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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.
184 Lights
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[00:00:00]
Melissa: Okay, Jam, today we are going to talk about what causes the Northern Lights.
Jam: Oh,
Melissa: this?
Jam: I don't know what causes them and I've never seen them, but I was watching something just the other day that talked about the Northern Lights, not like about them
Melissa: I bet I know why.
Jam: detail or whatever, but it just was mentioned in the show or something.
Melissa: Oh, okay.
Jam: And I was like, I just was thinking like, huh, those are really weird.
Melissa: Yes, they are really weird, and they're really cool, and we're actually right now in the middle of a geomagnetic storm, which I don't even know if we know what that means, but we're going to talk about it, and that's impacting our atmosphere, and it is likely to cause the Northern Lights. Right now, probably not by the time this comes out, but definitely when we're recording. And I figured we were just talking about the solar eclipse and now this geomagnetic storm is happening. And let's talk about the sun and the cool lights some [00:01:00] more.
Jam: Okay. Sounds good. Let's do
Melissa: right, let's get into it. Hey, I'm Melissa,
Jam: I'm Jam.
Melissa: and I'm a chemist,
Jam: And I'm not.
Melissa: welcome to Chemistry for Your
Jam: The podcast helps you understand the chemistry of your everyday life.
Melissa: Okay, and before we even get started, I do need to shout out Abby H, who asked for this back in 2021.
Jam: Ooh, nice.
Melissa: So if you asked me a question, you know, two years ago, and I haven't gotten to it yet, Maybe, you know, take a little bit of hope
Jam: I'm impressed that you're able to find that because it is so hard for us to go find some questions of old
Melissa: it, it was, um, actually in a text message. It was in our very, some of our very early days, and she's a friend to IRL that texted about it.
Melissa: Or sometimes I would text myself the messages that people suggested. I'd be like, Oh, someone in real life just asked me [00:02:00] a question. This would be a great episode
Jam: Yes.
Melissa: okay, so that is, uh, the first person who asked me about it, but it's been coming up more and more lately because of this geomagnetic storm.
Melissa: And I guess I clicked on some solar eclipse articles. So then my Google was like, what about, what about other solar articles? And so it all came back together. Okay.
Jam: Nice.
Melissa: So I actually think it makes the most sense to start our lesson today at the Northern Lights. What? In Canada, let's go. Um, no, at the Northern Lights themselves and then we'll talk about what causes them a little bit later.
Melissa: So when I mean at the Northern Lights, I mean at the molecular level of the Northern Lights. So we're going to zoom in. molecules and we're actually going to go all the way back and do just a basic refresher on like what an atom even is. So molecules are made up of two or more atoms and atoms. They have usually a center surrounded by some particles.
Melissa: The particles we're [00:03:00] going to talk about today are electrons. Okay, so we're going all the way back that far back. Okay, we've talked about it several times, but I just feel like it's worth it to do a little refresher.
Jam: Yes.
Melissa: And so atoms are run by electrons, and atoms can absorb energy from heat or light. We've talked about that a lot.
Melissa: Um, and therefore, they, they let the electrons surrounding the atom, those will sort of take in the energy for the atom is a good way to think about it. But something that we haven't talked about a lot is that we have talked about it a little. The episode that came to my mind was when we talked about how thermoses work
Jam: Oh, yeah
Melissa: how, um, how molecules or particles really of any kind will run into each other, they'll collide and that will transfer energy.
Jam: Right.
Melissa: So we don't talk about that a ton, but that is an important thing. That [00:04:00] transfers energy and then impacts the electrons and I tried to think of a good analogy and the thing I thought of was Imagine so you have kids you have a you let's say your son is Hanging out just a normal at home state And then one of our friends brings their kid over and say that kid is so excited that he's gonna get to see his friend.
Melissa: And when he gets to your house, he's really excited. And then what happens to your son?
Jam: also gets excited.
Melissa: Gets really excited and now they're just like.
Jam: Ah, yeah
Melissa: Literally, I've heard both of the kids I'm thinking of right now make that exact noise.
Jam: Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa: Okay, yes. So, so we will say they went from their resting state or their ground state to their excited state, right?
Jam: Okay. Yes. Before,
Melissa: before they can come back down to their ground state, in order to do that, You have to let them let off energy, right? Okay, and then or another example I thought of is maybe like if you're at work and you're really stressed at [00:05:00] work And you're taking in all these things that need to be thought about or worried about and you're just getting more and more stressed You need an outlet a lot of times to like let that energy off.
