How do diapers change color when wet?

Hey, Jam. Hey. I know that you're familiar with diapers because you have kids a whole gaggle.

Mm-hmm. I do. And all of them have or do or have worn diapers. Yes, that's correct.

And have you ever used the ones with the wetness indicators? Yes, I think all the ones we have

have wetness indicators. And what do you know about how those work?

I don't know about how they work. I just know how to look for

whether it's indicating wetness. Well, do you want to know? Yes, I'd love to.

Okay, that's going to be our Q&A lesson for today. Awesome. Let's do it. Yay!

Hey.

Hey, I'm Melissa. I'm Jam. And I'm a chemist. And I'm not. And welcome to chemistry for your life.

The podcast helps you understand the chemistry of your everyday life.

Okay, and before we get into today's episode, I would like to address a little bit of what I

think is the elephant in the room, but I don't think other people probably think is the elephant

in the room. Mm-hmm. And that is my face. I know. So there is a bandage on my nose for those of you

who are listening. And that is because I had to get stitches on my nose and I broke it.

And that is why I don't know if you noticed or recording schedules a little different. We did

it more re-releases in a row than we normally do. I didn't say a lot of details about your nose,

but I did say that in the intro of the re-release that that was part of what contributed. Yes.

So you fell. Yes, so if you'd like to know more of the deeds on what happened to my nose,

I know everybody is like tell me everything about what happened. You can check out our community

episode, which will tell Jam all the details. He'll ask all the questions and you'll get all the

behind-the-scenes info about it. So you can go on over to our community and learn everything that

happened to me. But the big picture is fine. Everything's fine. I went to the ERN Metro. It was fine.

Nice. And then also I think we have a brand new speaking of our community. I think we have a

brand new community member named Summer A. So yay Summer. Thank you so much for joining our

community. That's how exciting. And so this episode is a shout out to you. So thank you Summer.

And hopefully you think that this is the fun kind of episode to be dedicated to you. I don't know

how your relationship was with diapers, but... Right. Right. Yeah, it's kind of specific. But yeah,

if you want to either join our community that we're talking about, it's on patreon.com slash

Kim for your life. And that's also where our monthly bonus community episodes are where you get to

hear yeah, unabridged versions of things going on in our lives. Not always something as exciting

and painful as a bike wipeout happens, but that will be discussed on there. And we also have one

coming up where we did a media swap. So if you're interested in that, you can listen to or I guess

watch the two things that we swapped and you can give your opinion in the comments when we give

our opinion on our community over there. So that's where I tell Jim, he has to watch something I

really like and he tells me something that I have to watch that he really likes and then we talk

about it. We've done, yeah, we've done some movies, some shows, music, swap albums and stuff like

that a little bit. And this time we swapped documentaries. So very exciting. And the documentary,

I picked was Listers, which is the best documentary I've ever seen maybe. Whoa. I know, I know. Okay.

All right. Okay. So I know. You guys have to go listen. Okay. So this week's episode is,

it's dedicated to summer, but it is inspired by listener and friend of the show, Vienna.

Nice. So Vienna recently had a baby and Vienna loves chemistry for your life. She's one of

the first listeners. We knew her in real life, but she loved science. Yes. And at one time we

walked into a coffee shop where she was and she was like, oh my God, I'm listening to you guys.

And you're here in real life. And you know us in real life first. And she's like, yeah,

but this is so cool. Yeah, it's like, even though, yeah, it was like the most fan interaction.

Probably even though it's like, no, you're a real life friend. Yeah, but she was like so excited.

Yeah. Yeah. This is very fun. And I, she recently had a baby. I was over at her house and she was

talking about, you know, the color changes for urine, but it doesn't change for solid ways. And

she like, I don't really know why it changes. And I was like, should I do a podcast episode about

that? And she's like, yes. Oh, oh, oh. And so that is where this episode was born. Okay, sweet.

So thank you, Vienna, so much for that question and for wondering for being curious. I love that.

