Stories

Deep-dive stories

Each story starts from a puzzling question, uses scrolling to direct the camera, and locks observation, particles, and diagrams onto one computed state — then hands the model to you.

SEASON 01 · PHASE EQUILIBRIUM

A phase-equilibrium quartet

We begin with ideas that benefit most from three-way translation. Each story starts with an anomaly and ends at a model you can calculate with.

01 Interactive prototype · about 12 minutes The unreachable 100% Why does repeated distillation enrich ethanol, yet stop with roughly the final 4.5% still out of reach? 02 Interactive alpha · about 10 minutes A map of boiling How does a pot of water at high altitude lead us into the pressure–temperature map? 03 Interactive alpha · about 12 minutes A pot of brine, split in two Two salts dissolve into one pot of water; a triangular map shows how to usher them out one at a time. 04 Interactive alpha · about 10 minutes The cooling-curve detective One alloy and one thermometer: reconstruct the whole phase diagram from a temperature log.

SEASON 02 · THERMODYNAMICS

The skeleton of thermodynamics

Phase maps answer where equilibrium sits; season two asks why. Start by counting microstates, descend the Gibbs valley, then wire the downhill road to a meter.

05 Interactive alpha · about 10 minutes Entropy is not disorder No metaphors: count microstates one by one and let the odds pass the verdict. 06 Interactive alpha · about 11 minutes The downhill road of a reaction ΔG° is positive, yet the reaction runs — the valley and its slope decide. 07 Interactive alpha · about 10 minutes The potential landscape inside a battery 1.10 V is the gap between two rungs; plateau and avalanche both live on the Nernst slope.

SEASON 03 · KINETICS

Put a stopwatch on the reaction

Thermodynamics tells us which way is downhill; kinetics asks how long the walk takes. Hear concentration count down, watch heat swell the reactive tail, then let a catalyst change the route without moving the destination.

08 Interactive alpha · about 10 minutes The concentration countdown Rate is the slope right now; successive half-lives drum reaction order into a visible fingerprint. 09 Interactive alpha · about 11 minutes Molecules over the mountain Heating does not nudge every molecule equally; it magnifies the sparse tail able to cross the barrier. 10 Interactive alpha · about 10 minutes The shortcut that moves no valley A catalyst lowers the pass but moves neither valley: both directions speed up while equilibrium stays put.

SEASON 04 · STRUCTURE & SPECTRA

Read matter through light

Season four reads structure through light. Hydrogen emission lines lead to molecular infrared vibrations, then nuclear magnetic resonance.

11 Interactive alpha · about 11 minutes Why hydrogen emits a few lines Compute the wavelengths of hydrogen lines and connect each one to an energy gap. 12 Interactive alpha · about 10 minutes Why infrared misses some vibrations CO₂ has several fundamental motions, but only the ones that change its dipole leave an infrared band.