Eye-Catching Videos Show the Beauty of Chemical Reactions

For those of us with only a passing high-school knowledge of chemistry, the scientific discipline can feel pretty abstract. But new online film series Envisioning Chemistry brings chemical reactions to life as works of art, visualizing chemistry in high resolution.

Created through a collaboration between the science visualization studio Beauty of Science and the Chinese Chemical Society, the series is a follow-up to Beautiful Chemistry, a 2014 project that included video of chemical reactions, animations, illustrations, and diagrams to visualize the history and practice of chemistry.

The images in Envisioning Chemistry were made using “high-resolution microscopes, infrared thermal imaging cameras, high-speed cameras, and 4K Ultra HD cameras, to reveal beauty of chemical reactions like never before,” according to the project’s website.

Envisioning Chemistry is designed as a teaching tool, so each of the films also has an associated worksheet so that teachers can use them in the classroom. There are 15 films total, and the creators hope to add more in the future.

The films explore chemistry topics like precipitation reactions, metal displacement, and electrodeposition, using elemental metals like copper, tin, lead, and zinc. “If you think you know what metals look like, well, think again!” as one video warns. By the end of the films, you may even know what words like electrodeposition mean.

Envisioning Chemistry Collection I: Beauty of Chemistry from Beauty of Science on Vimeo.