Also shout out to Vienna because she was like a reviewer for a long time. We would have people

like list had a crew of people were like sucking through. They would listen to every single

episode before it went out. Yeah, just to give extra set of ears and feedback, you know, yes.

So the least we could do is explore this question. Yeah, 100% yeah, amazing. Okay, so there are kind

of two chemistry lessons of all today. We're going to go more in depth on one about acids and

bases. And then the other one is about color. And we've talked about that a lot before. So I'll

only I'll only like dip my toe into that. Okay. So let's talk about acids and bases first.

Essentially, the reason that Venus babies diaper changes colors or anybody's babies diaper

changes colors when there's urine is. So the urine hits the diaper and it goes through a sort

of a polymer matrix. Okay. And we've talked about this before on an episode where it was a

chemistry at home episode where you worked with the stuff inside the diaper and added water to it

or whatever. But it basically absorbs a lot of that water and tries to kind of immobilize it.

So the baby's not just sitting in water, you know, whatever. And then so but it does still that

stuff does get wet. And so it is able to travel through the diaper. And so it hits that polymer

and that liquid will very slowly move through and eventually the liquid of the urine will hit

something that is acidic. So it gets to a strip that is a different material than the polymer

that's holding on to all the liquid. Okay. And just I don't want to get to side tracks. But if you're

curious about like what I mean by polymer and some of the background on how that water is mobilized,

we've talked about that like in our episode about jelly and in our chemistry at home episode

about diapers. You can read that textbook right there called the introduction to polymers. I'm just

kidding. But so when I say polymer, it sounds like a big scary word, but it's basically just something

that's really good in this case. It says that holds on to water. It doesn't really come up very much

after that. But then it'll get to sort of a different polymer and a different matrix or like a

different maybe a good way to say this is a different area that's holding something into place

in the diaper and it's yellow and it's acidic. And we can see that yellow color from the outside

of the diaper usually. And when the urine gets to that, it realizes that acid acids a lot of times

are able to give up a proton. So that means they're able to give up a hydrogen, but they leave the

electrons that acid will keep the electrons and just give up the hydrogen. So the urine is basic

enough that it can take that hydrogen for itself and that stabilizes itself a little bit and it leaves

the acid behind kind of destroyed a little bit. It's left with something negative to deal with.

I'll talk more about this in a little bit, but it's left with the acid is left with the

consequences of the basic, relatively basic urine coming and it's sad or it's

yes. So I have a really good analogy that I really like for this, but essentially there's a

chemical reaction that happens here and there are really striking results from a pretty almost

basic, no pun intended, a pretty simple chemistry reaction that it's like one that we've talked

about many times before, but just changing the context a little bit can make it so much more

applicable. And my favorite kind of metaphor for an acid-based reaction, especially one like this,

is that it's like a one-sided breakup. So if your in a relationship is going well and you know

you're happy and then someone else, the other person leaves a relationship to get something new,

either like they find someone new or they got their dream job and they're like I'm going,

you know, you hear those reddit stories where you're like I got offered into medical school and

I'm leaving my girlfriend, I never talked to her about it, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah.

One person leaves and they're going to go, they're going to go be happier in a new situation,

but the person that they've left behind has a lot of negative side effects for that.

And when you have those negative side effects, you can deal with those on your own, but you're

going to have a much easier time and the burden of that breakup and the negative side effects of

the breakup will be eased if you had some structures, some support systems and people who you can

share some of that burden with, right? Yes. That can really ease that transition.

Well, very similar to this in an acid-based reaction, the acid is going to lose a proton,

so the acid you can kind of think of the proton is bonded to the rest of the acid. The proton

leaves, but the electrons that were making that bond are just left behind and electrons are negative.

And so the thing that used to be the acid, give a bit of proton and now it's dealing with these

negative side effects. And it's hard to do that if it's dealing with the negative side effects all

alone. But there are some structures, some support systems that can ease the burden of that

extra negative charge. Make sense? Yes. Okay. I think so. I think I'm tracking.

Okay. And we often, after what was an acid loses its proton and it has to deal with those extra

electrons, we call that a conjugate base. So it was an acid, but now because it's lost its proton,

it can act more like a base. Okay. Because it's now negatively charged. So the support system

that can really help us in a breakup is similar with with atoms that need a support system.

