away. And the light that is least efficiently scattered are the reds, oranges, and yellows.

Jam: They're getting caught somehow,

Melissa: They're still, they're just still in the line of sight.

Jam: They're still in line of sight.

Melissa: So if you're looking.

Jam: It doesn't take much.

Melissa: Right. It's just gone. It's been scattered away.

Jam: Got it.

Melissa: So if the sun was setting, not through an atmosphere, theoretically, it would just look the same white light that you see when you look up at it. But because it's setting through an atmosphere, you're looking directly at the sun because of the angle it's at, opposed to when it's up in the sky above you.

You're looking directly at the sun blue light has been scattered away. And what makes it through are these warm red colors?

Jam: And [00:18:00] we're kind of helped by either clouds or objects or whatever, as it gets lower and lower. You can obviously get to where you can actually look at it and not like your eyes. can't quite exactly add it until it's already gone or something, but it's helping that. You can actually then see its direct path of light because it's kind of being filtered more and more.

Melissa: Right. So it's not just. You're more in line with the site, but because of the angle it's at it's passing through more of the Earth's atmosphere. So the more of the blue light is scattered away, leaving the less efficiently scattered light to reach our eyes. So it's almost more filtered by more of the atmosphere and we're in the right angle to really see that.

Jam: Right. Yes. Okay. [00:19:00] That makes sense. Not that I had that sophisticated of a thought to it, but it kind of aligns with my non-scientific theory about stuff in the air, by stuff I didn't even mean like pollution and necessarily there is obviously a part of that, but like just all the elements, all this stuff.

Melissa: Well, and actually pollution does have an impact. can change the colocolor of the sky

Jam: Uh huh.

Melissa: because. Those little particles from aerosols and all the pollution are small enough to tpart in Rayleigh scattering. So. they can actually play a role in changing the color of the sky because they are helping scatter the light they can amplify the sunset because they're scattering more of the blue light away.

They can, they can do that. I've read some articles. I've talked about that. Absolutely.

Jam: Zimbabwe a couple of years ago. It probably happened to the places too, but this is where I observed. Um, there can be a lot of dust in the air, [00:20:00] either kicked up from animals or whatever. So much land in that is not being used by stuff or a lot of roads that are dust roads. And there was a time where it was like we were driving somewhere and it was, the sun was still kind of high.

I mean, it was definitly the afternoon. Let's just say 4:00 PM.

Melissa: Okay.

Jam: In normal, you would not be able to look directly at the sun at 4:00 PM. There was enough dust in the air. I couldn't even really like taste it. It wasn't like, like they were just clouds of dust everywhere, but I could look directly at the sun, and it looked just like this red or kind of like a star wars sort of deal.

Melissa: Interesting.

Jam: weird. I have a, like a video of it. I could show you. Um, it was just so weird.

Melissa: So it may be that the dust in the air was scattering, the light, the blue light away,

Jam: Uh, huh?

Melissa: efficient, more efficiently. And that's why it was looking kind of red orangy.

Jam: looking red orangy and then enough maybe just light in general scattered and [00:21:00] filtered and whatever else so that I could still look at it. not only could what I was seeing red, but also its intensity was like, yeah,

Melissa: Probably because there is a, more of a physical barrier. So that's it. That's why the sky is sometimes blue and why the sky is sometimes not.

Jam: Interesting.

Melissa: It's all about Rayleigh scattering. And if you tell me this answer back,

Jam: Uh huh.

Melissa: I'll tell you the cute story of my professor's daughter.

Jam: Okay. When you say, say the answer back, do you mean like explain it

Melissa: Oh, yeah. Yeah. By answer back. I definitely mean when you explain it back.

to me,

Jam: Okay. Yeah. Um, okay.

Melissa: I haven't slept much. So my, my language is scattering.

Jam: Um, Rayleigh scattering. So light. We have talked about a lot. Um, most of the light we deal with out in the day time, and even light in rooms, stuff [00:22:00] is white, which means it's made up of all the.

So, but they do have differences, not just in color, but in wavelength. And so if something causes them to be messed with broken apart, scattered, um, refracted or whatever, then they will behave in those different. Ways, not like not crazy different, not like different elements on the periodic table, but their differences will have an effect like the rainbow.

So the light coming from the sun is white, but whenever it strikes our atmosphere and is coming through a lot of atmosphere to get to our. It's going through a lot of things like gases, whatever makes up our atmosphere, I guess, things that can [00:23:00] scatter these rays of light. And so the blue light, which has the compared to other lights we're used to seeing in the sky sometimes like reds and.

And oranges blue has a much faster wiggle, much faster, um, wavelength. And so when it's striking those things, it could cause it to scatter. It scatters really easily and quickly, like it's like,

Melissa: Right.

Jam: just like gets out of the way while it's hitting things. And. Red and orange and other light that has a lower frequency.

They're like slithers are slower. They don't do as many.

Melissa: Right.