Melissa: So like I used to go to kickboxing, or you go running. So that's like your way to come down from your excited state back to your ground
Jam: Mm-Hmm. . Mm-Hmm. . Okay. Mm-Hmm.
Melissa: So electrons do the same thing. They start out in a resting state in a cloud around an atom,
Jam: Okay. Mm-Hmm.
Melissa: then as they absorb energy, They'll, they'll move away from the atom into excited states.
Melissa: And you can sort of think of them as like concentric rings, or like, sort of like rungs on a circular ladder or something, where they're concentrated around the middle of the atom, and then, they're not super concentrated, I guess, they've got room to move, but they get further and further away into like higher and higher excited
Jam: Okay. Okay.
Melissa: And there can be a variety of levels of excited states. [00:06:00] Um, so they'll stay in that excited state for a period of time, and then they do something to let off energy to come back down to their ground state. And when I say for a period of time, this is like a very short period of time, like fractions of nanoseconds.
Melissa: It's like very, very short, but that's a very basic primer on how electrons can absorb energy and then they will come back down from the excited state to the ground state after they've let the energy back off. Okay, and oftentimes they let that energy off instead of like your son running around screaming or me doing kickboxing or you running, they let their energy out in a variety of ways, but one that we see is light.
Jam: Okay.
Melissa: And we know about light is that different wavelengths or different amounts of energy will result in different colors of light. Okay, so, [00:07:00] different atoms are able to absorb different amounts of energy. So I'm going to start with just talking about oxygen as an example. So oxygen, you know, has a few different levels of, you know, excited states that it can get to.
Melissa: So it will absorb energy in certain amounts that will take it from the ground state to level 1, level 2, level 3, excited state, okay? Just sort of speaking generally. And then, when the electrons need to come back down from that excited state into the ground state, they will let off that exact amount of energy which often corresponds to a color of light.
Melissa: It's light energy in a specific wavelength and a specific energy level. So, for example, oxygen very often will absorb enough light, or enough energy, and re emit in the color green. Or, if it maybe takes a little bit of a lower energy particle, it can take less energy in, and then it'll release [00:08:00] that out, and it'll look red.
Jam: Okay.
Melissa: So these different amounts of energy that the Oxygen is taking in and then releasing back out as it relaxes back down to its ground state. They correspond to colored light.
Jam: Okay. Right.
Melissa: And higher energy moves more towards like the violet spectrum, the green, and then lower energy is more like on the red side, you know, oranges, yellows, oranges, and reds are lower energy. So, you know, oxygen can absorb in these specific energy packets is what they're sometimes referred to. Okay. as like a photon, a little pack, photon is a packet of light, kind of. They'll absorb a specific packet of light and then let that specific packet of light back off. Okay? And then it has these characteristic ways that it can do that.
Melissa: So it sort of has what we would call It's like, almost like a [00:09:00] fingerprint, called an emission spectrum, where if you were to shine light on oxygen, it will consistently emit the same colors. So I'm going to show you the emission spectrum, and I don't know if this is possible. I wondered while I was talking about, or thinking about this, if I If I point up to the top of the screen on YouTube, would you be able to cut in a picture of what I'm talking about?
Melissa: Okay, great! Okay, so, right here, imagine. I guess you don't have to imagine, hopefully it'll be
Jam: Yeah, yeah.
Melissa: Is it hard to do that, or is it
Jam: I could do it. Okay,
Melissa: great, great, great. Okay, so, let me pull up the, um, the emission spectrum of just oxygen. Okay, and I'll link this also in our show notes and Jam will put it in for us. But, um, okay, so here is a variety of different emission spectrums for different [00:10:00] gases. But see how oxygen lets out maybe like a very little in the violet
Jam: Uh huh.
Melissa: several in the green, and then some in the red and orange, right?
Melissa: Or, then if you have something like nitrogen, do we have the nitrogen one? Or like, here's helium. Helium has a different spectrum. And so each of these emission spectrums are slightly different. And so they're almost like little fingerprints, like, oh, if we see this emitting these specific lights at these specific wavelengths, these colors, we know that must be oxygen.
Jam: see. Okay. That's really cool.
Melissa: we did this, and you may have done it too, because I did it in my gen chem class, so anyone who's taken like high school chemistry may have gotten like, they almost look like those little solar glasses. And they're so that you can kind of see the light broken out of the rainbow and then you shine light onto like a tube of oxygen or a tube of helium, like in a, like a sealed [00:11:00] glass tube of it, and they're like, Like let the light out and you look through that little thing and you can see the emission spectrum And there's like a lot of different ways scientists use this specifically with stuff in space to see like What gases are in space and things like that?
