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A podcast that helps you understand the fascinating chemistry hidden in your everyday life.
Have you ever wondered why onions make you cry? Or how soap gets your hands clean? What really is margarine, or why do trees change colors in the fall? Melissa is a chemist, and to answer these questions she started a podcast, called Chemistry for your life!
In each episode Melissa explains the chemistry behind one of life’s mysteries to Jam, who is definitely not a chemist, but she explains it in a way that is easy to understand, and totally fascinating.
If you’re someone who loves learning new things, or who wonders about the way the world works, then give us a listen.
180 Temperatures 3
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Melissa: [00:00:00] Alright, Jam, are you ready for it?
Jam: Let me check. Yeah.
Melissa: Okay, great. It's part three, temperatures. This is gonna be a little history, like, what even is a degree? What's a Celsius? What's a Fahrenheit? How'd we get here? As a final bow on our last two episodes about thermometers and temperatures and how they came to be and how different thermometers work.
Jam: Okay. Nice
Melissa: So we're wrapping it up, and we're gonna cover Celsius, Fahrenheit, and the ever elusive Kelvin that no one talks about.
Jam: Man, poor Kelvin poor guy, dude.
Melissa: I think he's probably doing
Jam: I knew I named Kelvin It was his first name, but he never went by it so it was like one of those things were like every year the beginning of the school year but and Kelvin blah blah blah and he'd be like I go by my middle name, so I've always thought about it like Kelvin, the name the guy didn't use.
Jam: Kelvin, the [00:01:00] method of measuring temperature no one
Melissa: No one uses is. I wonder why he didn't like it.
Jam: know either, that's kind of,
Melissa: Maybe because it's like Kelvin is really close to Kevin and but easy to get mixed up.
Jam: just kind of like accidentally threw an L in there.
Melissa: Mason's name gets mistaken for Madison a lot and he just lets people do it. He'll be like Madison. Yep. That's me
Jam: I liked, I would, it'd be cool if someone saw it and thought, I'll pronounce it the French way and be like, Oh, Maison,
Melissa: like that to get to get voice to text to spell it right you have to say Maison All
Jam: All right,
Melissa: right, well let's get into today's episode I'm so excited
Jam: do it.
Melissa: Hey, I'm Melissa
Jam: I'm Jam
Melissa: and I'm a chemist
Jam: I'm not.
Melissa: and welcome to [00:02:00] chemistry for your life.
Jam: podcast helps you understand the chemistry of your everyday life.
Melissa: And today's episode of chemistry for your life is dedicated to long time friend of the podcast, Carol R.
Jam: Carol. We've known her for a long time.
Melissa: Very long time.
Jam: to the podcast early on followed us on Instagram interacted with us a lot. And so super cool
Melissa: she's an English coach and she has her own podcast and her voice is so soothing. And, um, I remember telling my mom about her and how excited I was that she was like using chemistry that we talked about to help teach science, or teach English and science.
Jam: right. That's right. Yeah,
Melissa: So Carol's like a real one from the beginning.
Jam: So thank you for joining our chemmunity of patrons and helping keep the show going, keeping the access to it free, helping cover the costs of making it. We appreciate you so much, Carol. Thanks for supporting us from the beginning and now upping that support even more so by joining our [00:03:00] chemmunity.
Melissa: was so excited when I saw your picture, I was like, it's Carol. So thank you so, so much. Okay. So let's get into it. So temperature part three, what are degrees?
Jam: degrees. And who is Kelvin?
Melissa: Who is Kelvin? Not nobody, just kidding, okay? He's a big old nobody. Okay, so in essence All the thermometers that we talked about measure what's happening at a molecular level.
Melissa: They use what's happening at a molecular level to indicate, you know, a change in temperature, right?
Jam: Mm hmm.
Melissa: oh, here's roughly what the temperature is now. But they have to be standardized for that to mean anything.
Jam: Okay.
Melissa: Right. So we have to have standards, and there's stories of Fahrenheit seeing thermometers Fahrenheit, the person seeing thermometers, but they were just all, whenever he would see them, it was like everybody set their round of like what was what?