Jam: And so

those,

Melissa: aid jam for red [00:24:00] and orange is moving his hand up and down like a wave that's going slow. And then for blue he's wiggling his hand up and down really fast.

Jam: yeah. Yep. Something has to be seen to be believed. And those slower frequency types of light don't man, this is kind of hard to put words to. I feel like I don't know why I know exactly what I'm trying to get at. They don't like scatter in the same way that blue does blues. Like, like totally fine. They like ricochet like a bullet.

And so when we look in the sky, we're seeing tons of blue, the blue is fine, it hit stuff. It ricocheted it's all. The red and the orange did not somehow.

Melissa: it did. So you're close. So that's a good explanation.

Jam: Do we still get to hear the cool thing?

Melissa: Absolutely. So the only differences get scattered, [00:25:00] but how, when they scatter, they acceleration increases.

Jam: Eyeball and gets

And we're not seeing red and orange

Melissa: Right. And the, how much it accelerates is directly related to the frequency. And so actually.

because of the difference in frequencies between blue light and red light blue light is actually scattered 10 times. More efficiently. increases about 10 times more in acceleration than red light does.

Jam: Like going everywhere. Very fast, so much faster. New blue light is coming and lapping this slow orange, red light

Melissa: Maybe if it was traveling on a track path [00:26:00] at a high school

like you've got your pho- your photons like little tiny circles. and they're riding, driving on a track And then a photon hits a particle that makes it scatter in breaks into all the colors of the rainbow. The blue light is going so much faster than red light.

That's a fun example,

I have, I enjoy imagining a photon now as a white

Little ball running with legs, running on track, and then it hits a particle that makes it break into all the colors of the rainbow. And then you can see on the track that the violet is running. I think even faster than blue is 10 times faster. than red, and then green comes behind blue.

And So that you can see the change

in

Jam: have six or seven lanes, like you have on track and each one is a color and it's like, they could be that much different. So it might be like red and orange are not that far from each other, but then Blue's like way up there and Violet's like already on the next lap. [00:27:00] That's crazy.

Melissa: That was a great, that was a good visualization. You put in my brain. Good job.

Jam: Hey, anything I can do to bring things into non-science language a second, that might either be a really ridiculous analogy or end up bringing about a good one.

Melissa: I kind of want to make a little video of that, of photons. If anyone's a cartoonist and can do that, I would be so happy. It'd be so

Jam: Cartoonist or like digital animator kind of

person.

Melissa: Yeah, that would be adorable. That'd be the cutest science video. Okay. So that's all I have for you. and you got it. Right?

So I'm going to tell you the little story. So one of my professors, he's an analytical chemistry professor and daughter asked him

why the sky is blue. And he taught her the chemical formula, I guess, chemical form. Is that right? The mathematical equation Why the sky is blue [00:28:00] behind Rayleigh scattering. So the equation for frequency is C over lamda.

So the increase in acceleration is one over Lambda to the fourth. So if anyone asked this little girl why the sky was blue, she would say one over Lambda to the fourth

Jam: Oh, gosh,

Melissa: Isn't that so cute?

Jam: It's cute. But it's also kind of put myself in the classmates, like. Shoes where like, there's this girl whose dad's smarter than everybody And she's saying that stuff, she doesn't even understand it really, but it's just like,

those are the,

Melissa: think it's cute.

Jam: I mean, if it was my little girl, that'd be the cutest thing ever, but I just remember being around kids it was like, okay.

All right. Yeah. That's why we don't ask you questions. That's why you're not coming to my birthday party.

Melissa: Uh, well I think she probably was just fine on birthday parties, but I thought that that was a fun, cute story. Yeah, So you can tell, you can tell your friends.

[00:29:00] whatever Lambda the fourth, if anyone asks you guys why the sky is blue listeners at home, or you can tell them the real answer, because now, you know, both now that you heard that cute story, what was something good that happened in your week?

Jam: So I think like many, several Q&Rs ago, uh, friend and listener of ours asked like an update on my employment situation. And I said, yeah, I'm still freelancing. Um, so that's been like, not a lot of stuff. There's been a consistent amount, but that consistent amount has been not very much, but it's not been zero.

That's been interesting. over the past two weeks, it's like ramped up a lot. Um, and I've had like consistently. Clients that I'm doing stuff for. And that's been really cool. It's been tiring. It's [00:30:00] like, it's kind of like, imagine just starting like three part-time jobs in one week. Um, so it's not like anyone would, no one would pick to do it that way.

would spread them out a little bit, I think, but it's been really cool. I've enjoyed that. Um, my schedule has gotten crazy suddenly. I'm trying to get a handle on. But it's not like I'm working 80 hours a week. It's just that having four different jobs. It's like you juggling four different objects.

Melissa: Yeah.

Jam: It's chaotic, but I think I'll figure it out.

So that's been good. It's been tiring, but good. Definitely thankful to be having more work. And I'm excited by a good amount of it to where it's fun to help people. Figure their stuff out, help them get to a better spot in whatever it is they're trying to accomplish. Um, a good amount of it's marketing stuff, which I love.