Melissa: I don't I don't fully understand that but Um, and so there's all different types of emission and absorption spectrum So here's a few more if you want to look I like this one the nitrogen You can see it has more pink like purpley blues You And then less in the red and green, while oxygen has more in the green and
Jam: Interesting. Yeah.
Melissa: Okay. So, we've never talked about that part of it before, the emission
Jam: Yeah. That's crazy. It's weird because I feel like, you know, we talked about various different elements on the periodic table and that they behave differently. So it's like, that's not new. We've talked about that a lot. But the fact that they behave differently in the ways that they. Uh, in the light when they're releasing energy, it's like, it feels weird at first because it's such [00:12:00] an area that most of us haven't thought of, but then it's like, well, I guess it's not that weird that like, you know, we know that like iron has very different properties from, you know, oxygen or carbon or something like that.
Jam: It's like, we
Melissa: all that has to do with our electrons
Jam: and we know that because we've interacted with them and the lights thing is something that like we've probably witnessed, we just haven't thought about it. And like who's going to shine a light specifically like oxygen and
Melissa: Yeah,
Jam: you know what I mean?
Melissa: be, you'd have to be in a science class for this to come up. Unless you are
Jam: in
Melissa: looking at the Northern Lights.
Jam: Yeah.
Melissa: So all that to say is what we see when we see the oftentimes green, because oxygen is the predominant thing that this is happening to, but sometimes blues and pinks and reds of the Northern Lights is.
Melissa: Energy being absorbed by [00:13:00] oxygen atoms, nitrogen atoms, helium, hydrogen, Ox Ox Blup! Energy being absorbed by those different atoms, the electrons becoming excited, and then as they relax back down to the ground state and let that energy back off, they do so in these beautiful displays of color. Because it's not just happening to one molecule, it's tons of them. So that's what the Northern Lights are.
Jam: Okay, so we talked about what they are and now you're going to explain why they're even getting Energy
Melissa: Yes.
Jam: and why is it up there only? Is that good?
Melissa: Yes, that we are going to talk about those things. And I will say, so it kind of is cool. It's kind of like you're seeing the little fingerprints of all the different, you know,
Jam: Yeah,
Melissa: I think I was very excited about
Jam: almost like painting with all the colors of the wind, but like, but like different, you know what I
Melissa: like different.
Jam: It's almost like, instead of painting the colors of the wind, you're just like, you're sort of like [00:14:00] lighting with all the colors of the
Melissa: Oxygen. Yes, exactly. I love that. Okay. So, um, And for those of you who are listening and not on our YouTube channel, you can go check out our YouTube channel to see the emission spectrums or you can just google oxygen emission spectrum versus nitrogen or something like that. You can see the different ones.
Melissa: Or hydrogen. Hydrogen's pretty simple. Well, it has less light that comes out in different areas. Okay, so now then. That's what's happening when the northern lights. happen at, at the molecular level right there. But the question you asked is like, why though? Where is this energy coming from? Why isn't it all the time?
Melissa: Okay. And that's where the sun comes in and the geomagnetic storm.
Jam: Okay
Melissa: so the sun will sometimes, and I am not a solar physicist, so I don't know why the sun is doing this, and I [00:15:00] probably could have looked it up, but that was beyond the scope of this episode.
Jam: Right.
Melissa: Sometimes I, I, the best way that I've like thought about it so far, solar scientists hit me up, is sometimes the sun will almost like spasm, and it'll send out like more energy than normal.
Melissa: So you've heard of maybe solar flares?
Jam: Yes, I have and I'm a sci fi nerd so like I've seen like that'd be a plot device of a
Melissa: Depictions of that? Yeah, so, um, sometimes very large er than normal amounts of energy get emitted from the sun, like an unusually large amount. That's why I think of it like suddenly a spasm happens and, you know, whatever. And that will send charged particles going very rapidly towards the Earth, okay? But we have a magnetic field around the Earth. in that magnetic field, you know, for the most part will deflect that. So think about like charged particles coming at a charged band of electrons are [00:16:00] going to mostly, you know, bounce away. But some of them will ride the wave of the electromagnetic of the, you know, magnetic field around the
Jam: Uh huh.
Melissa: And so like, if you imagine there's like a nice little circular thing blocking out the Earth, some of them will ride that wave and come close to the Earth, close to the Earth's atmosphere, And a nice little crown sort of at the top of the earth.
