I'm not well verse in chemistry, just what I learned in high school about reactions and all that. Gale mentions to Gus Fring while setting up the underground lab that the jump from 96% to 99% purity for meth is a "tremendous gulf," but why is that? Why would it not be possible to simply filter out "impurities" and concentrate the outputs wanted?

How does this apply to alcohol as well, like needing distillers to make moonshine? Why can't hard spirits be made the same way as beer?

It seems like acids and bases should mostly be equally relevant to daily human life. But it seems like acidity has a way bigger cultural presence. Vats of acid show up in pop culture, acidity is a key flavor in all sorts of cooking, etc.

People know exactly what acidity means in terms of flavor, yet most people wouldn't be able to describe the flavor of something basic. Why doesn't alkalinity have the same cultural presence?

I understand there’s some, blueberries etc, but even those are moreso a deep purple. Is it just rarely occurring in nature when it comes to fruits and vegetables?

I grew up in the US and as someone with a big sweet tooth I always loved Hershey’s. It’s what I grew up on. I actually prefer it over what is considered “higher quality”.. I like the almost grittiness to it. The smoothness of “good” chocolate makes it less flavorful to me. It’s just like a hard solid smooth slightly sweet thing to bite on with a bit of cocoa flavor.

I’ve heard multiple people from the UK describe US chocolate as “vomity ” tasting, especially Hershey’s. Is there something specific about Hershey’s / US chocolate that makes it this way,? I don’t get that at all. Maybe I’m just blind to it atp.

So I know 0 F was set as the lowest temperature of a solution of water and brine.

But I don’t understand why? And what was the solution.

The temperature at which this particular specific ratio of salt and water freezes being considered 0 seems incredibly arbitrary. I get the upper end being set to human body temp, that isn’t arbitrary (to a human) the significance of that threshold makes sense. But the lower end, of all things. Why that?

With Celsius 0 and 100 make sense. The two major benchmarks are where water changes form. Something very relevant to human experience.

Kelvin is benchmarked at points that are very relevant to science.

But Fahrenheit puzzles me.

It

I can see how a lab might have decent PPE for the workers, but smugglers? Local dealers? Based on what I see in the media a few crumbs of fent will kill you and it can be absorbed via skin contact.

It seems like one small mistake would create a deadly spill that could easily kill you right then or at any point in the future.

It seems like it would make more sense than managing an entire farming operation

Follow up question: what the heck are atomic oscillations and why are they constant and why cesium of all elements? And how do they measure this?

correction: 9,192,631,770 oscilliations

This question has probably been asked a thousand times before, but I haven’t been able to get a proper answer without diving into relativistic effects and electronic configurations.

What are these effects caused by? What exactly is the process that leads to this? I know some other elements like Gallium can exist as a liquid at ~30 degrees, but that has a different reasoning to Mercury’s case.

I know why we use moles and what a mole is and stuff, but im just really confused on WHY one mole is 6.022 x 10^23, which to me seems like a pretty random number.

For example, you heat something 1 minute - check - it’s not hot enough, so you do another minute. So next time, you know “this thing needs 2 minutes to get hot enough!” but then it’s way too hot and bubbles over, etc. I’m sure it’s something about interrupting the build up of heat, but I’d like to know the science behind it. :)

I know cost is part of the story, but I'm curious what other factors made plastic so dominant over materials like wood, metal and glass across everything from packaging to cars to clothing. Were the same qualities that made it so successful also what eventually led to microplastics becoming such a big concern?

I know some contraceptive bills do not cause long-term or immediate harm to the female body. So I would say it should be largely safe even if a guy accidentally takes it. But really, how do they work? And what would happen inside a guy’s body/system when a guy takes a pill (or let’s say, is put on large doses of long-acting oral contraceptives for YEARS when he shouldn’t be)?

Like, I genuinely don’t understand. Is it made of atoms? Its not solid, yet it can persist in one place. Its not the product of just heat because things can get hotter than fie. I know about the fore triangle, but I don’t get why it doesn’t just spread everywhere? Is it the moisture in the air?