Melissa: There was no standardized version. And so we need a standardized version so that we can [00:04:00] all talk about temperatures and it means.
Jam: Right.
Melissa: this is where temperature scales arose from, is that need. You can see how easily it would, um, you would be like, nope, that's not the same thing that I've set that to, you know?
Jam: Yeah. Yeah, what if you were like, well, on my little vial of liquid, it was, uh, about halfway. It's like, well, on mine, it was three quarters. And it's like, okay.
Melissa: Yeah, exactly. So, um, there's a lot of these stories are alleged, but I tried to find as many reputable sources as possible. This is the best thing I can piece together. So this is just more like a fun story history episode than like a. You know, lots of peer reviewed journal articles. Okay, so let's start with Celsius.
Melissa: So Celsius is the temperature scale that's used in everywhere in the world, I think, except the United States.
Jam: Right.
Melissa: Pretty much everybody but us uses it and it is used in science everywhere. So I tend to have a lot of my science terms in [00:05:00] Celsius, actually. So, like in the organic chemistry lab, all of our thermometers were Celsius.
Melissa: I think of water as freezing at zero degrees and boiling at a hundred degrees. That's like, um, where I think of Celsius first. Like it takes me a minute actually to remember at what temperature water boils in Fahrenheit. That's not like in my brain automatically. So that's definitely like the, a standard one that is used a lot in science, but also just around the world. Celsius is a scale that goes from 0 to 100. You might have also heard it called centigrade. Have you heard, do you remember that
Jam: I do. I feel like I remember that in some old, like, older textbooks that we had and also the occasional sort of like old, um,
Melissa: person? Yeah.
Jam: or I wouldn't even say that, like, some of the like, different practice problems that some, and different sort of [00:06:00] questions. Teachers would borrow from even older books and stuff like that that those also Would say that a lot.
Jam: But yeah, I never never really investigated further than that.
Melissa: Okay. Well, we'll talk about why it's sometimes called centigrade, but I'll start with telling you that Celsius the person, um, was, is Swedish astronomer. In 1942, he was developing a temperature scale and he actually set the freezing point of water at a hundred
Jam: Okay
Melissa: boiling point at zero. And what. is liked about this scale then and now is that there's a hundred degrees in between and they could be broken down into tens.
Jam: Right That's so interesting that he thought it made more sense to have it be Zero be boiling
Melissa: I know. I've, I've thought about this a lot. Is it because we know now that it's the opposite that it feels weird or is it weird?
Jam: [00:07:00] Right. I feel like from the subjective human experience it is More hot equal more degree like that
Melissa: yeah.
Jam: is intuitive But yeah, I guess you could be right. Who knows?
Melissa: So, well, I think other people agreed with you because then Carl Linnaeus, Linnaeus, who's a biologist who also, um, contributed to the nomenclature of, what is that, taxonomy? He created taxonomy. A taxonomy. I don't know if it's a standard one. I'm not a biologist. He flipped it because he felt it made more sense to have zero be closer to the death of plants.
Jam: Ah
Melissa: Which I really thought was funny.
Jam: That's that's so funny what an interesting like like explanation, you know instead of just saying like what it's like colder is lower It's like no no plants die here
Melissa: So death equals zero. I thought that was interesting too. So, um, but there are mixed accounts of this now, both [00:08:00] Lennius and Celsius went to work data, say some, the same university. And so there were some. Sources from that university where they claim it's a combination of Celsius scale and Linnaeus making it useful in everyday life is how we kind of came up with our final Celsius thermometer.
Jam: okay
Melissa: Okay, and something that's fun here about Centigrade. Um, I'm going to read this to you. This is from an old journal article. It says, Just how the ascending order of Linnaeus happened to be adopted in scientific circles under the name of Celsius, who seemed to have used the reverse order, is another of those interesting historical anomalies that adds to the gaiety of the nations and helps to make life interesting.
Melissa: Probably most of us would use the term centigrade, but it would be helpful to know just how far either Linnaeus or Celsius or both helped in giving us the rationally constructed heat measure.
Jam: Interesting.
Melissa: Which I [00:09:00] thought, like, basically is just saying, who knows? It's kind of fun that it's a mystery, like, in a published paper.