Melissa: So if you look up the magnetic field around the earth, it's not a perfect sphere, but because of the shape of it, then the Northern lights happen where the magnetic field kind of comes in closer to the earth's atmosphere, which happens to be. Not exactly on each of the poles, but like near the top of the, and the bottom of the earth.
Melissa: Like it makes a little circle, you know? And so Northern Canada is, um, made up of [00:17:00] that here. Let me made up of that, his present in that circle. Now I'm going to also pull up the magnetic field around the earth. And maybe you can also put that right here. That would be amazing. Okay, so here's a picture of the magnetic field, and you can see that like, it might not be exactly just on the Earth's, it wouldn't go just to the poles, it might come right here, like around the top and around the bottom.
Melissa: Okay, so because of that, sometimes, and these, lots of these charged particles will hitch a ride on the wave of the shape of the magnetic field, and they will collide with the magnetic Oxygen, nitrogen, what have you, atoms, in the atmosphere, or on the outer edges, right there. And that is where the beautiful displays happen.
Jam: Got it. But these don't happen on the South Pole because they go east. Oh,
Melissa: they, I think they [00:18:00] do. we, we talk about them being the northern lights, but I think they happen on both ends, but it's just that the northern side has land that we can get to
Jam: Right. Right. I was thinking that you were going to say something about like the polarity of that magnetic field means that the direction they go is toward the north, something like that.
Melissa: think so. Let me double
Jam: So you're telling me there's northern lights and there's some, there's, there's southern lights too. Oh, I didn't, I didn't realize there were, there were southern lights.
Jam: I did not know that.
Melissa: the Aurora Borealis or the Northern Lights. In the Southern Hemisphere it's called an Aurora Australis, Australis? the Southern Lights. So apparently they happen both places. Interesting.
Jam: Now that's crazy.
Melissa: Yes.
Jam: weird how they don't get much. I mean, like what you're saying is makes total sense. We can obviously go to the one of those much more easily, but it's just funny that like, never [00:19:00] even heard that until now that there is a Southern Lights.
Melissa: Well, why would you? Nobody sees it. Well, I guess not nobody. Not very many people hang out down there.
Jam: Yeah. It's very crazy. There's this, uh, stuff I show that I love that I think you would like.
Jam: Uh, that even we talked about this actually, uh, that I think is important in the podcast that both my wife and my mother in law also like we've all watched this hard to find a show. We all like called for all mankind,
Melissa: Yes.
Jam: space race history thing.
Melissa: yes, yes. We have talked about
Jam: And one of the seasons there is a solar storm kind of thing.
Jam: And there's people on the moon and the moon is much more exposed. And so that energy, that radiation, that kind of stuff, big deal in that episode about what they do to. Be safe. Despite that. Also, the effect it has on the moon is interesting, and I'll, I think it's accurate to, like, what we think might happen.
Jam: Like, it's, I don't know if it's ever been observed on the moon, but I'll show you a video [00:20:00] afterward of what, how they did that, but it, it looks, Pretty cool. Now I'm kind of seeing a connection between like the weird ethereal oddness of the lights and the way that they tried to render, uh, an effect on the moon.
Jam: Anyway, um, but I'll show you later, but it's from the same thing. I didn't really realize that, that it was the solar flare deal. Okay. Wow.
Melissa: So, oh, and I don't know if I ever specifically said that a geomagnetic storm is when those shooting charged particles are coming towards the earth and they disturb the, the magnetic field around the earth. That's called a, a, um, geomagnetic storm. And then I also learned all about like solar weather, which.
Melissa: you know, is basically the concept that solar flares happen and they can impact our magnetic field. And that's a storm. And so it's called, like, Weather
Jam: crazy. Cause the sun's like so far away,
Melissa: it [00:21:00] does
Jam: messes with us and also we need it.
Melissa: and there was a very crazy thing. I'm not trying to fear monger or turn everybody into preppers but because of a geomagnetic storm in the 1980s I think like some parts of Canada lost power for it was something crazy like nine hours And, you know, at that point, I feel like in the 80s, that wasn't a big deal, but if it was probably a big deal, but not as big of a deal, like right now, if we all lost power for nine hours, I feel like it would be chaos.
Jam: You're right. Yeah. People will be definitely freaking out.
Melissa: Yes. that was just something I read. I read it really late at night. Sometimes I get into researching these things and like I do it too late. So now I, this is not in any of our sources and I haven't revisited that. It was just a weird thing that I saw, but I just, one more thing for us to be scared about.
Jam: Yeah. That's so funny because I feel like a lot of us would be like, wait, look for [00:22:00] a radio or, you know, something like that. Like it'd be like, well, yeah, well, how many power and if the power also got like knocked out to the like cell towers might not be like,
Melissa: Yeah.
