Changing Key and Chemistry

What if chemistry’s most intimidating subject were as easy as learning to play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star?”

In “Changing Key and Chemistry,” a ten-minute film from Chemistry Shorts^®, UCLA Professor Dr. Neil Garg shows us that organic chemistry can be understood much like music — one key, one scale, and one step at a time. Each atom in a molecule is like a note in a melody: once you learn the basic components, you can put them together in infinite combinations from the simplest molecules to the most complicated symphonies.

“Don’t fear organic chemistry. You got this… you can pick up some of the fundamentals, pick up the keys on the piano, the notes in an octave, you have what it takes to learn how to be an organic chemist. Because guess what? Students are naturally curious and creative and they’re absolutely brilliant problem solvers.”

– Professor Neil Garg

In the second act of the film, Professor Garg explains how scientists have re-orchestrated natural molecules to solve big problems. For instance, by slightly tweaking a chemical found in yew trees, scientists created the cancer-fighting drug taxol. Listening to nature with a well-tuned ear allows us to compose brand-new masterpieces.

In the final act, Professor Garg reminds us that scientific progress often begins when someone plays off script:

“And I’m always reminded, although we need to use these rules to teach students, that we also just as much teach them that these are rules based on what we know now. And without you challenging those rules, solving problems, creating things, making new discoveries, we don’t advance society.”

– Professor Neil Garg

Professor Garg’s recent headline-making work on anti-Bredt olefins showed that even century-old chemistry rules are made to be broken as we expand our scientific understanding.

In the lab, the classroom, and now the screen, Professor Garg conducts learners with excitement and passion, encouraging them to not just practice the scales of organic chemistry, but improvise beyond the score.

Learn more about Professor Garg’s work here: https://garg.chem.ucla.edu/

Energy to Spare: Building Better Batteries

Lithium-ion batteries make headlines: from the positives of smart watches, glasses, and phones that hold a charge for days, to the negatives of battery fires and environmental cleanup.

“Energy to Spare,” a seven-minute film from Chemistry Shorts^®, uses exploding batteries, bowling showdowns, and electrifying animations to give a primer on how batteries work and explore how scientists are revolutionizing battery technology for the renewable energy age.

Current technology relies heavily on lithium-ion batteries, which are in everything from electric vehicles to laptops to cellphones. But lithium is rare, which can make it expensive, and mining it can take a toll on local communities. Lithium-ion batteries are also prone to catching on fire, making them a safety risk.

UCLA scientist Maher El-Kady describes work on one promising solution: zinc-ion batteries. These batteries have many advantages over lithium-ion batteries. They use water instead of toxic solvents, are much safer, and have the potential to store more energy. Zinc is also far more common on our planet, making it cheaper and more environmentally friendly. This new science could help us leave lithium-ion batteries in the gutter, rolling towards better batteries and a more sustainable future.

“In batteries, there is always some type of chemical reactions that are happening. It’s the chemists that can actually understand that and perfect those reactions, developing new materials that can make a better battery for the future.”

– Dr. Maher El-Kady in “Energy to Spare.”

“Energy to Spare” is targeted towards high school and college students and can be used as a starting point for discussions around battery function and composition, sustainable chemistry, renewable energy, electricity, and more.

Learn about Dr. El-Kady’s work here: https://www.maherelkady.com/research

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Mighty Microbes Film Description

Microbes can power up our world, making sustainable fertilizers, repairing concrete structures, creating vaccines, and so much more! But to complete these quests, they have to get to their destinations safely, avoiding obstacles like high temperatures, acidic conditions, and changes in pressure.

“Mighty Microbes,” a nine-minute film from Chemistry Shorts^®, explores new, self-assembling polymer coatings that help create chemical “suits of armor” for these microbes, giving problem-solving scientists the ability to transport them to wherever they need to go.

In “Mighty Microbes,” MIT scientist Ariel Furst describes her lab’s work creating this armor, often out of food-grade materials to minimize impact on both the planet and the microbes themselves. These coatings assemble around their microbial targets via redox reactions, chemicals processes that move electrons from one place to another. Redox reactions can create new compounds or allow molecules to perform new functions, and are an important topic in the chemistry classroom.