Melissa: So I don't think it's really clear who did which one, but it is clear when centigrade became Celsius. So Initially, centigrade is, centi is a hundred, so like centimeters is a hundred, you know, if you, if you have centi in front of something, it means a hundred, and The metric system, so that's why it was Centigrade, um, but that officially changed in 1948, I think, to avoid the confusion of other things that were also called Centigrade, um, that like other 100 degree things, 100, uh, units of something.
Melissa: So they changed that to be Celsius. And my guess is that they used Celsius because they both started with a C. So degrees centigrade can very easily be converted to degrees Celsius. But in 1948, it was officially changed by the, [00:10:00] um, Conference of Weights and Measures, which, um, the Conference of Weights and Measures is like an international standard of what things weigh.
Jam: Maybe, so maybe that would seem like there's no way I would have that in a textbook in growing up. So I wonder if it would maybe just
Melissa: I just, but I also wonder how long it takes for things to trickle
Jam: Right. Well I don't have a strong memory but I wonder if it's like specifically an older teacher or two who would just say it like that out loud but on the paper it said Celsius. Something like that. Like that would make sense.
Melissa: It was almost like, oh, yeah, centigrade, like jogged my mind to remember when I was young, that was something that came up. But like, so I was in school in the 90s. So if in the 50s this got changed, it took like 10 years to disseminate. That's into the 60s. And then, like, I could see how someone grew up in the 50s and 60s thinking
Jam: using that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Melissa: then they gave that to their kids, who were also thinking that, and then those were our teachers.
Jam: Right.
Melissa: it was kind of like, hmm, centigrade, celsius, I could see that.
Jam: Yeah, [00:11:00] I could see that too.
Melissa: And I think this was before the internet was really around a lot, right? So things didn't get disseminated just like that, the way they do now, where it'd be like a worldwide news story that Celsius has churned to centigrade, you know?
Jam: Or people who even actually do know it's changed, just the habit is so hard to kill. So it's like people like, ah, whatever, same thing. Like, you know, you know what I mean? And so I could see there being a group of people who are just like, you know, what's the point? Like, it's not even, it's not that important.
Jam: You know what I meant? It's not like we're actually confused. So they just hold out and keep on using centigrade
Melissa: Yeah. So that's the story of how we came to have Celsius.
Jam: interesting.
Melissa: And I, I really do see how scientists could like it because yeah, for me as a chemist, like I care really about water is something that we use a lot. You know, it's like we use it to evaporate other things, you know, like we like water to freeze and boil.
Melissa: It's like a lot of things are done in. Hot water baths or cold, cold ice baths, you know, and so like [00:12:00] knowing what the temperature is at based on water boiling is convenient. So like for me having that and then knowing it's like nice and round, zero, a hundred, and then these little steady increments in the middle, I can see how as a scientist you really like that. Okay, but now let's talk about Fahrenheit because I can also see why people like Fahrenheit, okay?
Jam: Before you move on to that, do you know? Someone who uses Celsius in a non in their normal life
Melissa: Like doctors or you mean like
Jam: someone that you know
Melissa: Someone I know uses Celsius in their everyday life.
Jam: Not every day, but uses it not in a science lab or whatever
Melissa: No.
Jam: your husband and I only roast coffee
Melissa: That's because everything is standardized to Celsius.
Jam: Well, we have the option to change our roaster to Fahrenheit But, because this roaster and people who post about it, and it's like a, the company that makes it is in Europe,
Melissa: [00:13:00] Yeah.
Jam: used it and like, created guides or recipes or whatever, all use Celsius, and it's sort of the decision was like, do we want to like, have to convert in our heads all the time, or do we want to just leave our roaster in Celsius?
Jam: So we've it's always been in Celsius since the beginning and sometimes even forget come used to the numbers in it And they're so unrelatable into other life
Melissa: They're like into the hundreds,
Jam: yes, right I'm like, I'm like, I'm not thinking how does this relate to the temperature I cook stuff at whatever it just feels like this is numbers I'm used to for specifically cough roasting.
Melissa: Yes. Yeah.