Jam: How do we get information?
Melissa: I know. I think we'd all just have to stop
Jam: Yeah.
Melissa: and maybe it'd be chaos. I don't
Jam: been here while they start walking around the street and be like looking for somebody who knows what they're talking about.
Jam: Like a bunch of us are just like. Leave our houses for once or whatever and be like, do you know what's going?
Melissa: I was like, I'm glad I have a bunch of neighbors within walking distance so I could at least talk to somebody and we would all just not know what to do together.
Melissa: Mm-Hmm. , you
Jam: mean, whether my neighbor like grows food and like has chickens and like has eggs, the power goes out longer than when we knock on his door, but like you're self sufficient, uh, can make some sort of trade here.
Melissa: That kind of plays into what my happy thing for this week is but let's let's stop our little tangent here And do you want to try to explain this back? [00:23:00] To me and then we can go into our happy things
Jam: Yes. I would love to.
Melissa: hmm. Mm
Jam: so The, the elements, the oxygen, the nitrogen, the hydrogen, the helium, they just want to shine. They just want to, they just want to show, they just want to show us who they are and we just won't let them most of the time.
Melissa: or we just don't have the energy to let them
Jam: Yeah, right. There we go. We don't have the energy to let them in the large scale sense, but you know who has a lot of energy.
Melissa: The
Jam: The son. My son really likes it. My son really likes this, like, classic folk song, Mr. Son, you know? Um, Mr. Son, Mr. Son, Mr. Golden Son, please shine down on me. One of the lines in that Oh, you [00:24:00] haven't? Uh, one of the lines in that is, These, these little children are asking you, um, oh, it's something about son, son, Mr.
Jam: Golden Sun hiding behind a tree on point. And as I've listened to this song hundreds of times at this point, I've realized like, they, it's behind a tree. So like, all you gotta do is like move. It's like, it's behind a cloud where like, there's nothing we can do about it. So like, if there's something behind a tree, that's because you are behind the tree.
Melissa: spot. Yeah.
Jam: Anyway, the sun has a lot of, Mr. Sun has a lot of energy and sometimes Mr. Sun sends a lot of energy. more than we're used to toward the earth very rapidly.
Melissa: Mm-Hmm.
Jam: And our magnetic field pattern thing is, for the most part, kind of prevents that from really getting into our atmosphere, getting into a way where it could visually affect, it probably still affects, Whether it's like that, [00:25:00] but in a visual sense where most of us live, but the pattern works to where at the poles it can get much closer and so that energy can actually raise the energy level of these electrons
Melissa: It's like, it sends electrons with energy shooting and they go interact, they knock and collide and transfer
Jam: transfer energy. So they are electrons, fast.
Melissa: There's also protons, but those aren't the ones that are doing most of the
Jam: Got it, got it. They're just, they're just hanging.
Melissa: think so. I was like, well, what happens to the protons? No answer.
Jam: yeah, yeah.
Jam: That's so funny. They're like, like, we're not, like, what happens to protons? And it's just like crickets.
Melissa: Yeah, that's how I felt when I was searching for it, and I was like, well, okay, let's
Jam: So they are colliding and transferring energy, getting the other ones excited, like. the kid who meets the, who finds the other kid, their buddies, they [00:26:00] get each other excited. And as they get excited, there's different levels to that excitement. The electrons have, that are the concentric rings around the protons, the nucleus, the whatever.
Jam: And, but then as it's coming back down from that excited state, which that's always hard, because that feels counterintuitive to me for some reason, going down, that's when it's emitting light. And based on what level of excitement, going down from affects which color also which element it was that's at that's electrons got excited in the first place both what element and how excited
Melissa: Right. Yeah. Mm-Hmm.
Jam: and all those things happening to work this at the right time in those conditions that situation can suddenly make a lot of Electrons become [00:27:00] excited and come back down.
Jam: And so it's visually a lot of light being emitted
Melissa: Yes. From a lot of different oxygens or nitrogens or whatever. Yep.
Jam: and different energy levels, I guess. So the different colors plus the elements, and then it's just crazy, beautiful, awesome.
Melissa: Yeah. There you go.
Jam: And, and, and it's real. Yeah.
Melissa: talking about like, what's a good way to describe that? And then something I thought is like, what if we had A bunch of different soda machines and they took in like only, like this one only takes a dollar and this one only takes 50 cents or a dollar and 50 cents and this one only takes in 25 cents or 75 cents or something like that.
