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Here is a picture of the visible spectrum. Can you find the color magenta? Why can't you find magenta in the visible spectrum? This is because magenta cannot be emitted as a wavelength of light. Yet magenta exists; you can see it on this color wheel. Magenta is the complementary color to green, or the color of the afterimage you would see after you stare at a green light. All of the colors of light have complementary colors that exist in the visible spectrum, except for green's complement, magenta. Most of the time your brain averages the wavelengths of light you see in order to come up with a color. For example, if you mix red light and green light, you'll see yellow light. However, if you mix violet light and red light, you see magenta rather than the average wavelength, which would be green. Your brain has come up with a way to bring the ends of the visible spectrum together in a way that makes sense. Pretty cool, don't you think?

Calcium isn't found free in nature, but it can be purified into a soft silvery-white metal. Calcium is the 5th most abundant element in the Earth's crust, present at a level of about 3% in the oceans and soil. The element is essential for animal and plant nutrition. Calcium participates in many biochemical reactions, including building skeletal systems and moderating muscle action. Calcium is a metal. It readily oxidizes in air. Because it makes up such a large part of the skeleton, about one-third of the mass of human body  comes from calcium, after water has been removed. Calcium Atomic Number: 20 Symbol: Ca Atomic Weight: 40.078 Discovery: Sir Humphrey Davy Davy 1808 (England) Electron Configuration: [Ar] 4s 2 Word Origin: Latin calx , calcis : lime Properties: The melting point of calcium is 839 +/- 2°C, boiling point is 1484°C, specific gravity is 1.55 (20°C), with a valence of 2. Calcium is a silvery white, soft alkaline earth metal. Although...

Did you think there was a canola plant? I never gave it much thought. I mentioned in my biodiesel tutorial that oils which contain tocopherol (Vitamin E) have a longer shelf life than oils that do not contain this natural preservative. I noted that rapeseed oil contains tocopherol... what I didn't say was that canola oil is made from rapeseed. So why don't we just call it rapeseed oil? Blame Canada! I'm joking, but seriously, the word 'canola' was coined in 1978 from 'Canadian oil, low acid'. Canola oil comes from select rapeseed cultivars that produce low erucic acid rapeseed oil and low glucosinolate meal. These cultivars were developed in Canada in the 1970s by Keith Downey and Baldur Stefansson.

February 21 st is Carl Henrik Dam's birthday. Dam was a Danish biochemist who discovered vitamin K. He was feeding chickens a cholesterol-free diet to find out if they needed cholesterol or not. He discovered the chickens could synthesize some of cholesterol, but several fell ill due to severe internal hemorrhaging. Further testing showed he could prevent this if he added green leaves or liver to their diet. Something in these foods helped the chicken's blood to coagulate, but did not match up with any of the other known vitamins. He called his new coagulation nutrient vitamin K from the German Koagulations-Vitamin. Dam would earn half the 1943 Nobel Prize in Medicine for this discovery. Find out what else occurred on this day in science history .

Monoammonium phosphate is one of the chemicals included in commercial crystal growing kits because it is safe and practically foolproof for producing a mass of crystals quickly. The pure chemical yields clear crystals, but you can add food coloring to get any color you desire. Difficulty: Easy Time Required: one day Here's How: Stir six tablespoons of monoammonium phosphate into 1/2 cup of very hot water in a clear container. I use water heated from an electric drip coffee maker and a drinking glass (which I wash before using it again for beverages). Add food coloring, if desired. Stir until the powder is completely dissolved. Set the container in a location where it won't be disturbed. Within a day, you'll have a bed of long, thin crystals blanketing the bottom of the glass or else a few large single crystals. Which type of crystals you get depend on the rate at which the solution cools. For large single crystals, try to cool the solution slowly from very hot down to ...