Jam: So it's like, sometimes I'm like, oh wait, this is Celsius. I forget. We're not talking, cause it wouldn't even make sense. It'd be like preheating it to like 300 degrees Celsius is actually significant, but 300 degrees Fahrenheit is like low for like an oven. You know, so anyway,
Melissa: But it is all hot, you know, it's like it's all 300 degrees Fahrenheit Celsius, you know, so I can see how that you forget that that's even what you're doing. [00:14:00] Like we said it's 300, 300 what? Oh, what?
Jam: It's also the highest you can preheat too. So it's like, it's the hottest temp. So that's what
Melissa: There have been times where we've been talking about water boiling on this show and I, I had to be like, cause water boils at a hundred and then I'd be like, I mean. Wait what and I like really have had to because you just like I just get into like I'm not thinking about water boiling ever So like when I think about it, it's just like in this scale that I've set in my mind But, your wife does that also, temperatures, like taking temperatures in the medical field are in Celsius, which I found out because I got sick when we went on a post graduation trip to Canada and we didn't have a thermometer, so we bought one in Canada and we cannot change it to Fahrenheit.
Melissa: We tried, it's supposed to be able to change to Fahrenheit, it won't, and so we're like, all of our temperature taking is now in Celsius, and I'm like, well, now we're just in line with the medical field, so.
Jam: That's funny.
Melissa: So it's like 40 is bad. 40 is a fever. [00:15:00] So yeah, I, um, there's like little pockets of life where it's like, yeah, I guess we'll just leave that in Celsius.
Melissa: So that's just one more as your coffee roaster. So, and for those of you who aren't in the United States, you probably think like, this is a hilarious, odd conversation.
Jam: yeah. It's like, yeah. You're like, well, why don't you just use it for everything and stop being weird? It's like we would if we could
Melissa: Yeah,
Jam: We really would.
Melissa: we would. Yeah. And I have friends that are in Canada or in other parts of the world that who will tell me what temperature it is. And I had to be like, okay, 40 is. 100 and then if 25 is roughly room temperature, but it's like kind of hot room temperature But when you're doing chemistry problems, it's easier to use 25 So that's what we do, you know, and I like I'm like, so if they give me a number between 25 and 40, that's between 77 and 100 like I like have to like I have my own little scale where I know where like pieces are and I'm like Okay, what temperature does that feel like?
Melissa: Because I know what things happen at but I don't know what it feels like at different [00:16:00] temperatures and Celsius
Jam: Yeah. Dang.
Melissa: So, okay, so now let's talk about Fahrenheit. Let's talk about how, how Jim and I conceptualized temperature in the world. Okay, so Fahrenheit was a Poland German physicist, and in 1924, so the other one was 1942, so this was a little before, but I like, Starting with Celsius better because I think it has like a little bit more logic and chemist to it, and it relates to more people.
Melissa: So, um, uh, Polish German physicist, Polish German physicist, Fahrenheit, had seen thermometers, but like I said, they didn't have any standard, standardization. So people just like set their own reference points, and they usually used alcohol. Um, and so he developed a precision thermometer, and he set zero degrees at the coldest he could get water to.
Melissa: How do you think he got water colder than zero degrees? Because zero degrees is below freezing.
Jam: Yeah. [00:17:00] Um,
Melissa: It's something we've talked about before.
Jam: I moved about getting super cold water and it doesn't, like, if it doesn't have. A nucleation side or something that kind of helps it jump into its solidness and form the crystalline structure, whatever, but it can be
Melissa: That's one
Jam: that cold.
Melissa: But if the thermometer was in it, I think that would act as an indication site.
Jam: Okay, so,
Melissa: We talked about something that can raise the boiling point and lower the freezing. I think I just saw the light bulb go on.
Jam: um, something that can raise the boiling point. Oh, it's a different, uh, pressure, it's under a different pressure, atmospheric pressure,
Melissa: Different atmospheric pressure.
Jam: colligative stuff.
Melissa: Uh huh.
Jam: Something in mixed in it that okay. Okay. [00:18:00] What did he use?
Melissa: He used salt?