And a good way to do this, there's a couple different ways that atoms can kind of share the burden.

But one that we've talked about before is, I don't know if you remember this word, but it's called

a conjugated system. Yes, we've talked about conjugation and you said the phrase like highly

conjugated, whatever. But it's like it's been a while. It has been a while. So I think I've

been to a little bit differently than I have before. Okay. So conjugated systems are systems of

orbitals. And orbitals are just really areas where electrons are likely to be. Okay.

And they're calculated mathematically and each individual atom will have orbitals. But when

those atoms come close enough to make a bond, the orbitals will overlap with each other and

that overlap of two orbitals is where the bond is. Like that is a bond basically is orbitals

overlapping. Okay. And so if you have a special type of orbital, it's called a p orbital. I don't

know if that really matters, but they can you can have them in the x, y or z axis. But if you can

get a whole row of them, all let's say in the same axis, so we'll just say in the y axis.

Then they'll all line up out of like the idea I had was did you ever have like a train track

or like a model train with a little kid or hot wheels or whatever. Like if you can line them

all the pieces up, if you can get the same type of orbital lined up, atom after atom after atom,

all those can sort of lock into place overlap with one another and make an electron highway

basically. Okay. So instead of electrons, extra electrons being stuck in one area, they can

be shared all across a big molecule. Okay. And that ability to share electrons across a big

molecule is really great because it can lessen the impact of say a radical. We've talked about

that before when we talked about antioxidants. Or in this case, if you get extra electrons from

an acid-base reaction, those extra electrons instead of being concentrated on the one atom that

used to be bonded to the hydrogen that's gone, they're spread all around the molecule. Through this

electron highway, because of these nice overlap of these special orbitals that allow our electrons

to be shared. Nice. Okay. Does that make sense? Yes. Okay. Sorry, I got so into my description,

I kind of lost my place in my notes. Let me just make sure that I didn't miss anything here.

Okay. So. Yes. Okay. So by doing this, once our acid gives up its proton, the impact of those

negative electrons is spread and it goes for being concentrated at one area to the burden being

shared, you know, just like when you have like friends and family and a counselor who are all

sharing the burden of your breakup. Yes. Same kind of thing that it's stabilizing the

electrons left behind on the molecule, just like all those support systems can stabilize your

emotional state after a breakup. Okay. So this, these alternating, these line up of P orbitals that

happened, it explains the phenomenon we've talked about before called a resonance, and that's

kind of what allows, that's the movement of these extra electrons all through the molecule.

But it is a good stabilizing factor in an acid-based reaction. Okay. But, you know,

breakups are going to have lasting impacts. They'll often change you, you know. I've

never been broken up with. I realize that just now. No, but I mean, like, there's a count to have like

witnessed. No, I was going to say to like, to have high hopes and not, not to have them be mutual.

You know, it's not the same thing, but it's like a, the bond's not formed. The bond's not formed,

but you're like putting yourself out there. Yeah. And doesn't, doesn't happen. So you're trying

to bond. Yeah. And no one's, no one's going for it. No one's going for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's not, not the same. My husband also has never been broken up with.

I know. Well, wait, maybe he has once in junior high, actually. Yeah, that is like, oh, actually,

you know what? I can, I had a situation that I think might count as being broken up with, but it's

like maybe a similar. Yeah, junior high, but as high school, but it was

early, but it wasn't shut down on approach. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so you have, but you definitely

have been the support system. I mean, you were around for some of my breakups. You are part of

the support system. Right, right. I've definitely seen you, you know, you know, the burden of having

pure bottles. Sure. And also like the, like the witnessing it, the being in the support system,

and the like, it's not hard to think about like, man, how much would harder would this be?

Right. Do not have it, right? Yes. If you're like, completely alone. Yeah. Yeah. However,

that factors into the, um, illustration, uh, like, it does factor in, it does factor in,

because atoms are more likely to give up a proton if they have that support system. Got it. Okay.

