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Chemical Reaction Changes Color Over and Over

Posted by timothy on from the note-gratuitous-but-accurate-dig dept.

DancingFountain writes "If you have taken a college chemistry class, you may have seen this fantastic demonstration. When two clear liquids are mixed, they immediately turn yellow, and then undulate back and forth between blue-black and yellow in a mesmerizing display. Wired Science explains that the reaction, which was developed by two high school science teachers, has been rigorously studied but not fully explained."

3 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Huh? by moosesocks · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm confused..... where's the news here?

    The reaction's notable for its cyclical nature and the fact that we don't really understand the underlying mechanisms. According to the news article, we still haven't figured it out.

    Thanks for that status update!

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    1. Re:Huh? by paintballer1087 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      And that's impossible. I mean science has always gotten everything right about physics. Don't belive those crazy rumors going around that the world is spherical.... As much as we know about physics, astronomy, matter, time, space, etc... There's that much more that we don't know. I'm not saying perpetual motion is something that will ever be discovered, or if it is possible. But saying something is "impossible" because we would be wrong otherwise, puts us at the place of knowing everything. As far as we know, the second law of thermodynamics is right, but we've been proven wrong in the past, and probably will in the future.

  2. oscillating reactions are reasonably well known by StandardDeviant · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I did a math paper for a mathematical modeling class during my chemistry undergrad on the BZ reaction mechanism, which is another oscillator like the system in TFA. It's not a perpetual oscillation, but with precisely controlled reagents you can get some pretty long-lasting oscillations (precisely as in on the order of hundredths of a mole, iirc). There's a really good little book in the oxford chemistry primers series (series as a whole is quite nice for accessible, focused introductions to various fields) on this topic: Oscillations, Waves, and Chaos in Chemical Kinetics by Scott.

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