Jam: Ah
Melissa: might have used different types of salt, but it doesn't super matter what,
Jam: Okay,
Melissa: in there.
Jam: so he when he makes us all then then he could get it that far down that's pretty far
Melissa: is pretty far.
Jam: Wow
Melissa: know. So he said zero degrees is the coldest he could get water to be with water and salt. And that's why we have a freezing at 32 degrees Fahrenheit instead of at zero degrees is because zero degrees is as cold as he could get water with salt.
Jam: That's interesting I would not have expected that and also we've talked about it in both ways But especially more, you know, my memory stronger with it about boiling point I didn't really think that much about it for freezing, but like, obviously that we talked about the salt in the roads and stuff like that too, so that makes total sense, but how weird.
Melissa: know. And then he set the other temperature, 96 degrees, at the temperature of [00:19:00] his wife's body. So it's like zero degrees is the coldest he could get water. 96 degrees is a temperature of a human body. And here's why this was widely adopted, and I think it will make sense to you and I, is that zero degrees is cold, and it's a lot of times the coldest that people feel.
Melissa: And, you know, it's like one of the lower temperatures. And 100 degrees is hot, and it's a lot of times the hottest that people feel. One of the hotter outdoor temperatures.
Jam: intuitive to the human experience to be like, 100 is super hot, 0 is super cold. Yeah. And like, you actually would experience them. Especially if you live somewhere like where we live those are real temperatures that you could experience in any given year. We don't get Close to zero very often, but it's not impossible.
Jam: We definitely get to and exceed 100
Melissa: Yes. Yes. 100%. But I think that was less true. I think we had [00:20:00] Less hot days previously than we do now. One time I was looking at like the highest and coldest days in Texas and there's definitely a trend, which makes sense.
Jam: Yes, totally
Melissa: So they have, that's why I think it's, it's been widely adopted, but scientists don't love it because it's weird that freezing and boiling point are at 32 and 212, which is why I don't know what they are a lot of times.
Jam: Yes
Melissa: Yeah.
Jam: odd which makes sense because those weren't even what he was trying to base it on just like Celsius, that makes sense. But it might, we might be lost trying to intuit the weather.
Melissa: But people do all over the
Jam: Obviously, yes, totally. But if you had no standard at all, and you were just starting out, if you were someone who did things in a lab and you cared about boiling and freezing, you'd want those to be convenient.
Jam: But if you don't do that, and you're just like, no, no, I just like, want to be able to like, tell you how I feel. Based on the temperature how it feels to me and I want to kind of make sense [00:21:00] like dang It's hot like a hundred in like feels right.
Melissa: it does feel right. But does it only feel right because that's what we've grown
Jam: I think probably so gotta be
Melissa: It's hard to know. It's hard to
Jam: so it would 100 degrees Fahrenheit be in Celsius
Melissa: ish?
Jam: that to me.
Jam: I mean again like you just said growing up But 40 doesn't sound like a high number.
Melissa: it doesn't.
Jam: So it sounds like, Golly, it's 40 outside. It's like, It just feels not hot.
Melissa: But other people, I have heard my friends from, like, like my friend, shout out, Miriam, and her husband, Neil, they listen to the podcast. And I've heard them talk about, um, talk about Oh, yeah, it was like 38, you know, and I'm like, 38 years, almost freezing. Yeah.
Jam: traveled to another country, obviously every single one of those countries is using Celsius. And so, the people you're talking to around are like, oh yeah, it's gonna be, I think it's gonna be high of, you know, 38 today, so, it's gonna be pretty warm. I'm like, that's gonna be down to like, [00:22:00] You know, 18, so you better bundle up or something like that.
Jam: And I'm just like, every time I'm like, I'm still not sure how cold you're talking or how hot you're talking. Yeah. You know, but yeah.
Melissa: Yeah. So I think that is why it has gotten widespread acceptance, you know, and probably why it held its own. I, to me, makes sense that these two are the ones that have held their own as long as they have. You know, when you hear that, you're like, yeah, yeah, those two make sense to the human experience and to the scientific experience.
Melissa: Yeah, okay. So, um, then the last one, oh, I was going to say there are exactly 180 degrees between freezing and boiling in Fahrenheit with which people also like
Jam: Mm.