So that's been really, really enjoyable. Yeah.

Melissa: Yeah.

I've had more of a front front row seat to you. Picking some of those things up. So [00:31:00] I think it's been fun to watch that develop and

Jam: So it's old news.

Melissa: not old

news, but that I was present for the making of, I am really excited for you to have your new jobs and to be getting stuff in place. But, you know, my goal is for you to be my full-time co-host and producer,

Jam: Yeah.

So until day comes, I just need to have some stuff to do

Melissa: right.

Jam: just to

Melissa: Just to keep you busy.

Jam: Cause like, oh my

Melissa: want you to be bored. Yeah.

Jam: Yeah,

Melissa: Well, congratulations. It's really exciting. It was a crazy. I got.

some of those updates as they came and it was kind of crazy balancing everything for you. I know, but

Jam: Yeah, we had to switch up some recording stuff and stuff like that, but

Melissa: I think it'll be good.

Jam: yeah, me too, I'm pumped about it.

Melissa: That's exciting.

Jam: So that's been, yeah, that's been me. What about you?

Melissa: Well, actually, I'm gonna do two in one, cause I'm a cheater.

Jam: my gosh. Ihow you waited you w you [00:32:00] to say I could have done two in one, you didn't say that before.

Melissa: Well, you have three jobs. So it's kind of like you did three in one.

Jam: That's true, but I didn't describe each of them and it'd be kind of weird and be like, so one of them is this guy and I'm helping him do this another one's this guy and he lives at

Melissa: Well, mine is 201 that are related.

Jam: okay.

Melissa: So I had a qualifying exam this week and. I mean, they're not super important, but basically when you finish your classes and you're getting your PhD, you have to pass these qualifying exams at most institutions, which basically just demonstrate that you have mastered the material and you are ready to be, what's called a candidate.

A candidate only has to finish their research and write a dissertation to be finished. So qualifying exams are a big deal. And I pass them for organic chemistry and then I switched gear. So take a few more and it always feels really good when you finish one. So that's a really exciting feeling.

And I took my first one for education today. [00:33:00] So. Very

Jam: Yeah.

Melissa: But the thing that happened this week leading up to my qualifying exam, I, was on Twitter a lot less and there was this really cool Royal chemical society did a poster presentation on Twitter. So you basically did a virtual conference on Twitter and I love Twitter.

Jam: I actually, I think I saw this and meant to ask you about this. So it's kind of like, you're answering a question. I forgot to

Melissa: That you.

never asked. Okay. Well, I love Twitter and I always so sad that I missed

it. I got on at like midnight and realize what had happened. I was heartbroken. So I tweeted that I was sad that I missed it and check out chemistry for your life. That's probably what I would've done a poster on any way.

And. There's an account on Twitter that makes.

little cartoons about science. And they worked in collaboration with the royal chemistry society, making little cartoons that represented the posters. They were cartoon. Abstracts is what they called them. Abstracts like the little summary of your [00:34:00] poster. And since I didn't have one they commented,

on my post and said, Well, we decided to make you a special comment cartoon.

And it was a little person chasing after the Twitter bird saying, wait, you know, it was so cute. And I just felt like someone cared that I had missed.

it. And so that was my happy thing of the week.

Jam: I was scrolling through and I saw you like, share that thing. then I saw that they had mentioned to you in the description and this like a legit account or whatever. And I was like, I've clearly missed some important context here. There's a person trying to chase the Twitter bird. I understood that much, but I was like, why is this happening in a seemingly chemistry setting?

Like is like a lot of the stuff that Melissa tweets about is with chemistry people. And I was like, this seems unrelated.

Melissa: It's not. So That was exciting. And then I messaged that person to tell them how happy

they made me, the person who runs that account. And we had a great conversation. So I love Twitter. You can make all kinds of cool friends [00:35:00] on Twitter and academic Twitter. I've made connections that I never would have made in real life.

So I think Twitter is a really fun place to do networking and meet science people. And that was just a small, bright spot. So. So thanks Aaron science for making my week better. That was awesome. Love you. Go check out @errantscience on Twitter and thanks Jam, for listening and to you guys, to you guys, to listeners for coming and learning about why the sky is blue.

Jam: Any time for me. And then also anytime from me and all the listeners,

we talked and we were like, yeah, you know, anytime Melissa and I have a lot of ideas for topics of chemistry and everyday life, but we want to hear from. So, if you have questions or ideas, you can reach out to us on Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook at chemforyourlife.

That's Chemforyourlife to share thoughts and ideas. If you enjoy this podcast, you can subscribe on your favorite podcast app. And if you really like it, you can write a review on apple podcasts [00:36:00] that are supposed to be able to share chemistry with even more people. If you'd like to help us keep our show going and contribute to cover the costs of making it go to ko-fi.com/chemforyourlife and donate the cost of a cup of coffee.

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