Melissa: And so you can go to different soda machines and put in different amounts of money and each one will only take different amounts of money and each one gives you a different soda. sort of like that, like oxygen will only give you these certain colors [00:28:00] and it'll only And it will only accept these certain amounts of light, and nitrogen will only accept these certain amounts of nights of energy, and it'll only give off these certain colors of light.
Melissa: You know, it's like, each separate atom has a separate amount of energy it will absorb, and in return, as that energy gets released, it will only give off, you know, one of these specific colors. So it depends on, yeah, both the identity of the atom and the amount of energy that it happens to absorb. But it can only absorb certain amounts, so, which is very, it is very counterintuitive.
Melissa: Because it should just be
Jam: hmm.
Melissa: like, oh, we put some energy in it, we get some energy out, and we can put in any type of energy, and that exact same type of energy will come out or whatever. But it's not like that. Someone described it to me once as like, photons of light have a specific wavelength and it can't give off anything more than that.
Melissa: It's not like it can give off half of its [00:29:00] energy and like, the electron hang out between the ground state and the excited state. That's not possible. Just like how a soda machine can't dispense half a coat,
Jam: hmm. Got it. Got it. Yes. I see.
Melissa: Great, well good job!
Jam: Well, good job to you, too.
Melissa: Thanks. Can you tell we're tired? Um, do you want to talk about, or maybe I'll talk about my fun thing since it transitions well
Jam: Yes, yes, totally.
Melissa: Well lately, I think I've just been thinking a lot about like all the suffering happening in the world and like, you know So I think some of it is like social media just you know brings you the sad things
Jam: Mm hmm. Mm
Melissa: about like the war going on and then there's like a lot of other things.
Melissa: I'm learning about other exploitative practices like that are really putting a lot of people's lives in pretty miserable conditions as a direct result of just like economy and the way things are set up. [00:30:00] And it's been making me really sad, which doesn't
Jam: Yeah, I think you're misunderstanding the assignment.
Melissa: But then I think I've spent so much time thinking about that and then kind of like feeling helpless because it's like, well, my representatives aren't doing what I want them to do. And I don't even know if the thing that I want them to do is really going to like help anything. And so like, what do you do?
Melissa: Because these are like huge issues. And then I thought there are some like practical things that we can do in general, stuff that you and I talked about before, like reduce your waste and try to make things last, whatever.
Jam: hmm.
Melissa: Something that I've been thinking about more lately is like a really tangible thing that I can do to make life better overall for the people around me is to just you know love the people around me well and try to just like do something nice for them
Jam: Mm hmm.
Melissa: I don't know, it, it [00:31:00] feels so small, but just like, helping someone nearby you who needs it is a tangible thing that you can do to make the world better.
Jam: Yes.
Melissa: Even if it's just like a small scale, and like, even if it feels like this isn't gonna make a huge difference.
Jam: Mm hmm.
Melissa: And that, and also like, I can learn about things, even if that doesn't feel like it's making a huge difference.
Jam: Yeah.
Melissa: But, so that's something that I guess I've just been thinking about is like, It is important to learn about these big, hard things, but whenever I get too overwhelmed by these big, hard things, or feel like lost in it, or feel just like, Overwhelmed with despair about it and like how I feel helpless I can help a human being like watch my friends kids or bring someone a meal or invite a friend over to cook a meal for them or [00:32:00] you know I got this little sign in my yard that says if you turn you should turn DFW because there's a bird migration happening and the the birds might hit Your window and die and if you turn off your lights after a certain time of what night you're like much less likely to let Birds die.
Melissa: It's like these small things that can help my or like I've started composting. I don't know It helps more when I'm like thinking of a specific person,
Jam: Yeah. Mm
Melissa: that, I think like building community and loving the people around me well and trying to help them has been the thing that I've been clinging to lately and that's bringing me a lot of hope and joy. Even in the face of like so much despair and sadness. And so yeah, that's just something I'm just thinking about.
Jam: That's good. That'll breach. I'm very down with that. It [00:33:00] is huge because it's like, it doesn't, it doesn't fix the things out there, but it is something that Does affect the place where I'm at right now, and
Melissa: Yeah.
Jam: you know We all wish and I think I think really do done everybody does wish they could have and a much broader impact than that, but if we're so hopeless about the fact that it's hard to do that, that we don't do something small here, then none of us are going to do anything.
Jam: You know, it's like if a bunch of individuals did small things, actually, that would be huge. Right. So I love that. That's really cool.