Whereas atoms that don't have good support systems, uh, like if you're bonded to a hydrogen,

you have a whole molecule that you can kind of share those extra electrons with after it leaves.

You're in a way better position than if you give up a proton and you have to deal with the burden

all by yourself. So, um, molecules are more acidic. Uh-huh. When they have a good support system

after the hydrogen use. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, we weigh harder, so they're less likely to do it.

Got it. So yeah, that kind of goes. But where, um, I mean, we can say there is like, you know,

breakups change you. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And you're, you're going to be really sad. You might even,

you know, it'll be a little blue. It does kind of break down a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. So, um,

here's where our color comes in. Okay. So that first part is just an acid-base reaction. We have

a molecule and it has a hydrogen that will be bonded somewhere in the molecule to another atom.

The hydrogen is given up. It's acidic and it will be given up when the urine comes to take it.

Okay. Some molecule in the urine is going to be a strong enough base compared to the acid in

that little yellow strip that it's going to take that proton. Okay. The electrons are going to be

left behind initially on that atom that was bonded to the proton. Okay. But that atom doesn't have

to deal with it itself. It has a whole molecule of support that it can share the extra electrons with.

Okay. Okay. Um, in doing that, when we take the hydrogen and the electrons get left behind,

we add a P orbital. So we change fundamentally the system of, you know, that was already there.

Okay. And that might not seem like it matters a lot except that those orbitals, uh, that's where

electrons hang out and electrons tend to absorb energy in the form of heat or light.

Mm-hmm. And if they absorb energy in certain amounts, they, um, we are able to see when they

reflect energy back based on what they absorb color. Mm-hmm. So if you, for example, start out

yellow, you have some alternating double bonds and it will take you, that color appears to be yellow

because it absorbs a certain wavelength and then reflects other things back. And so it looks yellow

to us based on what energy is absorbed from the light. Got it. And it so happens at systems that

have these conjugated systems that they tend to be absorbing light in the visible region.

And so we see them as being colorful. We've done a lot of episodes about color. Mm-hmm.

So I wasn't going to go to in depth about it except to say that when we have our acid-base

reaction, we gain those extra electrons and we are adding an orbital to that system.

So by adding an orbital to that system, we change the increment that light can be absorbed in.

Okay. And when we change the increment that light is absorbed in, then that means the light that

we see other than what's absorbed reflected back to this will now be a different color.

Mm-hmm. So by adding an orbital and adding electrons to it,

we've changed that interval. We've essentially fine-tuned our color

from yellow to, in this case, blue. Interesting. And that is what is known. Something that

changes color based on a chemical environment is known as an indicator. Indicator.

And you've seen indicators before. Yeah, we've used that word

and totally undyper related topics, haven't we? Yeah, do you remember the cabbage episode?

Yes. The cabbage is also an indicator. pH, specifically, like, it was very gradual

based on the pH of the, oh yeah. And this is kind of similar except it's like there's a pH range,

which basically is like a concentration of acid under which like if you have a certain amount

of acid, it'll be blue. And then if you have more acidic environment, it's yellow.

And so, and the only reason that it changes colors is it happens to have this like big system

that's conjugated and it's like over here, it's the perfect interval that of light that's

absorbed to look yellow and over here, the perfect interval of light is absorbed to look blue.

So we can just tweak it. It's like fine-tuning a radio station. So the initial

system of orbitals is like tuned to yellow. By adding to the system, it's like we change the station

and we now it's tuned over to blue. So that stark color change is because it's a pretty simple

reaction of just a proton being taken, the electrons are being left behind. But because it's a

simple reaction within a much larger system, the system is impacted in a really dramatic way

that other acid-based reactions might not do the same thing. So we've seen acid-based reactions

and we talked about them a lot in our baking powder versus baking soda episode. But in those episodes,

we didn't have as dramatic of a reaction because there wasn't a whole support system. And actually

in our baking powder versus baking soda, it makes something pretty unstable that immediately breaks

down into gas. But this doesn't immediately break down because it has this whole support system.