These new, polymer-based coatings support the Furst Lab’s goal of energy equity, ensuring everyone has access to technological advances. For example, nitrogen-based fertilizers ensure we have enough food to feed the entire globe. But, bulky fertilizer must usually be shipped to its final destination, requiring huge quantities of energy. Microbes could be a way to produce sustainable nitrogen-solutions right where you need them. But, the microbes must resist drying out or overheating on the journey to their destination. Dr. Furst’s coatings could be just the armor they need along the way!

“Our goal is to push the frontiers of what we know and what we can do by using what biology has given us. I see chemistry as the foundation of every other form of science. If you understand how molecules are built, that explains biology, it explains a lot of physics, it basically ties everything we know about the world together.”

– Dr. Ariel Furst in “Mighty Microbes.”

“Mighty Microbes” is targeted towards high school and college students and can be used as a starting point for discussions around redox reactions, sustainable chemistry, polymer coatings, nitrogen fixation, and more.

Learn about Dr. Furst’s work here: https://furstlab.mit.edu/afurst/

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Cracking Chirality Film Description

In a mirror, our bodies appear symmetrical from the right to the left. But hold one hand on top of the other, rather than palm-to-palm, and you’ll notice that they are not in fact the same; they have a defined right- or left-handedness, or chirality. Look even deeper inside, at the molecular level, and you’ll find that many of the important molecules in our bodies are similarly right or left-handed, and exist in only one form or the other. We call this homochirality.

“Cracking Chirality,” a twelve-minute film from Chemistry Shorts^®, explores how the essential molecules of life, like DNA, RNA, and proteins, acquired their homochiral structures and how magnetic rocks at the bottom of a prebiotic lake may have set the stage for life as we know it.

Chirality is the idea that some molecules come in two mirror-image configurations. Despite having the exact same chemical compositions, their physical structures are different. These left-handed and right-handed molecules can have different properties and functions. Understanding how chiral molecules function differently is essential to chemical synthesis and medicine. But it also holds a curious question about early life: why are the nucleic acids that hold genetic information in all of life right-handed, while the amino acids that they encode left-handed?

In “Cracking Chirality,” two Harvard University scientists, Dimitar Sasselov and S. Furkan Ozturk, present their exciting new findings: magnetized molecules found at the bottom of lakes on the primordial Earth may be the key to how important biological molecules crystallized and grew, tipping the scales from a 50-50 mixture of molecules to homochiral solutions made up of just one or the other. Their simple experimental setups, growing crystals on tiny magnetized plates, help provide a solution to an essential question about life itself that has plagued scientists for decades.

“Life’s polymers from DNA, to RNA, to the proteins, cannot really function if they’re a mess of left-handed and right-handed molecules. They have to be clearly homochiral. And you need to do something very special to break that symmetry. It is still a big mystery of how this happened at the origin of life. And our work is trying to answer that question.”

– Dr. Dimitar Sasselov in “Cracking Chirality.”

“Cracking Chirality” is targeted towards high school and college students, and can be used as a starting point for discussions around the chemical origins of life, molecular chirality, electron spin, magnetism, and more.

Learn about Dr. Sasselov’s work here: https://astronomy.fas.harvard.edu/people/dimitar-sasselov

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Frosty Formulations Film Description

“Frosty Formulations,” a seven-minute short film from Chemistry Shorts^®, explores the surprising science behind one of the world’s favorite desserts. Ice cream is made up of dairy, sugar, flavorings, and chemistry! Like bubbles colliding and connecting, the interactions between the molecular components of ice cream are responsible for the dreamy qualities of texture and mouthfeel that we all enjoy so much. Those same interactions reveal important chemistry concepts that touch our lives daily.

States of matter, emulsifiers, and hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity are topics covered in the chemistry classroom, but also intrinsic to a delicious treat: ice cream.

In “Frosty Formulations,” Ice Cream Scientist^TM Dr. Maya Warren takes us down to the microscopic level to discuss how ice cream is a solid, liquid, and gas all at once, and how the combination of those three states gives it its distinctive texture. But, that’s not all. The film dives deeper into the key steps in making ice cream that allow suspended fat globules to partially coalesce like soap bubbles: with the addition of an emulsifier, cold temperature, and friction from the churning ice cream maker. Without all of these steps, combined in just the right way, the complicated chemistry of ice cream wouldn’t form the same beloved treat! For teachers, this film is a way to engage students on important chemistry topics through an approachable, relatable subject.

