It’s National Chemistry Week! The Timstar team thought we would celebrate the beauty of chemistry with you, by sharing some awesome resources plus listing our Top 10 Chemistry Facts that we hope will blow your students minds!
It’s National Chemistry Week
13/10/2020


Top 10 Chemistry Facts
DNA is a natural flame retardant
Due to the chemical structure of DNA, it suppresses heat. The phosphate-containing backbone produces phosphoric-acid when heated which removes water and leaves behind rich residue which is flame resistant.
Helium can climb on walls
Defying gravity -when the temperature of helium gets to 2.17K (as cold as space) it is called the Lambda Point and is close to zero. Atoms inside the liquid come to a complete stop, becoming a superfluid which will climb the wall of a container. A window into the world of quantum mechanics.
Glass is not a solid or a liquid
The molecules in glass flow so slowly and at such a low rate that chemists class it as an amorphous solid – a state between a solid and a liquid.
Adding salt to a bathtub will make the water level go down – not up!
Archimedes’ Law means that stepping into a bathtub will make the water level go up, however, when adding sodium chloride (salt) to water the volume will decrease. This is due to solvent molecules becoming more ordered in the vicinity of dissolved ions.
The periodic table was created as a cheat sheet
Dmitri Mendeleev created the periodic table as a giant cheat sheet. He had to submit a description of all chemical elements but was struggling for time, so he threw together a huge data set of atomic weights that we know as the periodic table today – hence why the table is ordered by atomic weight.
99% of the human body are made up of just 6 natural chemicals
Our bodies are made up of 60 of the 94 natural chemicals that exist in the world, with 6 of them making up 99% which are oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus.
If we didn’t have saliva – we wouldn’t taste a thing
Saliva provides the moisture we need to break down the food we eat, dissolving the chemicals on our tongues to activate our taste receptors – therefore if we didn’t have saliva we would not be able to taste a thing!
Our ‘pee’ solidifies in space
When urine is released in space conditions it violently boils and then goes through sublimation as its vapour turns into a solid rapidly, resulting in a cloud of frozen pee.
Oxygen appears blue when liquid
Although transparent to the human eye, oxygen turns into a shade of blue when passed into a liquid state.
Mars is a huge floating ball of rust
With Mars’ surface containing so much iron oxide (otherwise known as rust) it can be considered a floating ball of rust.
Check out some of our chemistry activities?
’Creating Eruptions Practical’.
Download below…
DID YOU KNOW...
A wasp sting is alkaline and a bee sting is acidic!

Check out some of Timstars favourite chemistry products…
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