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Chemistry Facts

Ice That Burns

What looks like regular water ice but hisses and jumps around like water on a hot plate when you put it on a room-temperature surface and bursts into flame when you light it up? It is a rare and ... Continue reading

Ice on fire: methane hydrate.

Chemical Burning

Chemical burns are the result of very normal reactions that can occur between the offending material and living tissue components. People generally tend to regard their bodies as things outside of the ... Continue reading

Knocking the NOx Out of Coal

Nitrogen is the most common part of the air we breathe. In fact, about 80% of the air is nitrogen. Normally, nitrogen atoms float around joined to each other like chemical couples. But when air is ... Continue reading

Air is mostly nitrogen molecules (green in the above diagram) and oxygen molecules (purple). When heated hot enough (around 3000 degrees F), the molecules break apart and oxygen atoms link with the nitrogen atoms to form NOx, an air pollutant.

Why Does Cement Set?

Concrete has been known for literally thousands of years. It is a testament to the enduring strength of this material that concrete structures from those long-ago times are still standing strong ... Continue reading

Image of microstucture predicted from a NIST-developed model of cement hydration.