“Chemistry has opened up the possibilities and opportunities in my life in ways I would’ve never even imagined. Being able to have something like ice cream and being able to relate that to my first love, which is chemistry, has been able to allow me to see life in a completely different way.”

– Dr. Maya Warren in “Frosty Formulations”

“Frosty Formulations” is aimed at high school to college students and can be used as a starting point for discussions around emulsions, hydrophobicity/hydrophilicity, and states of matter.

Learn more about Dr. Maya Warren here: https://drmayawarren.com/

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Driving Reactions

Like demolition derby cars continually upgrading to face greater and greater challenges, enzymes in the test tube can undergo modifications that make them better and better at solving problems in our everyday lives. But can we evolve them fast enough to clear some of our biggest obstacles?

Our world faces climate, economic, and sustainability challenges that we don’t yet have the tools to fix. “Driving Reactions,” a nine-minute short film from Chemistry Shorts^®, explores how directed evolution and the chemical sciences are creating some of these new tools.

“Driving Reactions” explores the power of harnessing nature’s own innovations to solve problems. Featured scientists Professor Hal Alper of the University of Texas at Austin and Nobel Laureate Professor Frances Arnold of the California Institute of Technology use directed evolution to design enzymes that work as molecular machines, helping create a more sustainable world using the power of chemistry. These new enzymes open the door of scientific progress, creating solutions for recycling waste, creating sustainable fuels, and more efficiently producing materials we use in our everyday lives. “Driving Reactions” focuses on Dr. Alper’s innovative work to design an enzyme that can efficiently degrade PET, or polyethylene terephthalate, one of the most common plastics found in water bottles and other everyday objects, into infinitely recyclable and reusable products.

“We have the ability to use the power of chemistry to find sustainable solutions for the future.” – Hal Alper, “Driving Reactions”

“Driving Reactions” is aimed at high school to college students and can be used as a starting point for discussions around polymer chemistry, enzyme reactions, directed evolution, DNA, and plastic recycling.

Learn more about Professor Hal Alper’s work here: https://utw10252.utweb.utexas.edu/
Learn more about Professor Frances’ Arnold’s Nobel Prize-winning work here:
http://fhalab.caltech.edu/

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Untapped Potential

Ensuring a safe water supply is one of the most compelling challenges humanity faces in the 21st century. The nine-minute film “Untapped Potential” highlights the game-changing solutions being developed in the chemical sciences.

“Untapped Potential” features environmental and chemical engineering experts who explore how modern chemistry, desalination, and advanced oxidation processes can be used to quell the growing problem of diminishing fresh water sources. Featured specialists include David L. Sedlak, PhD, Professor, University of California Berkeley, Meagan Mauter, PhD, Associate Professor, Stanford University, and William Tarpeh, PhD, Assistant Professor, Stanford University.

“We are experiencing lots of change in our water supply. Our traditional sources are not only less available to us, but we’re demanding more and more of them. As the climate changes, we’re seeing longer periods of drought; and as it gets warmer, more water evaporates. Scarcity is one of our huge problems in the 21st century. We’ve got to look for new water sources – sources like brackish water, municipal wastewater, industrial wastewater – and figure out ways to treat that water to a quality that enables its reuse. When it comes to turning water that’s undrinkable into something that we can put in people’s taps…it’s chemistry. That’s the key to solving our problems.” –– from “Untapped Potential,” fourth in the film series Chemistry Shorts^TM.

Learn more about Professor David L. Sedlak’s research at Sedlak Research Group.

Learn more about Professor Meagan Mauter’s research at WE3 Lab.

Learn more about Professor William Tarpeh’s research at Tarpeh Lab.

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Direct Air Capture & The Future of Climate Change

Global climate change is one of the most important challenges of our time, and chemists and chemical engineers are at the forefront of this effort. One especially promising technology is through Direct Air Capture.

Direct Air Capture makes use of amines, which capture carbon dioxide out of the air through specific chemical bonding. The carbon dioxide is then sequestered by storing it underground so that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air is reduced every year. Though repurposing is helpful, it is not a solution. Reducing the amount of carbon dioxide every year through sequestration is the only real remedy.

