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This could make you fall crazy with chemistry.
He used the form of video to record the chemical reaction process under the microscope, so that the boring chemical experiment was full of artistic atmosphere, and used art to show the beauty of science to the public. His work won the Video Expert Award at the International Science Visualization Competition, the first of its kind in the Chinese mainland. In the eleventh session of the SELF Forum "The Beauty of Reason" activity, Liang Yan told the story of the original beauty of science, let us look back again and indulge in the art world of science.
Liang Yan
Producer of "Beauty Science"
Creator of "Beautiful Chemistry"
Special Associate Researcher, Department of Science and Technology Communication, University of Science and Technology of China
Co-founder of Xinzhi Digital Media
The following is the transcript of Liang Yan's speech:
I am Liang Yan, from the University of Science and Technology of China, and one of the founders of Xinzhi Digital Media Company, and I am very happy to have this opportunity to share the beauty of science with you.
I'll show you a video, one we made two years ago, about crystallization. "Beautiful Chemistry" is a public welfare project we have done, hoping to bring the beauty and magic of chemistry to the public. We've photographed a lot of chemistry, all of which are equations that seem boring.
For example, the reaction of silver nitrate and sodium chloride to form silver chloride may be learned by everyone in middle school.
This is a type of reaction called a chemical garden, a reaction of cobalt chloride in a sodium solution of silicate, like a dragon.
There is also a very simple metal replacement reaction, replacing metal lead with metal zinc, which is like a forest, generating lead trees.
We photographed a lot of chemical reactions, and in addition to chemical reactions, there was also chemical structure. The diameter and length of this molecule are only two nanometers, one nanometer is the minus nineth square meter of ten, which is very tiny. But chemists can make molecules with spatial topologies like polomian chain rings at such a small scale. Such a small scale can do such a complex operation, is a very high skill.
It's a DNA nanoscale, really a nanoship made up of DNA self-assembling. Scientists through self-assembly, 208 or 208 types of DNA single strands mixed into the solution, will automatically form such a nano-spacecraft, it is a very magical thing. We are learning from nature because DNA is a molecule that nature gives us.
There is also a part of the history of science. We used computer graphics to restore a lot of very classic instruments. This is Boyle's vacuum pump, what did Boyle find with this vacuum pump? A very common phenomenon was found, that is, combustion in a vacuum cannot be carried out.
This is a device that Lavoisier uses to determine the proportion of oxygen in the air. It heats mercury in a closed environment, and after 12 days of heating, many red particles will form on the surface, which are oxidized mercury, and the air will be reduced by a part.
His experiments were rigorous, and finally the oxidized mercury was taken out and reheated. If the resulting gas is put back into the previous gas, it restores the structure of the entire original air. So again it turns out that oxygen is part of the air, and oxygen is an element.
Our project has received a lot of media attention at home and abroad, and there are a few reviews that I think are great. For example, the Huffington Post in the United States said: "This may make you fall crazy with chemistry." "Popular Science Journal", a well-known popular science magazine in the United States, said: "Chinese scientists have proved that chemistry can be beautiful." The domestic fruit shell network said: "This is the coolest work about chemical science communication made by Chinese." ”
We are very pleased to get the evaluation of these peers, and the most gratifying evaluation for us is that some netizens said: "If I saw 'beautiful chemistry' in middle school, my chemistry might not be so bad." ”
We restored this part of the chemical instrument, after a parent saw our work, donated 100,000 yuan to us free of charge, so that we can continue to do the "beautiful chemistry" project. We were very impressed.
The "Beautiful Chemistry" project has also affected a lot of people. These two pictures are not made by us, but from a high school girl from Beijing International High School, whose English name is Julie. When she saw our work, she knew that she could have such a profession, combining the art and chemistry she liked, and she wanted to do such a profession in the future.
She now has her own website called Alchemy, where she's illustrating every element. The picture on the left is cobalt, why is there blue and white porcelain in it? Because of the color of blue and white porcelain, the blue color mainly comes from cobalt-containing minerals.
"Beautiful Chemistry" is a work from two years ago, we have gained a lot of feelings, we want to continue to do this thing, so we set up a new knowledge of the media company. We built the brand of "Beauty Science" and we wanted to expand things a little more, beyond chemistry. This is the birth of "beauty science", we want to bring the beauty and magic of science to the public. Let more people be obsessed with, impressed, and even change their life plans by the beauty of science.