Melissa: That like 32 to 212 is 100 degrees apart because it's like on opposite sides of the circle.
Jam: Ah, I see. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Melissa: So there's that, I don't know, just a little note, a side note that I found that I was like, oh, I never even thought about that. Okay, and then last [00:23:00] is Kelvin, which is the unused one, which is the, um, you know, the odd man out here, so Absurd
Jam: learned about coven. I can't remember if I have, but what if you started explaining it and it really was just like stupid. Like, it's like, no one uses, it's like freezing is actually like the letter Z and then boiling is actually the number 1025 and it just like made zero sense and it's like, well, I could tell you why.
Jam: No one used it. It's because it's like, it doesn't make any sense at all. Or, freezing is yellow, and, and boiling is
Melissa: the thing with Kelvin is people use it in science classes all the time, but maybe outside of physics And so people say this is the, this is a scientific temperature, but outside of physics, I don't think it really is.
Jam: okay.
Melissa: So I never use Kelvin in the lab. I always use Celsius. So I don't really know why, but I know why.
Melissa: Because [00:24:00] scientifically, Kelvin has absolute zero where there is zero degrees is at absolute zero, which means there's no energy at all in the molecules.
Jam: okay.
Melissa: And so there's no energy, so they're not moving at all. It's the, it's the place at which all atoms have no energy in them and therefore they cannot move.
Jam: So how, how cold are we talking?
Melissa: Really? At cold?
Jam: So,
Melissa: guess I don't know, but nobody's ever achieved that. They've gotten close, but they've never achieved
Jam: it just takes into account that, theoretically, this exists. Theoretically, there's a, there is a coldness you could get.
Melissa: Yeah.
Jam: Okay.
Melissa: That was a good question. Here, I can look up real quick what it is in Fahrenheit and Celsius. Zero Kelvin to Celsius. Let's see what it says. Zero Kelvin to Celsius. Negative 273 degrees Celsius, which [00:25:00] also at negative 40 Celsius and Fahrenheit are the same. So I don't know if that's also the same in Fahrenheit.
Melissa: Yeah, that's a fun fact for you. Oh, no, it's negative 500 Fahrenheit. So really cold, but they've never achieved it. And yeah, so nobody ever really talks about Kelvin. I mean, like I don't, the last time I used Kelvin was when I was doing gen chem type problems, like because you use that in all those equations.
Melissa: Because they have constant space and whatever, but I mean, I didn't ever use it, and I don't know other people who did, but I could guess that physical chemists, theoretical chemists, and then like physicists, I could see those people doing it, but not me.
Jam: Why do I say keep trying, guys? Keep trying to get it all the way down. See what happens.
Melissa: They've gotten like within point zero zero something, I think
Jam: Oh, really? Wow.
Melissa: But, but, I, I'm like, how do you take all the energy out of them all? But it really, [00:26:00] everything would be totally frozen, so that's like the true freezing point is because nothing could move even the atoms at that
Jam: Right. Right. Yeah.
Melissa: So,
Jam: Yeah. Because we think of freezing as like, we're really just talking about water. And like that's not everything clearly lots of things are doing fine in 32 degrees though.
Melissa: zero degrees,
Jam: Yeah, we're zero.
Melissa: depending on where you are in the world or. in the lab or not.
Jam: Dang interesting.
Melissa: So that's your little history lesson. That's your, that's our first, this is our first episode back. So our little intro into 2024 and a little bit about how temperatures came to be.
Jam: Did you say who Kelvin was?
Melissa: No, I didn't write it down either because it's like, uh,
Jam: Yeah,
Melissa: shmash, man.
Jam: and he doesn't even use that name anyway
Melissa: Yeah, he doesn't, he doesn't use that name. I'm sure.
Jam: looked into him and it was like Kelvin was his first name, but he never went by it
Melissa: I'm sure he was a guy, a [00:27:00] guy, I want to say an old guy, but I don't feel like a lot of them were probably old. They just were around in an old time.
Jam: just they just were When they died, they were old.