Chemists and chemical engineers are working to scale up this technology to remove 10s of gigatons of carbon dioxide. Key challenges that lay ahead are to find ways to both reduce the cost of this procedure and make it more efficient.

In this film, experts from academia and industry discuss the science of Direct Air Capture and the opportunities it provides.

Additional Resources:

Christopher Jones, Georgia Institute of Technology

Climeworks

Carbon Engineering

The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager

Can Carbon Dioxide Removal Save the World? by Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, November 13, 2017

One Man’s Two-Decade Quest to Suck Greenhouse Gas Out of the Sky, by James Temple, MIT Technology Review, February 27, 2019

Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration, The National Academies Press (2019)

Rewriting Life

The CRISPR-Cas9 technology, and the subsequent research-based innovations stemming from its discovery, integrate chemistry and evolution to program and re-program biology. David Liu at the Broad Institute has taken the basics of CRISPR and innovated the technology from cutting DNA to actually chemically swapping its component base pairs (Cytosine, Guanine, Adenine, and Thymine).

“The majority of human genetic diseases, which collectively affect hundreds of millions of people, are caused by single-letter (‘base’) changes on DNA. These single-letter swaps or ‘point mutations’ cause grievous diseases such as sickle-cell anemia, progeria, or muscular dystrophy. For many such diseases, correcting the DNA base from the pathogenic form back to the normal form is thought to offer a potential treatment or even a permanent cure. Towards this goal, our lab created molecular machines known as ‘base editors’ that directly correct point mutations in living cells and organisms.

“Through a combination of protein engineering and protein evolution, we developed two classes of base editors that together enable four kinds of base-to-base conversions at target positions in genomic DNA with high efficiency and few unwanted byproducts. The mutations that these base editors can correct collectively account for most known human pathogenic point mutations. Base editing has been used by many laboratories around the world in a wide range of organisms including bacteria, fungi, plants, fish, mammals, and even human embryos. We and others have integrated several of these developments to treat animal models of human genetic disease.

“This short film overviews the history of base editing and introduces the concepts behind the technology to a general audience.” – Liu lab

Learn more at Liu Group

Under the Skin

Stanford chemical engineers have created a synthetic skin that can stretch like rubber, carry electricity, and self-heal. They have chemically developed an entirely new class of synthetic polymers in order to create a highly functional replication of human skin.

“Our skin is constantly helping us interact with the world. How do we know how tightly to hold objects so that they do not slip out of our hands; or whether a surface is too hot to touch; or even how to enjoy our comfortable pajamas? Our skin helps us determine sensations such as temperature, texture, vibration, and pressure. Also, it is constantly regenerating, protecting our internal organs from the outside environment, and automatically healing wounds. Besides helping us perform necessary tasks every day, skin provides us feedback that enriches our lives.

“We use our skin as an inspiration to make new types of electronics that are ultrathin, stretchable, healable, and biodegradable, and yet have electronic properties. Our goal is to change how we interact with electronics to ultimately improve human health. For example, we are developing seamless health monitoring electronics that provide real-time information on our vitals that guide disease diagnosis and ultimately serve as individualized treatment for the patient. Moreover, these electronics are critical for imparting the sense of touch in prosthetics and improving the quality of advanced robotics. By making these electronics biodegradable, not only are we consciously minimizing impact on the environment, we can begin to explore new applications of temporary electronics inside the body and in the environment (e.g. agriculture, forestry).

“In order to achieve these goals, we must use chemistry to create new materials. We focus on making polymers, otherwise known as plastics, electronically conducting and functional like skin. Understanding the molecular design rules are important for generating a material that has multiple properties that aren’t typically found together. We construct polymers with both covalent and dynamic bonds as well as encode instructions for self-assembly into desired architectures. There is a large chemical and physical landscape to design new polymeric materials for new types of electronics. We are exploring this exciting field and anticipate our findings will contribute to future advanced electronics.” – Bao lab

Learn more at Bao Research Group

Series Trailer

Chemistry Shorts^® communicating the breadth & depth of chemistry’s impact on humankind

The Chemistry Shorts^® series shows the vital role the chemical sciences play in the biggest issues facing the world. Each film is accompanied by a lesson plan to integrate the science behind these innovations into the classroom.