Melissa: Yeah. And even just talking, like, there's a few of my friends that I hadn't really talked about, like, that I was feeling this way about with anyone really, I guess I was just kind of like holding it inside me, except maybe Mason, but you should always have more friends than just your spouse. And you know, so I, I just felt like I was kind of like alone worrying about all this stuff and feeling really sad.
Melissa: And. Then I just talked to a few of my [00:34:00] friends and having community in that and knowing that you're with other people who feel the same way and like trying to think about things that you can do together, that helped too. And then they told me that they've also found other community that's been doing that, that's been pouring back into them and then they, yeah, so I don't know.
Melissa: That's just, that's been an encouraging thing in the midst of.
Jam: Yeah.
Melissa: So, yeah, that's been my happy thing. There's been like a few specific instances and I'm like, I made this person's life better today, you know,
Jam: That's cool.
Melissa: or they made my life better today. Because you have to be, I saw a TikTok that was like, um, If you don't let people help you, that's anti community.
Melissa: If you're helping other people all the time and you're not help, you're not letting people help you and you really need it, you're being anti community and you're part of the problem. And I was like, ooh, yeah. But, but there have been some tangible times people have made my life better too.[00:35:00]
Jam: Yeah.
Melissa: So yeah, that's just been a big picture thing I've been thinking about.
Jam: cool. I like that a lot. That's awesome. I totally had mine and I, it's gone.
Melissa: Was it while I was talking or before
Jam: No, no, I had it before. I remember thinking you going first made more sense and I wasn't worried about it. And then slowly mine has gone and I'm just trying to
Melissa: Oh,
Jam: figure out what it was.
Melissa: we can do that thing. Um, you know, that. That sometimes people will do when they show like the time has gone by is that like little colorful screen and it's like boop.
Jam: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa: And
Jam: bars and tone.
Melissa: it will cut this part out and just let the bars and tone
Jam: Okay. All right. Perfect. No,
Melissa: I think you should leave the part where we're explaining that in. That'll be fun. You had it while I was talking about it.
Jam: no, it's okay. I even had it before.[00:36:00]
Melissa: Yeah, I got
Jam: Oh, got it. I got it. I totally got it.
Melissa: Got it. He's got it. All right.
Jam: Okay. So I got it.
Melissa: Okay.
Jam: Uh, it's just like one of those things where it's like, it's a happy thing, but I guess, you know, in a perfect world, maybe I'd wait a week or two in the next recording and tell you more about how it's actually going. Maybe I will still do that, but I'm excited about it.
Jam: So I'm about it right
Melissa: Yeah, just tell me about it.
Jam: So I have been many, many times and I mean many, many times considering making this decision and I haven't done it because I've, I've put it off or I've thought, I don't know if I need it right now
Melissa: no idea what this is gonna be.
Jam: and it's going to be underwhelming and, um, but [00:37:00] so finally I feel like the, the The need is there enough and the, um, so I'm going to try, I'm going to do a sort of trial.
Jam: Two months of working at the co working space in our town
Melissa: my gosh, with
Jam: Called
Melissa: our friend Ryan.
Jam: our good buddy
Melissa: You just, you just doxed yourself so now everybody can come find you while you're at work. Anybody who's listening to this podcast. Yeah,
Jam: stand we walked to and I think we shouted it out by name But you know, I mean you gotta be a member to come there. So People, they can't just find me. Actually, it's better to be there than to be at a coffee shop where anyone can
Melissa: That's probably true.
Jam: Anyway, co working space, uh, may or may not remove the name that I said a couple seconds ago. We'll see. But, but, um, for a few reasons. One, my house is kind of crazy, and I have this, you know, probably anyone you included, [00:38:00] especially like have you've been in the working remotely for like a long time at this point.
Jam: And even before that, you would work around different places like that if you needed to. But, um, the difficulty of like, if you work at a coffee shop, you gotta pay for something. Like I want to support the coffee shops here, obviously. I don't want to just use this space. Uh, that's, it adds up. I also have coffee at my own house that I have already roasted that I like a lot.
Jam: If I stay here, free coffee, or sort of free, uh, but my house is kind of chaos. And sometimes, I mean, it's hard for your kids to be like, okay, he's in that's the other room. And there's all these windows actually into this office, right? Yeah.
Melissa: through. Yeah.
Jam: So it just kind of challenging. And I think there's a point in the future where I wouldn't need to have a different place, but I like, I kept thinking, I really, really nice to have a, like a comfortable chair desk to have things spread out good internet outlet and free coffee.[00:39:00]
Jam: They have free coffee. So you're paying for the place. But you get the coffee. What I'm doing at other places, I'm paying for the coffee, and I'm getting the place for free. So to speak. So I'm going to Is it really
Melissa: Is it good coffee?