Melissa: probably when we heard about them, it seemed like they were old because it was so long ago. Yeah. So that's a, that's a little bit about Kelvin.
Jam: Yeah. Dang. Interesting. How weird. And also, it's also weird how closely we associate with the numbers because we grew up with them and we become familiar with them and they, they are there before we ever understand a lot of other math.
Jam: You know, it's like, like you, you can be young and be told the temperatures outside. But not really understand almost anything else about numbers and already form associations with numbers before you ever understand, like, Oh, by the way, it's actually totally different ways of measuring this. in other countries use and they use totally different numbers.
Jam: It's like just one of those things that is fascinating to think about.
Melissa: Sorry, while you're talking, I remembered a fun story, which is my sister who, [00:28:00] you know, rules the world, basically. I mean, she like does lots of amazing
Jam: Uhhuh, Uhhuh,
Melissa: and, um, it's hard to tell her no. When she was little, she made up her mind that Celsius was cold and Fahrenheit was hot. Which kind of makes sense, but she was like sure that that was true, and she did not believe my mom when my mom was like, that's not true, and my mom had to call her teacher and ask her teacher to tell her that so that she would believe my mom.
Jam: that's so funny to be like, so like, yeah. When it's cold, to use this one when it's hot. Use this one. Yeah. It's just like what?
Melissa: guess C is cold maybe.
Jam: Yeah. And F and F is, F is freaking hot.
Melissa: Yeah, exactly.
Jam: Yeah.
Melissa: Anyway, so I, I remember that while you're talking, he's like, while we're young, we just get used to them being used this way. It's like, not if you're Renee. She had her own ideas.
Jam: exactly. Yeah,
Melissa: that was fun. This is, this is a good white hearted episode to come back from our break on. [00:29:00] Um, so, you know, real quick, do you want to wrap up with something fun that happened for you over the break?
Jam: something kind of happened for me that was also a little bit crazy, um, is that my family came and stayed with us. We did like our Christmas later. Then we, we kind of always do that basically. It just makes it easier on everyone's schedules. They came stay with us for a week. So total there were 11 people in my house and my house is not big and we got creative about where to put people and so every, basically every room had multiple people in it.
Jam: Um, me, my wife, and our kids were all in our room. My younger brother, his wife, their two kids were in our boy's room. And then my mom, my older brother were in this very room where we record. And um, and then my younger brother actually had to work while he was here. And so we set up a workstation for him in the garage because he
Melissa: Oh no,
Jam: of his work.
Jam: He is listening to stuff, transcribing, doing things, he needs silence and quiet. And there was literally no [00:30:00] other room. To put him in that he could close a door and have some sound barrier because office, all bedrooms were taken. We could not spare a bathroom, you know, we needed all of them. And uh, so we set him up in the garage,
Melissa: Did that work out well for
Jam: worked out fine.
Jam: He was a little cold, but we put a space heater out there. And so literally like we could just barely make it all work. It was like just enough spaces for everyone to have a place to sleep and for him to have a place to work.
Melissa: Like this is gonna work until the kids are a little bit bigger and then you gotta come up with something.
Jam: yes, exactly. Exactly.
Melissa: Well that's kinda fun though.
Jam: Yeah, that was cool. It was, it was a little crazy, but it was fun. How about you? How were your holidays?
Melissa: Um, you're not gonna believe this, but I got sick again. I
Jam: also got sick, by the way. I forgot to say that. But, I did hear about your sickness, and I, you had to get one in, one more in, didn't
Melissa: more and I had like, just started to feel good. I was like, great. I feel good in time to go see my family. And then we got there [00:31:00] and then it was like, as the days went by, I started to feel more and more rundown. And I was like, are you kidding?
Melissa: I was so mad. I got sick three times, but I think the reason I got sick and, and we'll talk about this probably more in today's community is I was working a lot because I was writing a grant, which has something to do with this podcast. So if you want to learn about that, you can go follow us on Patreon and hear about that in the bonus episode.
Melissa: Or the secret, the super secret episode, not the bonus,
Jam: Right. Yeah, this,
Melissa: community
Jam: the chem, yeah, exactly, yeah.
