The Unexplained Mysteries of Chemistry

As a discipline, chemistry is inherently mysterious, as it deals with the chemical and physical aspect of how substances – particularly their atoms – interact with each other, which is a tall task to complete for all the known substances. While it has applications in almost every other rapidly-advancing field – like medicine, nanotechnology, space exploration, etc. – chemistry in itself remains an area full of unsolved mysteries and unanswered questions....

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[biggieb]

Oof a lot of mistakes in this one...

10. Catalysts aren't that much of a mystery, they are used all of the time. There's just complicated physics between us and understanding them so sometimes we need computers to help us, but not always. I took a class where we could make predictions of catalyzed reaction behavior with just paper and calculator using well defined theories. Also, yeast isn't a catalyst.

9. The Iron Pillar of Delhi is explained by a passive protective film, a phenomenon found throughout chemistry that is well understood...it's the same thing that makes aluminum resistant to corrosion. This was explained in great detail in a paper by Balasubramaniam.

8. This might sound ridiculous to a non-chemist, but the nucleus of the atom is entirely irrelevant to chemistry. The only thing we are concerned about are the electrons and their behavior.

7. Ok, superconductors are a legit mystery.

6. Glass? Glass is not a mystery. We know exactly what it's made of and its structure and why it does what it does. It's not a new phase of matter, it's a solid. It's an amorphous solid. Other examples of amorphous solids include rubber, plastic, silica, and chalk.

5. Turbulence has nothing to do with chemistry. It's also less of a mystery than people think, it's a chaotic phenomenon and so cannot be predicted easily but it can be statistically modelled very well nowadays.

3. There does seem to be a set of circumstances where you can observe hot water forming ice before cold water and we aren't exactly sure how that happens but there are a lot of different explanations and aren't sure which combination of them are the right ones. But the set of circumstances are very particular, the experiment is very hard to reproduce. If you change the smallest details of the experiment, like the shape of the container, it cannot be reproduced.

1. Abiogenesis does not involve creating 'organic materials from non-organic substances.' Organic substances merely contain carbon. The real trick is to create something that starts replicating itself. It would be one of the most incredible discoveries in the history of science if we could figure it out. How it happened is one of the greatest mysteries of the universe.

[elnombre]

We actually do know how a lot of catalysts work though. Catalytic cycles are taught to every chemistry undergraduate and are regularly published in papers.

[mackdog]

LoL yeast doesn't speed up baking. If anything, it slows it down. Use baking soda if you want fast bread. Hence the name: Quick breads.

[gregglesmigregglesmi]

I thought yeast was a leavening agent…to put bubbles in the dough so it is light and fluffy. I’ve never heard that it’s used to speed up baking times.

[michaelpipkin]

That first stock photo of "chemists" is hilarious.

Are the making Gatorade? Hahaha...

[makouras]

Didn't you sort of 'debunk' the Mpemba effect on Today I Found Out?

[jmgajda]

I worked with microRNAs extensively about a decade ago; they play a huge role in guiding stem cells from undifferentiated to more specific cell line types; e.g. hematopoietic cells (blood stem cells) into white, red or platelet cells. They're really not THAT mysterious, but, it was fun to hear them mentioned!

[j.dunlop]

Mpemba effect I observed that in Alaska, when a fellow worker, took us outside at -50 below, he threw hot coffee directly over our heads. Freakingly you could hear the molculed slowing down, along with instant steam. The extreme dryness at those temperatures, has always, was shockingly fascinating!
Snow squeeked, when you walked on it.
( I lived in Fairbanks 6 winter's, then moved to where it was only 20-25 below, near the coast! Alaskans call it the banana belt! LoL)

[legendofyetti]

"With guest host Michael from VSauce"

[JimFortune]

Yeast grows by eating sugars. Not a catalyst.

[coreyyantz]

Exposed surface area is a variable of both evaporating and freezing a mass of water. I suspect that when water is hot enough to evaporate and is thrown into freezing cold air, the exposed water quickly evaporates and immediately freezes because it becomes almost entirely exposed surface area. This might explain why it works when you throw the water out but it is not easily replicated with standing water.

I want to strongly note that this is just what makes sense according to my understanding. I do not know for certain.

[LiamNI]

I'm honestly shocked at how many times Tanzania comes up in Simon's videos. It's like every 5th one! And still he says "Tan-zane-e-a"... 😂

[scarybunnies]

Yay a chemistry video. As a chemist, I feel chemistry takes a back seat to biology and physics in the attention the discipline receives in modern media.

[jiminfested]

The last one Organic materials are a bit wrong, you can make organic materials, they just still won't be alive. They can literally make DNA but by itself it's just a chemical., not the formation of a living cell. Historically Organic materials used to be CxHy chemicals, things such as oil, plastic, gasoline etc.

[iTeerRex]

As someone from the field of physics, we know very little, and what little we do know has all kinds of problems. Yes including Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. But we have managed to use the properties of mater to make unbelievable things.

[bethdibartolomeo]

One thing I've found fascinating since I saw it in a program is how the designer of the periodic table managed to leave perfect spaces for elements that hadn't been discovered yet.

[DoctaOsiris]

Biochemistry was the most horrendous thing I ever had to do, afaik it has the highest fail rate of any course in university, and I honestly don't know how I managed to drag myself through it and pass 😲

[michaelmoore]

Room temperature superconductivity will be an ultimate game-changer once it's sorted out.

[joeycampbell]

Fire your writers because this is full of false and completely backwards information.

[seustaceRotterdam]

Totally wrong about the catalysts. I am not going to quote my sources here, but plenty of publications about heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis which work in different ways. And of course yeast is an organism, not a catalyst. It contains enzymes which are biological catalysts. In fact they are proteins, which have been decoded from DNA, each with a specific 3D structure which catalysed a specific reaction. For many enzymes the catalytic activity have been documented extremely well with different substrates under different conditions. So yes, we do understand catalysts. Thumbs down for this.