But because it has this whole support system, it does immediately change color.

Right. Wow, that is so weird. But the majority of the molecules unchanged. You're really only

changing one atom. You're tweaking this one atom that's gaining extra electrons when it loses the

bond to a hydrogen. But that one atom's tweak impacts this whole big network. It's like, okay,

we're going to add one more link onto this bottle train. And now we've completed a loop. We're

gone a whole new direction. You know, it's like you can change one piece and it alters the whole

state. You know what I mean? Yes, totally. Okay, so that was a lot. Yes. I kind of meant to stop and let

you explain that. I said base part before I went into the color, but I was kind of excited

and on a roll. Yeah. So do you want to try to explain that back to me? And we'll see. Yes.

How you're doing. And for our listeners at home, this is a great opportunity. If you want to like,

you can pause it too and see what you feel like you have a good understanding of and what you

would like more explanation on. And I will get the caveat to you and the listeners that

I'll probably get some stuff wrong, which happens a lot in their explanation, but even more so

with asses and bases, I feel like certain certain things in like color, those that are just so

like counterintuitive that the details start to fade fast. But I'm already like, okay,

wait, don't get what don't get it wrong. Which one is which? You know what I mean? Yeah.

Like the office, it's kind of thing. But in the conjugation, we haven't talked about in a while,

and the analogies in my head, but they're like, chemistry, I can already tell. It's okay to get

things wrong here, you know? So one thing that's also just so funny to me is like,

in this case, obviously, probably this kind of indicator stuff had been discovered and applied

in some other areas. But it's funny that all of this complex chemistry is in this particular case

being applied to a diaper. I know. It's like a lot going on for just so that we can know

if our kid peed or not. Yeah. I did see someone. I think this is a conspiracy theory.

The one on Instagram was like, that's not actually a helpful tool. It wasn't meant to help parents.

It was a marketing scheme because the faster you can see the diapers are wet, the faster you're

going to change diaper and the more you have to change the diaper, the more you're going to spend

money. And I'm like, that might be true, but also it's not good for your kid to sit in a wet diaper.

Right. And I actually think that you could make a good argument the opposite direction because

how many times, I'll do you give myself an example because I'm the parent that I've experienced

the most. I've only been in my own body. Yeah. Yeah. The times that I'm like, oh, like,

you kind of get in this rhythm. I mean, that kid probably needs a diaper change. And like, there's

times that I will, like, take a diaper off. I'm like, oh, actually, it's, they didn't pee.

Be ready to take it off. And so you don't want to just put it back on, especially if there's

like a little bit, maybe that you couldn't see. It just kind of feels like over like the velcroy

things are a little bit like messed up now because that took it off. So you can make a different

argument that with the indicator strip, you might save more diapers because you wouldn't

end up changing one. Like, for instance, you know, there's this habit of like, you're going to change

the diaper of a kid before you put the net for a nap because your thought is they're, they,

they need a totally clean slate. They're definitely going to go pee while they're napping.

And so it's like a rhythm of like, oh, yeah, change, feed, rock, put them for a nap.

But if you have an indicator strip and it's not wet at all, then you might not do that. Yeah.

You might go through if you were that person. So, you know, see, I knew it was a conspiracy theory.

Yeah. I could go either way. I could see, I can see like a case for both. Okay. So when,

so urine is slightly basic. I'll say urine is basic compared to the strip.

Yeah. I think actually urine on its own can, can range. But it's, it's close to the pH of water.

But acids and bases, I think in, in our introductory chemistry, we kind of put them on a scale.

It's like, this isn't acid. This is a base. But many things can act as acids or bases depending

on what you're comparing them to. Right. It's like something's like super far on the like base

end of the scale. Yeah. Next thing that's like less far, but still base.

But I'll go to base. Yeah. Interesting. Then it would take that, then that can act as a base.

Or water is a good example. Like most people know of like sodium hydroxide. That is water

minus a proton. So instead of H2O, it's just OH minus negatively charged oxygen hydrogen.

