Comic About Mercuryblob AMALGAMATING Aluminumball

Comic about Mercuryblob AMALGAMATING Aluminumball

Meet the Chemiballs; Earthbreaking Alkaline Earth Metals

The Alkaline Earth Metals are a bit like a diet version of the alkali metals. Unlike the alkali metals who have one valence electron that they really want to get rid of, alkaline earth metals have two that they sorta dislike having. They’re still very energetically reactive, often bursting into flames during chemical reactions. But they’re less likely to outright explode as sodiumball or potassiumball are. 

Ravings of a Mad Scientist

Meet the Chemiballs; Earthbreaking Alkaline Earth Metals

Meet the Chemiballs; Earthbreaking Alkaline Earth Metals The Alkaline Earth Metals are a bit like a diet version of the alkali metals. So it

Here's an old article with informative information about Alkaline Earth Metal balls but that's also meant to be funny i guess

Meet the Chemiballs; the Active Actinides

The actinides are famous for being very radioactive and generally not safe to be around. They contain a few elements that are very interesting and important. But also a whole lot of very obscure and boring elements (I didn't draw those).

They are one of the two rows awkwardly separated underneath the periodic table, the other being the Lanthanides (which I have not drawn any of yet, sorry).

Both of these make up the f orbital block (which is to say their valence electrons orbit in a very strange shape). The f block technically should be placed between the transition metals and alkali earth metals. But isn’t because that would make the table far too long to fit on the walls of chemistry classrooms.

Ravings of a Mad Scientist

Meet the Chemiballs; the Active Actinides

Did you know that Uraniumball is not the only radioactive element people use to make energy or warcrimes? There's a whole buncha them!

Dumb and very esoteric chemiball comic about the mechanism of organic mercury poisoning

Selenium (Se) is a necessary micronutrient. It’s involved in the amino acid selenocysteine (Sec), which is like cysteine (Cys) but instead of sulfur, it’s selenium. Selenocysteine is involved in selenoenzymes, which are important antioxidants.

Oxidants are highly reactive oxygen radicals that are sometimes accidentally made by the mitochondria. They really like to oxidize and destroy things like proteins, fats, and DNA. As it turns out, we need those things to not be destroyed.

Antioxidants are important because they’re useless and don’t do anything important other than be tempting targets for oxidants. They take the hit so you don’t have to. (though knowing biochemistry, I’m sure that most of them actually do everything, because it would just make too much sense otherwise.)

Organic mercury poisoning is bad because it permanently inhibits your selenoenzymes. This leaves the cell vulnerable to oxidation which is particularly bad for your brain cells.

In this case, methyl mercury (Hg-CH3) has previously bonded to the sulfur in Cysteineball and has now come near the selenocysteine ball.

Fun fact: the covalent binding affinities between mercury and selenium are about A MILLION times greater than with sulfur. I’m not exaggerating, it’s literally cited as ONE MILLION TIMES GREATER. So yeah, Mercuryblob immediately jumps to seleniumball and basically never lets go.

Sources: Ralston, N. & Azenkeng, Alexander & Raymond, Laura. (2012). Mercury-Dependent Inhibition of Selenoenzymes and Mercury Toxicity. 10.1007/978-1-4614-2383-6_5. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/278702735_Mercury-Dependent_Inhibition_of_Selenoenzymes_and_Mercury_Toxicity

Ralston NVC, Raymond LJ. Mercury’s neurotoxicity is characterized by its disruption of selenium biochemistry. Biochim Biophys Acta Gen Subj. 2018 Nov;1862(11):2405-2416. doi: 10.1016/j.bbagen.2018.05.009. Epub 2018 May 9. PMID: 29753115.

Meet the Chemiballs; the Noble Noble Gases

The noble gases were all (mostly) discovered by a Scottish man named Sir William Ramsay (Though, back in his day, it was more common to call them “rare gases”). He made the convention of ending all their names with -on, so you always know when something is a noble gas. (Unless it’s helium which is a noble gas but follows the metal naming convention, [or iron which ends in -on but is a metal. {Also, scientists seem to really like giving things -on names, like prion, codon, electron, etc. I will admit, it does sound cool. }]) So it’s not a perfect system.

The name “noble gasses” is a bit of an early 1900s joke. See, the noble gasses are too lazy to do anything and don’t like bonding with lesser peasant elements. The nobility is also lazy and don’t like associating with peasants. Of course, we live in an enlightened post-WWI world and no longer recognize barbaric concepts such as hieratical rule and rigid class structures. Also, the Queen is dead. But this is basically the equivalent of naming them “trust fund gasses”. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Ravings of a Mad Scientist

Meet the Chemiballs; the Noble Noble Gases

Are you procrastinating right now? What better way to do that than to read about the laziest elements, the Noble Gases!

so i return, fresh from the booping fields

what have i done