Watch the series trailer

See Our Newest Film:

Changing Key and Chemistry

with Neil Garg, UCLA

Classroom Resources

Other Films in the Series:

Energy to Spare

with Maher El-Kady, UCLA

Download Lesson Plan

Request Answer Key

Mighty Microbes

with Ariel Furst, MIT

“Mighty Microbes,” a nine-minute film from Chemistry Shorts^®, explores new, self-assembling polymer coatings that help create chemical “suits of armor” for microbes, giving problem-solving scientists the ability to transport them to wherever they need to go.

Download Lesson Plan

Request Answer Key

Cracking Chirality

with Dimitar Sasselov and S. Furkan Ozturk, Harvard University

Download Lesson Plan

Request Answer Key

Frosty Formulations

with Maya Warren, Ice Cream Scientist^TM

Download Lesson Plan

Request Answer Key

Driving Reactions

with Hal Alper, University of Texas at Austin, and Frances Arnold, the California Institute of Technology

Our world faces climate, economic, and sustainability challenges that we don’t yet have the tools to fix. The nine-minute film “Driving Reactions” explores how directed evolution and the chemical sciences are creating some of these new tools.

Download Lesson Plan

Request Answer Key

Untapped Potential

with Meagan Mauter, Stanford University; David Sedlak, UC Berkeley; and William Tarpeh, Stanford University

Download Lesson Plan

Request Answer Key

Direct Air Capture & The Future of Climate Change

with Christopher Jones, Georgia Institute of Technology

Download Lesson Plan

Rewriting Life

with David Liu, Harvard University

The CRISPR-Cas9 technology, and the subsequent research-based innovations stemming from its discovery, integrate chemistry and evolution to program and re-program biology. David Liu’s lab has taken the basics of CRISPR and innovated the technology from cutting DNA to actually chemically swapping its component base pairs.

Download Lesson Plan

Under The Skin

with Zhenan Bao, Stanford University

Stanford chemical engineers have created a synthetic skin that can stretch like rubber, carry electricity, and self-heal. Working with chemical bonds, Zhenan Bao’s lab has chemically developed an entirely new class of synthetic polymers in order to create a highly functional replication of human skin.

Download Lesson Plan

Chemistry Shorts^® is created and sponsored by the
Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation

Funded in part by the
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

Supported by the
Research Corporation for Science Advancement

Endorsed by

The organizations listed above encourage teachers to use these films in their classrooms to inspire future generations of chemical scientists.

Other Points of Interest

ACS Reactions (chemistry science videos and infographics)

ACS ChemMatters Magazine (articles that connect chemistry concepts and the real world)

AACT Classroom Resources (chemistry teaching resources)

AIChE K-12 Community (chemical engineering teaching resources and events)

ChemTalk (resources for learning about and teaching chemistry)

Nilay’s Chemistry (videos about foundational chemistry concepts)

LabXchange (teaching resources for science)

HHMI’s Biointeractive (interactive biology lesson and videos)

LabX’s “Chemists in the Kitchen” (videos about cooking and chemistry)

Jonte Lee (kitchen chemistry lessons)

The Artificial Leaf (artificial photosynthesis)

A Crash Course in Organic Chemistry (by Jakob Magolan)

“Forgotten Genius” (the story of pioneering chemist Percy Julian)

“The Poison Squad” (chemistry’s role in food safety)

“Human Nature” (CRISPR-Cas9 documentary)

Dreyfus Foundation on YouTube (Teacher-Scholar profiles and Dreyfus symposia)

Changing Key and Chemistry

Energy to Spare: Building Better Batteries

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Mighty Microbes Film Description

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Cracking Chirality Film Description

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Frosty Formulations Film Description

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Driving Reactions

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Untapped Potential

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Direct Air Capture & The Future of Climate Change

Additional Resources:

Rewriting Life

Under the Skin

Chemistry Shorts® communicating the breadth & depth of chemistry’s impact on humankind

Changing Key and Chemistry

Energy to Spare

Mighty Microbes

Cracking Chirality

Frosty Formulations

Driving Reactions

Untapped Potential

Direct Air Capture & The Future of Climate Change

Rewriting Life

Under The Skin

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