But also water can gain a proton. And it can become H3O plus acidic too. So if that was

confusing, all those hydrogen selections, don't worry about it. But just to say, the idea is yeah,

everything is relative in this case. Okay. I'm not going to be like, yep, all urine is basic,

but compared to the indicator strip, it is more basic. Got it. Okay. Then the indicator strip,

which is an acid, a good acid. Okay. So, and this is what it's like countertuitive to me. But

even if what it actually is changes like what the base or more basic thing is, if something is

more basic than something else, then it is more negatively charged than the other thing.

Usually bases are there. Yeah. They're out to take something to have enough electrons that they

can do that. Yes. Okay. Yes. And I remember early on when our first episode about acid

bases probably was that baking soda baking powder episode. The thing I think about with acids

makes me want to think that they are the one that is more negative, more has more electrons

or whatever. Their acids are they'll end up with more electrons in the end. Yeah. Right.

After reactions happened or whatever. Yeah. That's it's just so weird because I'm like,

I don't have any good reason to believe that. Just that you hear about like battery acid and

bubble on thinking about like electricity and stuff. And for most of us not knowing what that

how that works. Yeah. It's probably this seems pretty negative. Like, you know,

he's like, it's got a lot of electrons that like maybe it can do stuff. Yeah. And so, but it's not

the case. That is so that is such a funny. I have things like that also like when I'm teaching

that I'm like, I have to tell my students like, I'm going to mix these two words up. I don't know

why. I learned it that way. And I always mix these two words up. And I'll be wrong. Yeah. You

know. I know ahead of time. Yeah. These are two words I get mixed up. So once once the

pee the year and whatever. And I'm, you know, we have a lot listeners and all sorts of places

other around around the world who knows what word you prefer. Sorry. Whatever words we use

is are weird to you. And they probably called diapers nappies too. Oh, yeah. That's right.

Yeah. Peas like are very like like not crass up the middle, but not the most proper either. Yeah.

But it's like our it's probably the safest one. Yeah. Around here. We're on these parts. Yeah.

But it was one of the pee meets the indicator ship. Because it is more

basic than the indicator ship is at least. It has the ability to take from the indicator ship.

And so it takes a proton. A proton. And that's a hydrogen atom. Right.

Which actually reminds me of the way that proton and hydrogen were interchangeable in

clear stuff in the. Yes. Right. Exactly. It's a hydrogen atom. Right. Without electricity. Got

it. So when we say it takes a proton, it doesn't take the electrons that were bonding the proton.

It just takes the hydrogen. Got it. Just use the hydrogen and put on no electrons.

And leaves behind now what is an electron that was at one point bonded.

Yes. And so that now that makes their there's more just electrons hanging out.

Then there were before on that on what used to be the acid on about used to be the acid. Yeah.

And it is that the breakup that's happening. That's the breakup. Okay. So the bond was the

relationship. And when the hydrogen leaves, it gets taken. Uh-huh. Some some third party comes in

steals your girl. Okay. Some home record. Some home record comes in. That's the base relative.

That's the P home record steals your girl leaves you with the with the damage with the baggage.

Yes. Of a breakup. Uh-huh. So the home record is the base, the proton, the hydrogen without

its electrons is your girl. Uh-huh. And you are what used to be the acid and a happy relationship

dealing with the baggage. Those are the electrons that used to be the. Okay. Yeah.

That's happening in a bunch of places up and down this indicator strip. Correct. No, it happens.

Well, there's lots of the acid on the indicator strip. Okay. Okay. But for each individual molecule,

there is only one proton that needs to be given up for this change to happen. Okay. Okay.

