Chemistry in Ultra HD shows science like you’ve never seen it

Discover dancing fluorescent droplets, crystal gardens and watery clouds of chemicals in this new video compilation from BeautifulChemistry.net.

Scientists call it CoCl2 in Na2SiO3 Solution. You'll likely just call it "Awesome!" BeautifulChemistry.org

Chemistry was always the most visually appealing of the sciences I studied in school. There were all those amazing colors, plus smoke, bubbles and best of all, fire!

Turns out, I'm not the only one who found chemistry to be attractive. A collaboration between the Institute of Advanced Technology at the University of Science and Technology of China and Tsinghua University Press has led to the formation of BeautifulChemistry.net, a site whose goal is "to bring the beauty of chemistry to the general public through digital media and technology."

To start on the path, the creators "used a 4K UltraHD camera and special lenses to capture chemical reactions in astonishing detail without the distraction of beakers and test tubes." Those reactions are compiled in the following video and are broken into six different categories. You might not understand exactly what the chemical symbols mean in each video, but it helps to get Beautiful Chemistry's take on each category, which we've included below.

Or, you can just enjoy the stunning footage as a sheer work of art without knowing anything at all about the science, which is what I did -- the first time I watched.

Metal displacement

"We dropped zinc metal in silver nitrate (AgNO3), copper sulfate (CuSO4), and lead nitrate (Pb(NO3)2) solutions, and recorded the emergence of silver, copper, and lead metals with beautiful structure. To preserve the fragile structure of lead metal, we also added sodium silicate (Na2SiO3) and acetic acid (CH3COOH) to the solution to make it gelatinize."

Precipitation (1:10)

"This video features 5 precipitation reactions, each with its own "personality." In a typical demonstration of precipitation reactions, we see a transparent solution in a test tube at the beginning and a cloudy liquid at the end after adding a few droplets of another solution. However, when we used cubic glass cells to replace test tubes and took a much closer look, their unique beauty was revealed."

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Chemistry in Ultra HD shows science like you've never seen it