With the Fourth of July and American Independence Day on the horizon, a somehow topical post seemed in order. Having already examined the chemical compounds that give fireworks their colours in a previous graphic, I decided to examine another important firework component here: the first chemical ...

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We take for granted the water that comes out of the taps in our home when we turn them on – but a lot of work goes into getting it there. Chemistry, too, has a hand in making sure that the water is safe to drink. Here, we take a look at the water treatment process, and in particular the chemicals ...

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It’s Fireworks Night here in the UK tomorrow, which means fireworks (obviously), bonfires and sparklers. We’ve looked at fireworks in a previous post,so this time around it’s time to take a look at the chemicals that go into producing sparklers, and their various roles. In sparklers, there are ...

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For the latest in the alcohol chemistry series, we’re looking at a pirate’s favourite spirit: rum. It’s actually hard to describe what constitutes a rum, because there’s not really a fixed definition; different countries have different standards that rums have to meet. Still, despite the ...

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The colours in fireworks stem from a wide variety of metal compounds – particularly metal salts. ‘Salt’ as a word conjures up images of the normal table salt you probably use every day; whilst this is one type of salt (sodium chloride), in chemistry ‘salt’ refers to any compound thatcontains ...

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