So the indicator strip is coated with these acid molecules. And all we have to do is come

in with our base. And each base will take a proton, each base molecule will take a proton

from each acid molecule. Got it. Got it. Okay. And then every individual acid molecule will have

just one spot on it where this change occurs. Okay. Got it. And now to get from there to the

support system, electron highway situation, that makes the situation unique is that elsewhere

on this molecule, it has orbitals that line up with where this electron is and where electrons

are on the other parts of the molecule. Yeah. A good way to think of it is like I gave the

train track analogy is like the electrons get left behind. You can think of them as maybe like a

car on the train track. And in the moment they get left behind, you're like putting down the last

piece of the train track. And now the car is free to go off of it. Or you can think of like

boy soldiers all in a line or something ready to like pass the extra electrons down. It's kind

of hard to explain. It's even hard to explain in my organic chemistry class to students who have

more of the like background of it. But the best way I can think of it is like a lot of times in

organic molecules, you know, it's a chain of carbons. And each of these carbons has like a space

to hold extra electrons. And if you can get them to all line up to where every carbon in the row

has that space, then extra electrons can be shared down the line. And so the burden is kind of

shared among the whole line. Maybe another example would be like,

no, have you seen those things where like you have a water bucket and you pass it down the line?

Like instead of one person holding the bucket by themselves, it's like quickly gets moved down

like past along this row. It's kind of like that where instead of all the weight being on one

thing, it's sort of shared amongst a group. And so I know like some of the weird like

like quantum mechanic weird stuff about electrons that we don't understand because like in a cloud

or whatever and where really are they. So sort of what's happening is the electron is not

stuck in some weird place where it's like hanging out out on a limb that it doesn't want to be in,

which it probably wouldn't stay in that state. Probably break down like in a cake or whatever.

Yeah. In this case, because there's room for extra electrons to kind of be along this

row or whatever. Yeah. It just kind of instead of what being being just out there on its own,

all lonely, it has the ability to just kind of move around like a musical chair situation where

it's like. Yes. We're just not going to stop the music. Yeah. There's not quite enough chairs

for everybody, but it's okay. Exactly. Yes. If there was one atom that had all these extra electrons

on it, that would be super reactive. And it would be like, that get me out of here. I'm going to

try to go find something that's even more acidic than myself. You know, now I'm going to take that

and that way I'll stabilize myself. You know, that's how it would feel. But because it does have

this little row that it can share it around. The impact of those extra electrons is like,

okay, we can kind of get on this. It's not super reactive. We're going to stabilize these extra

electrons. We're going to have too much negativity in one area. It's like we can deal with this.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I think I'm getting it. And so because of that.

Yeah. That was a great explanation. Once we get to that point, the part that kicks in is the

like, well, how do we even see light and stuff, which is obviously the result of a bunch of

things going on at all times that whether a reaction is happening or not, we are things are

absorbing energy and reflecting energy at a certain wavelength that gives us the idea that has

a color. Exactly. So in this case, because the thing pretty significant just changed,

mm-hmm. Now the this new highway of shared electrons around like that makes it possible that when

it is absorbing energy from just the sun, from just light, whatever we are, visual light, it now

wants to breathe black. Oh gosh. That color part. Yeah. I didn't hit too good. Can I try again?

Yes. Mm-hmm. Okay. So let me try this. When we have those orbitals that are all lined up in a

room, often we describe those as rungs in a ladder. Mm-hmm. So like say you have a 10-foot ladder or

something and it has 10 rungs. Each one of those is going to be a certain distance apart, right?

So each step, you know, is a certain distance. Yeah. Now add an 11th one in there. We still want

them to be all equidistant. So now all the distances just got a little bit smaller. So what we did when

we added that extra electron pair is it came with an orbital. So after the acid-base reaction,

we gained an orbital for that system. So we added a rung to our ladder. So now instead of light

absorbing in this certain amount, now light is absorbed in like maybe a little bit smaller amount.

Mm-hmm. Because we added something to our system, we made things smaller. And so because of that,

the exact amount of energy that needs to be absorbed changed. Okay. And that matters because

what we see as color is visible light made up of all the wavelengths. Uh-huh. We'll have

one of those wavelengths taken out of it. Right. And then the rest of the colors are reflected back

to us. Yes. And so based on what's taken out and what's reflected, it will look to us like yellow

or if you leak that in a different amount is absorbed, then a different colors is absorbed. And

what's reflected back looks like blue to us. Right. Right. Right. And they are all those colors are

a different place on that spectrum as well. Right. It's like going up or down the spectrum.