Jam: Yes, it is. It's not good with an E at
Melissa: It's not your company's coffee, but it's still pretty good coffee.
Jam: It's pretty good.
Melissa: Great.
Jam: And so I'm going to try that for a bit.
Jam: I'm pumped about it. There's something fun about a new environment to work in a little bit. And I'm not like sitting at a desk working tons of hours every single week. It's But there are chunks of time, you know, multiple days of the week, sometimes maybe every day of the week that I need to have a place to go get a bunch of things done, but it's a very fixed amount of time that I have.
Jam: And so having it be somewhere kind of around town that I'm already going to be bouncing around doing other stuff is perfect.
Melissa: Amazing.
Jam: So I'm pumped about it.
Melissa: That's really fun. Sometimes I've had that same [00:40:00] problem. Mason and I negotiated a small budget for me to be able to go. When I got a race, I was like, I'm going to, I am putting in a request. Now, for you, in our budget, to take some of that raise and let me go hang out at coffee shops, but lately it's been like, ugh, they like kind of hurt my back, or
Jam: hmm. Mm hmm.
Melissa: like I'm, you know, having my blood sugar issues, so I need to eat something that's like pretty good for me, and like they're, a lot of that stuff's not, so sometimes I'll just pretend that my coffee table, or my like kitchen table is the cafe, instead of going to my office.
Jam: Yeah. So you like change locations within your house?
Melissa: Yes, yeah.
Jam: know, you could
Melissa: it works well for me because I have no children that live
Jam: Yes. You know, you could do if you ever just want an extra change. This the coworking space which I may bleep the name out of uh earlier and remove it uh is They have this this punch card thing. You can just buy a punch card.
Jam: You could come work near ryan and I Any [00:41:00] day you want to um, or wait till we're not there and go work there But it's cool because it's just like you have this punch card You can use it whenever you want to instead of feeling like oh i've paid an amount I need to like you be there a lot this whole month or whatever It's like it's like you've banked
Melissa: Some days. Cool. That's really cool. Yeah.
Jam: Yeah.
Melissa: Alright. Awesome. Well, um, thanks for telling me about that. Maybe I will do that. And thanks for learning about, um, about the Northern Lights.
Jam: teaching me. And thanks Abby for asking that question all those years ago. And if you have a question, idea, thought, um, curiosity, wondering if something is chemistry, please let us know. Reach out to us on our website at chemforyourlife. com. That's chem F O R L I F E dot com to share your thoughts and ideas and questions.
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 of patrons on patreon. com slash chem for your life to help keep our show going and, uh, help keep our show free and all that stuff. We'd love to have your help doing that.
Jam: We have a super [00:42:00] cool community over there and some perks to thank you for supporting the show. If you're not able to do that, you can still help us by subscribing on our favorite podcast app, rating and writing a review on Apple podcasts. I think you can also rate and write reviews for podcasts on Spotify now.
Jam: I heard
Melissa: Oh, that's
Jam: confirmed, but I heard that so you can rate it on either place, review it over on either place and also subscribe on our YouTube channel and leave us a comment saying that you're there and that you're watching and that helps us to share chemistry with even more people.
Melissa: Awesome. This episode was made possible by our financial supporters on Patreon, and it seriously means so much to us that you all want to help make chemistry happen. happen. Chemistry of real life happen and make chemistry more accessible for more people. And so I want to give an extra special thanks to those people.
Melissa: We want to. Those people are John T, Avishai B, Bri M, Brian K, Carol R, Chris and Claire S, Chelsea B, Derek L, Elizabeth P, Emerson W, Hunter R, Jacob T, Christina [00:43:00] G, Katrina H, Latila S, Lynn S, Melissa P, Nicole C, Rachel R, Sarah M, Stephen B, Shadow, Suzanne P, Timothy P, Venus R, Radioactive Dreams, Cullen R, and Jeanette N.
Melissa: Thank you all so much for everything that you do to make Chemistry for Life happen. And an extra special thanks to Bree who often creates illustrations to go with episodes of Chemistry for Life that you can see over on our YouTube channel. And you can thank Bree by following her and supporting her. at Bree McAllister, oh, at McAllisterBree on Twitter, or you can find her website in our show notes.
Jam: And if you'd like to learn more information about this episode, you can check the references in our show notes or in the description of the video. Yay chemistry!
Melissa: Yay Northern Lights! That's on our bucket list, to see the Northern Lights.
Jam: be so cool. [00:44:00]