Melissa: So, um, I got sick again, but overall it was good, and um, getting that grant submitted is like a huge weight off my chest, and that's like an exciting new thing in my career that I've never done before. And, um, yeah, so I think that's like the biggest thing that happened over my break.
Melissa: I saw family and that was great, but It was kind of overshadowed by remembering that I had that to do, you
Jam: Yeah, hard to take a break when there's something hanging over your head like that,
Melissa: It's like the mean teachers who schedule, like, a test right when you get back from Christmas. [00:32:00] That's kind of what the National Science Foundation does because they intentionally put grants due at the beginning of January to, like, weed out people who maybe are not as committed, I think is why they do
Jam: you know, they really should do beginning of December or something like that, you know, like get it done,
Melissa: get some breaks.
Jam: but I get that. Maybe they're like, well, we got to get stuff figured out early in the year. Okay, well, cool. Didn't do it earlier.
Melissa: I, I have heard that it's intentional to weed out people who aren't committed. Which is mean.
Jam: Yeah.
Melissa: So. So that, yeah, that's the biggest thing that happened over my break that I'm very relieved about.
Jam: showed them, you showed them that you're committed.
Melissa: I did show them that, yeah.
Jam: yeah.
Melissa: Take that. Anyway, so that's fun, and um, probably the biggest thing that's happened lately, I would say, and it's making me very
Jam: Nice. Nice.
Melissa: Yeah, well thanks, um, thanks for learning about this and breaking it up into three episodes was kind of fun.
Jam: It was very fun. I loved it. And I liked that we had a break before this one. I was [00:33:00] very interested in this one. And I'd kind of forgotten a little bit. This is exactly what we're going to cover in this one. I just knew we had another temperatures one. So anyway, it was fun. Thanks for teaching us.
Melissa: Yeah. And thanks to all of our listeners for asking questions. So this originally, this whole series started with a question from, um, one of our listeners who is also a chemist and who works in. Chemistry. I'm not thinking of right now. Latila.
Jam: Oh, yes.
Melissa: of her Instagram name, which is different, and I was like, that's not right.
Melissa: Latila is the one who initially started this off. So, um, thanks Latila for this question.
Jam: And if you have a question, idea, thought. We love to hear those. They turn into full episodes like this or they end up being a great question on our Q& R episodes. So we love those. Please send those to us on our website at chemforyourlife. com. That is chemforyourlife. com to share your thoughts and ideas with us.
Jam: If you'd like to help us keep our show going and contribute to cover the cost of making it, you can join our super cool chem community [00:34:00] of patrons on patreon. com slash chem for your life. It's patreon. com slash chem for your life. You help the show keep going. You also get some cool perks. Um, you get, I think, you know, from us, you get to get updates behind the scenes kind of stuff.
Jam: You get to be a subscriber on our super cool community only podcast. Um, you, depending on which tier you pick, you get to come to coffee hours with us. Super cool. Um, don't miss out on it. Go check it out. But if you cannot do that, you can still help us and help keep the podcast going by subscribing on our favorite podcast app, reading, writing, reviewing Apple podcasts, and also by subscribing on our YouTube channel and commenting or saying something on there too.
Jam: Those things help us to share chemistry with even more people and help more people discover us.
Melissa: This episode of Chemistry for Your Life was created by Melissa Colini and Jam Robinson. Jam Robinson is our producer, and this episode was made possible by our financial supporters on Patreon. It means so much that you want to be a part of our community and help make chemistry accessible to even more [00:35:00] people.
Melissa: And those supporters are Avishai B, Bree M, Brian K, Chris Sinclair S, Chelsea B, Derek L, Elizabeth P, Emerson W, Hunter R, Jacob T, Christina G, Katrina H, Latila S, Lynn S, Melissa P, Nicole C, Rachel R, Sarah M, Stephen B, Shadow, Suzanne P, Timothy P, Venus R, and our brand new patron, Carol R. Welcome to the community, Carol.
Melissa: We're so excited to have you.
Jam: And if you'd like to learn more about the chemistry lesson for today, you can look at our references in our show notes or in the description of the video on YouTube.
Melissa: Yay chemistry!