What does this logo mean? It comes from the midpoint of the connection between The Earth and Venus, part of the trajectory of the Sun. If you look closely, it is the source of our flower. It represents both the life sciences and the natural sciences. This is what "Beauty Science" wants to do, to bring more science to everyone.
This video is new to our shooting two years later. This video represents that in terms of technology, we are gradually maturing and perfecting; on the other hand, we want to be closer to art. We want to get closer to the new content of humanities, not only with science, but also with more humanistic connotations.
How are these crystals made and how are the videos shot? It's actually very simple. It is a solution of saturated inorganic salts, and when the water in the solution is volatilized, these crystals will precipitate. Each crystal has its own unique characteristics, as if it had its own life and soul.
The video is very good at home and abroad, and we attach great importance to the "dissemination", which has more than 300,000 views and more than 1,500 retweets on Weibo. We collected some very interesting netizen reviews, some netizens said: "I want to study chemistry after I looked at it", and some netizens said: "I want to try it myself". In addition, some netizens said: "This subtle and invisible beauty is around us every day", and some netizens said: "The shape is very regular, the gospel of obsessive-compulsive disorder patients," We are very pleased, we can see the feedback of various netizens.
Sometimes you focus your lens on nature, and nature sometimes gives a lot of things that you don't expect. It's a piece of nano metal burning, isn't it like a fried pork chop? The second piece looks like a pastry? Finally like a chicken cutlet, which is sodium peroxide and must not be eaten. Shooting is the direction we attach great importance to, we use special photography to capture the mystery of nature, bring it to everyone, and share it with you.
This is all made by us through computer images. What is a computer image? You may be unfamiliar, but you may be familiar with Avatar, most of the footage in Avatar is made of computer graphics, called Computer Graphics.
What do you do with computer images? We're doing something related to the history of science. For example, this is a project we are working on, called the prologue to the electric age. Show you a video.
Why did we choose these devices? These devices are more than a dozen sets of devices that are very important in the development of electricity. What you see is that these are not photographs, they are all installations that we make from computer images. We want to trace the origins of science, because there is a lot of scientific spirit, and there are some things that science is very attractive in the history of science. We attach great importance to the history of science because it is our foundation.
This is one of the sulfur balls called Curik. It should be one of the earliest friction-activated devices. Interestingly, Guric himself did not know that he invented this frictional power device. He thought that this sulfur had some characteristic of the earth in it, and after friction, it could excite this property, just as the earth attracts us people, gravity, it also absorbs tiny objects.
Although it is the earliest, people think that it is the earliest frictional power-up device, but the explanation is not like this, which is very interesting, science is constantly understanding, constantly updating their own insights.
This set of devices is called The Coulomb's Torque Device, which is a very important set of devices, a very elaborately designed set of devices. With this device library, Lun introduced the famous Coulomb Law. It marks the study of electricity, from the qualitative science to the quantitative science.
What are the benefits of using computer graphics with Computer Graphics? We can split the device at will, show its structure, and the principles in it. We were honored to collaborate with Professor Wu Guosheng, a professor at Tsinghua University, who provided us with text, which is a very beautiful book.
Why not do our own country stuff? We are working on a "heavenly work" project. "Tiangong Kaiwu" is a very important scientific and technological encyclopedia during the Ming Dynasty in mainland China. We use computer graphics to combine the history of science with the traditional culture of China, which is an interactive APP.
I have a seven-year-old daughter and I've been wondering how I can do a scientific piece that my daughter loves. So we have a project called "Hi Elements" that lets kids do it the way they like. Everything in the world is made up of elements, and it would be great if children could recognize some of the characteristics of elements at a very young age.
This is the first edition of the character design, and we wanted to show the nature of these elements in the form of illustrations, rather than using dry text narration. For example, hydrogen is powered by nuclear fusion to the sun; hydrogen is the lightest gas; and if hydrogen loses its electrons, it becomes acid in an aqueous solution.
We've received a lot of feedback, and one of the things that tells us is that our character designs don't have a particularly large level of recognition. So we did the second version of the character design.
We have not only elements of childhood, but also elements of adulthood. Why are there elements of adulthood? We have a lot of design considerations, which could be a game creation, to have a full growth mechanism. We're going to have stories, and we're going to have comics. This is a very good work, I believe it will be a work that children like very much.
From "Beauty Chemistry" to "Beauty Science", we have now assembled a very good crossover team to do excellent content. It's no longer something I can do alone, it's something that a really good team does. I hope that Beauty Science will become a very good brand of science communication. Thank you.