Still within visible light. But it's like within the that's where the fine tunings are happening.

Which makes sense. So if you're you're tinkering with a little bit of like the absorption and

reflection kind of stuff, it's like it's just going to change the color. Yeah. Because something by

the way of length changed. Yes. And I feel like if you haven't, this is your first episode and

you're like, I haven't listened to any of your color episodes. Definitely go back and check those

out. I think probably the very first one we talked about was why does sunlight fade? Maybe.

We talked a little else to probably too far back, but you some color stuff came up at even

an antioxidants. Yep. With constant conjugation stuff. I guess that was one for sure too. Yeah.

Yeah. What else has there been? There's lots of color. The fading one for sure. Yeah.

So I would say go back and check it out because I'm realizing as I'm listening to Jam talk that he

has so much background from those episodes that he's pulling on that this your very first episode.

You might be like, didn't explain that very well. But it's because we've talked about it a lot.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But just basically you can think of it as as we tweak that what electrons can

absorb, what light they can absorb because they're always absorbing something. The color that we

perceive changes. So we went from initially they could absorb a certain amount of light that

looked to us like yellow. But when we added that extra electron, we added the extra electrons,

we expanded the orbital highway a little bit. That tiny bit of expansion tweaked the little

details enough. It changed the distance on the ladder wrong to where now instead of us seeing yellow,

the light absorbs looks to us like blue. Is that a good summary?

I think so. Yeah. About me a lot of that part was getting all into there. And then also

I had the background info, but you can tell how hard it is for me to like explain.

And like wrap my head around again each time because it is like so complicated, but so

fascinating. I mean, it's always worth the try. But I love how much like the color stuff comes in

because while color seems like a distinct category to us, it's like, oh, it's not really because

it's actually just part of this spectrum of all sorts of things and of of energy. Yeah.

Yeah. So like the same energy that makes radios, that makes microwaves, that makes light,

that kind of sunburns that yeah, it's like all of it is all on one spectrum. Yeah. It's kind of

weird. So weird. Very trippy. Yeah. But you did a great job. Okay. Thank you. I was like the

long we're getting along. I was like, um, I think that earlier stuff is starting to fade.

I know. I realized that I was explaining like, wait, I was really counting on you to remember

some color stuff that I probably should have dealt with deeper in, but it's great. Hey, that's

the, that's a genuine learning process that we have. You know, it's like we both, we all make

mistakes sometimes. Well, that is our episode for today. Nice. So thank you so much for explaining

that back, being willing to jump into the deep end of color with me. And I was maybe gonna have

share crazy diaper stories, but I feel like it took a little bit longer than normal. And we're

gonna share my crazy bike. That's right. No story. So, um, I think we can wrap up there for today.

What do you think? I think so. I mean, like, I'm not even sure if I could easily pick a crazy

diaper story. And like, if I can tell it in a way, it's not too gross. Yeah. That's true. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. But I have so many of them. So it's like, you know, if that is something that the

people want at some point, I can try to collect some. I was also thinking of favorite color changing

object. I think we might have done that already. Oh, that's nothing. I think some of our color

changing. Oh, yeah. I did do color change episodes. Yeah. Something that it's in that category is

in our episodes back in the day somewhere. I mean, the Mr. Rogers color changing mug is one of

my favorites. Yes. There we go. That's what it was. And we did do an episode about that for sure.

Yes. 100%. Um, well, thank you for teaching us. And, um, thankfully, I'm wondering about this

while I still do have kids and diapers. Um, one of my, my middle kid is less and less diaper

dependent. He's only wearing diapers at night. My youngest is still, um, in diapers. So I'd be a

little sad. I think if, if I had like turned the page out of diaper season of life. Yeah. And

only then now I found out about that. So thanks for. Yeah. And they need to be like, like all

this time, just getting, I mean, like I still would have been benefiting from it. Whether I understood

it or not, but it is more fun to be able to observe it in my daily life and understand it better.

Yeah. So thanks for doing that. And, uh, if you have a question, thought idea, comment something,

either about this that you're wondering about this follow up or something else you've seen

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