Breaking Biology

[30082013] H I J K L M N O ≡

Posted on Tuesday, September 3, 2013 at 1:24 AM

You're probably wondering why the post title consists of letters from the alphabet. I hope this answers your question:

TEACHER : Donald, what is the chemical formula for water?

DONALD : H I J K L M N O!!

TEACHER : What are you talking about?

DONALD : Yesterday you said it was H to O!

(Left): 36 water droplets on a penny.

(Right): Water's Surface Tension keeps the toothpick "afloat," just like it keeps a water strider from sinking.

After three trials which tested how many droplets of water can be put on a penny without breaking its surface tension, I calculated an average of 35 droplets.

If you recall, cohesion is the ability of water molecules to be able to bond to each other. When I say "bond," I mean hydrogen bonds--the weak bond between two or more water molecules which are caused by water's polar covalent ability to take a positive side hydrogen and a negative side oxygen. Cohesion is what allows molecules of water to "stick" to each other, ultimately creating surface tension.

On the video above, we explored the effect of dishsoap on water tension. Previously, we hypothesized that dishsoap weakens the chemical bonds that hold the fats and proteins together in milk, and that this "weakening" is what caused the motion in milk. Here we prove that it was not the fats that made the milk "dance," but in fact the water. Dishsoap affects the surface tension in water by weakening their hydrogen bonds, causing surface tension to break as demonstrated in the video above.

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