🤩 amazing! Thank you Starbucks for raising the price of the passion tea to inspire my making it at home. This will be a fun addition to our exploration of mordants!

@manhattanscientist.bsky.social has inspired a nice #Gardenindicators experiment! The samples below, all contain Hibiscus tea. L to R, tea, tea with pineapple juice from a tin can, tea with acetic acid and tea with HCl. Those tin ions make a lovely purple complex with anthocyanins!

My colleague Marko Jeran turned me onto this electrolysis demonstration using our cabbage indicator. #anthocyanin #redox #acidbase

This seems to becoming a tradition for the end of August. Bramble whisky round 2 now in progress. A double batch this time as well. #Gardenindicators I look forward to the end of November when they will be ready. One jar contains famous grouse, the other is grant’s triple wood blend. #chemsky

Plenty of beautiful Hydrangeas around St Andrews now. Some will hopefully get used as #Gardenindicators in teaching next year.

One for any #Gardenindicators fans.

Anyone who has tried making naphtholphthalein will have encountered this compound at some point.

Happy hydrangeas!

It has been a while, but another #Gardenindicators video is now ready. This one shows a cheap and cheerful way to extract blackberries, works for raspberries too. youtu.be/HIV1Tgpa1-g?...

Alright, this is an awesome experiment - complexation, solubility, indicator acid/base, it’s got everything!! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

A colourful and quick experiment with tinned pineapple juice youtu.be/n62zByID52I?si…#Gardenindicatorsr#Snackindicatorsr#Chemskyky

I got a nice #Gardenindicators gift this week from @AlchemistAngus. A can of crushed pineapple! The anthocyanins in blackberry extract can be used to detect dissolved tin(II) ions in the pineapple juice. The anthocyanin/tin complexes give a lovely purple colour! #Chemsky

This month #PeriodicGraphics in @cenmag.bsky.social is a whole decade old! To mark the anniversary, here's a graphic on some of the interesting properties and uses of tin, the metal that traditionally marks tenth anniversaries: cen.acs.org/materials/Pe... #ChemSky 🧪

We’ve made a lot of phenolphthaleins this year, so here is a multiple phenolphthalein #Chemistree #OChemistree that uses many of the compounds we made. Also featuring an illuminated fluorescein bauble at the top. All planned and made by our lab office team! (not on this platform yet).

In an earlier post I showed a range of colourful #Gardenindicators oxalis samples. bsky.app/profile/iain... Much later than I intended, I have finally managed to get the video version on YouTube! youtu.be/JoefItjibOY?....

I tried a different type of #Gardenindicators experiment earlier this year. I started making bramble whisky in the late summer, this is the finished version after 3 months. Nice colour, quite a sweet taste, a bit like sloe gin. #Chemsky

At this time of year the number of available #Gardenindicators is more limited. However, we’ve been making some classic pH indicators too. Interesting range of colours in the methyl phenolphthalein series #Chemsky youtu.be/lcHvVRApqaQ?...

2 years ago, @AlchemistAngus grew some purple carrots in our teaching lab. Remarkably, the dried carrots are still providing extracts 2 years later! Colourful #Gardenindicators results here youtu.be/0oNgtucj2Ak?...

Hydrangeas are a #Gardenindicators favourite, although the blue ones can be difficult to get extracts from. In this video, red hydrangea extract mixed with metal salts provides some colourful results. youtu.be/27nrO-4DEgg?...

Thank you very much to @AlchemistAngus (on another platform currently) for this stunning #Gardenindicators specimen. We now have a lab oxalis to join our poinsettia! A video will appear on YouTube soon. #Chemsky

Here’s the pH evaluation of a red sweet pea from my garden. A cheeky blue around pH 8-10 is always a bonus! #GardenIndicators

There was a good crop of brambles this year, plenty of fruit for #Gardenindicators experiments. I made "Maraschino" style brambles by soaking them in bisulfite solution, then soaking them in a dye/sugar solution. This process is similar to the method used to make cocktail cherries. #Chemsky

Happy #FluorescenceFriday 😁 Following @compoundchem.com great post last week, here is another easy one. Extraction of highly fluorescent aesculin from the bark of horse chestnut twigs. Aesculin fluoresces a beautiful blue under UV illumination. #RealTimeChem SCHOOL #TECHNICIANSMAKEITHAPPEN

A few weeks ago, I put about 100 dried red geraniums in a Soxhlet extractor. After an hour or so, hot methanol gave a very rich red anthocyanin-containing extract. Hopefully, some pelargonidin will be isolated from this soon #Gardenindicators #chemsky

It’s a great project – there’s a whole crowd-sourced spreadsheet of indicators and colours here from @crocodilechemi1.bsky.social: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

#IteachChem 🥽 Chemistry and art: Students are investigating the effect of pH on dye color. I’m obsessed with the bright orange from annatto seeds!

The poinsettia I got last week resulted in some good #Gardenindicators colour changes in acid, base and with some metal ions too. youtu.be/1xE3DFqbjSw?... not bad from a £2.50 flower from the clearance shelf in the supermarket.

One of the things I learned about from #Gardenindicators on the old platform was the Shinoda test for plant flavonoids. Here are rutin and quercetin mixed in HCl and ethanol, then magnesium granules were added. These tests can be very colourful!

My HS food chemistry elective has made indicators in the past but yours are stunning!

Fluorescence of quinine in 'tonic' water and sodas. 🎢 🧪 #iTeachChem #Chemsky Max absorption in UV light, max emission in blue. Picture & plot made for last year's science fair.

The #GardenIndicators project started during the first lockdown as an accessible project from home. Anthocyanins are generally pretty easy to extract… but there are a few tricky ones!

Thank you very much @crocodilechemi1.bsky.social for the purple runner beans you sent, they gave very nice #Gardenindicators colours! The low pH pink is beautiful. This is the first video I have made that shows the extraction of the plant material. youtu.be/o7GpWCL6guk?...

Here’s the pH evaluation of a pink & white geranium from pH 1 to 13. The bottom image shows an RGB reaction plot, using actual RGB values to produce an image of the dynamic neutralisation reaction. Lovely purple with Al³⁺ ions too💜#GardenIndicators

I managed to get a poinsettia for # Gardenindicators purposes. Changing the pH leads to colour changes. Some anthocyanin-containing extracts change colour with metal ions too. In this case, alum solution on the left and tin(II) chloride on the right.

#FluorescenceFriday reminder that if you sprinkle turmeric into alcohol while shining a UV light on it, you get a brilliant fireworks display in a glass 🎇 #ChemSky 🧪

I’m seeing poinsettias in the shops now, these make great #Gardenindicators! but they can change colour other ways too youtu.be/xpFA3wMbxOA?...

As well as #Gardenindicators experiments, since June we’ve been making some the more unfamiliar phenolphthalein-derived pH indicators. So far the colour range is pink to teal youtu.be/ySd5xmq4L0A?...

If anyone uses #Gardenindicators in teaching, videos of various fruit, flowers and vegetables are posted here www.youtube.com/@Gardenindicators/videos. They are there for any teachers/educators to use. Not just plants, there are some classic pH indicators there too.