Helium

Okay, on to element number 2.  Helium is the first of the so-called "noble gases" on the periodic table.  These are called "noble" because they are very stable and chemically unreactive, so they don't usually hang out with the common riff-raff of the other elements.  It was once believed that these gases did not form any compounds with any other elements, but compounds of xenon with fluorine (among other combinations) have been synthesized.

It's fairly common knowledge that inhaling helium will make your voice sound funny.  I have firsthand experience with this phenomenon.  When I visited COSI (a science museum in Columbus, Ohio) many years ago, one exhibit contained a helium tank to which you could attach a disposable cardboard tube, inhale, and sound like a chipmunk for several seconds.  I had so much fun with this that I tried it over and over again, and ended up with a tremendous headache, probably from a lack of oxygen to the brain.  I was probably fortunate to not pass out.  Oh...and when I say many years ago...I was about 25 at the time.

Why does helium make your voice sound funny?  Basically, since helium is much less dense than air, sound waves travel faster through it.  The pitch of your voice is determined by the vibration of your vocal cords.  This doesn't change, since your vocal cords vibrate at the same frequency no matter what you've been breathing.  But the timbre of your voice is affected by the vibration of air in your vocal tract.  If your vocal tract is full of helium, your voice will travel faster, and sound higher.  Or something like that.

So if helium makes your voice higher, what would a heavier-than-air gas make you sound like?  Here is a video clip from one of my all-time favorite shows - Mythbusters.



Now, if I could just get my hands on some sulfur hexafluoride - then I could hit those low bass notes at hymn sings.

Heath toffee bits

My first recipe of my periodic baking project is a cookie recipe.  I was going to start with biscotti, but my 7-year-old daughter informed me that I make too much biscotti - she likes cookies better.  Element 1 is hydrogen (symbol H), so I decided that Ingredient 1 would be Heath (toffee) bits.

Here is the recipe I tried - Brown Butter Heath Bit Cookies.  The recipe uses a lot of butter (2 sticks), and a lot of brown sugar (2 1/4 cups).  My cookies spread a lot on the baking sheets, and I ended up with large, flat, crisp cookies.  I tried refrigerating the cookie sheets and the cookie dough, but the cookies still spread.  I think that I probably should have added some flour to stiffen the dough a bit.

However, the cookies taste fantastic.  They are very butterscotch-y (is that a word?) and would probably go great with a cup of coffee (although, really, everything goes well with a cup of coffee).  My kids even liked them, although my 5-year-old said that they needed chocolate chips.

The cookies are done when they are the approximate color of our cat, Mobius.

All told, I'm going to give these cookies a 7 out of 10.  Since I just made up this rating, and this is my first batch of cookies for this totally nonsensical project, I don't yet know if that's really good or not!

Hydrogen

I'll start my element posts with element number 1 - hydrogen.  A hydrogen atom has one proton and one electron, which makes it the simplest (and lightest) element.  Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe.  Hydrogen combines with carbon and oxygen to make up compounds as varied as water, alcohol, and sugar.  It also makes up a good percentage of our bodies.

Hydrogen is lighter than air, and can be used to make balloons float.  However, it is highly flammable, so balloons are now mostly filled with helium (which is almost as light, and very stable).

One reason why the Goodyear Blimp is filled with helium instead of hydrogen.

Hydrogen combines with carbon and oxygen to make up compounds as varied as water, alcohol, and sugar.  It also makes up a good percentage of our bodies.

A neat way to make your own hydrogen is through the electrolysis of water.  You can simply hook up two wires to the terminals of a 9-volt battery, then stick the ends of the wires in a cup of water.  At the negative (-) wire, bubbles of hydrogen will form.  Of course, since water is H2O, oxygen will form at the cathode (+) wire, and you will get twice as much hydrogen as oxygen.  Here is more detail on how to carry out this fun experiment.

Hydrogen is the fuel of the stars - fusion of hydrogen provides the energy to keep our sun (and other stars) burning for billions of years.  In the process, two hydrogen atoms are converted to one atom of element number 2 - helium.

I love chemistry.  I fell in love with chemistry in Mr. Rydarowicz's class at Leetonia High School, twenty years ago.  (I also discovered another life-long love in that class...one of my lab partners was a cute brunette who, six years later, became my wife.  Back then, though, she was dating someone else...but that's a different story.)

Anyway.  Chemistry.  I majored in chemistry at Eastern Mennonite College, and later obtained my master's degree in chemistry from Lehigh University.  I've worked as an analytical chemist for fourteen years.  I've always enjoyed the mathematical simplicity of chemical equations - one molecule of something, plus one molecule of something else, equals a totally different compound!

For my 35th birthday this past January, I received a wonderful book - "The Elements", by Theodore Gray.  It contains beautiful pictures of each element of the periodic table, in order by atomic number.  This book re-ignited a desire which I've long had, to collect a sample of each element of the periodic table.  Since many elements, in their pure state, are dangerous - either extremely reactive, toxic, or radioactive - my wife (tolerant, but practical) told me that I wasn't about to store my collection at home.  I still have aspirations of compiling an element collection, or at least the elements I can keep safely.

I also love to bake.  The act of combining simple ingredients - butter, sugar, eggs, flour - to create a sweet, delicious goodie contains a magic similar to the wonders of a good chemical experiment.  In fact, a lot of baking is chemistry - the emulsifying properties of eggs, the browning of sugar cookies when they are "done", and the leavening action of baking soda are all due to the chemistry of the molecules involved.  I'm always trying out new cookie and biscotti recipes, with varying degrees of success.

Since I also love to create totally unnecessary tables and spreadsheets, I decided to combine chemistry with baking and create a periodic table of cookies.  Each element on the periodic table has a symbol - one or two letters which are usually (but not always) an abbreviation of the element's name.  For each symbol, I tried to come up with an ingredient.  For example, H (for Hydrogen) can also stand for Heath Bits.  Every week (more or less), I'm going to bake a cookie or biscotti recipe which uses an ingredient on my table, and write up my findings on this blog.  Since there are over 100 elements, this totally pointless project will take some time.  But hey, it's safer than bringing home samples of arsenic and uranium!