Theodore Gray's Periodic Table Table

Wolfram Research co-founder and author Theo Gray has made the most amazing Periodic Table table for his collection of elements! And he’s collected so many in a variety of forms over the years… liquids, solids, bottles of gases, crystals, and cheeky substitutions. What a great, hands-on way to experience what could otherwise just be a bunch of memorized letters and numbers.

Related reading: Gray’s wonderful book The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe.

DIY Egg Geode

A pretty spectacular science experiment: how to make an Incredible Egg Geode. 

Your egg geode is formed through a process called sedimentation. The heated alum solution contains suspended particles of alum powder and as the solution cools, these particles of alum begin settling. When the alum particles settle towards the bottom of the beaker or glass, they begin crystallizing. With the alum-covered egg at the bottom, the alum particles from the solution begin attaching themselves to the egg. Covering your egg in alum powder beforehand gives the suspended alum particles a surface to which they can more readily attach themselves. The particles that settle onto the surface of the egg crystallize, and you will also see crystallization on the bottom and sides of the beaker or glass.

Animated Hair Cartoon (1925) and History of Early Animation from UCLA

From the UCLA Film & Television Archive, this is Animated Hair Cartoon, No.18 (1925), from Max Fleischer‘s Red Seal Pictures. Beyond it being fun to watch one face change into another, these images also come together as a pop culture time capsule from the early 20th century. From the historian’s notes:

The “Animated Hair” films, featuring artwork by “Marcus” (not well-known animator Sid Marcus, but a caricaturist for the original humorous Life Magazine) were relatively easy for the studio to produce, using one artist (his hand usually seen on screen drawing the image) and the gimmick of manipulating one caricature with stop motion to create a second caricature (usually by rearranging a hair-do). For example, in this entry, playwright George Bernard Shaw becomes baseball commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis, and Charlie Chaplin morphs into Buster Keaton. Audiences were thrilled. Fifty one “Animated Hair” shorts were produced between 1924 and 1927. This entry (No. 18) was released on July 11, 1925.

Also featured: Christy Mathewson, John McGraw, Samuel Gompers, Elsie Ferguson, and “Babe” Ruth.

And here’s more about UCLA’s Archives of Animation, from Fig. 1: