Carbon Capture - an easy demonstration

Yesterday I attended the launch of the Edinburgh International Science Festival. You can read more about the programme for this year's festival in yesterday's post.

At the event, I caught up with two scientific demonstrations. The first one involved first producing carbon dioxide by pouring boiling water onto dry ice (carbon dioxide in solid form, called dry ice because it doesn't have a liquid phase but turns straight from gas to solid when frozen to very low temperatures). The dry ice then sublimated to produce gaseous carbon dioxide.

then washing up liquid was poured into the tube and captured the carbon dioxide in bubbles, preventing it escaping further into the atmosphere.

This is similar, at least in theory to the methods used to capture the carbon dioxide produced by power plants to prevent the gas adding to global warming. You can read more about carbon capture and storage here. You can read about the drawbacks of the process (not least the fact that it isn't yet commercially viable) here.

The second demonstration involved optical illusions and a plastic model of a rabbit that magically changed shape, but, as they say, you had to be there. It was, sadly for all the bunny fans who read this blog, a demonstration that couldn't be captured on film.

Edinburgh International Science Festival will take place at venues across the city from 23 March - 7 April.

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.