Prof. Christoph Salzmann

Watching the Men’s moguls. Just love the fact that the English “mogul” comes from the Austrian “Mugel” meaning small hill. 😀

BBC Audio | Unexpected Elements | Let the games begin How did one extra stitch cause a ski jumping scandal? -- Physics.

The Winter Olympics and ice. Listen to me on BBC’s Unexpected Elements discussing ice. ❄️ www.bbc.com/audio/play/w... @uclchemistry.bsky.social

Tire-Wear Particles as Potential Ice-Nucleating Agents in the Atmosphere Tire-wear particles, generated through tire abrasion during driving, represent one of the largest global sources of microplastic pollution, with current annual emissions approaching 6 Tg. Due to their small particle sizes and low mass density, tire-wear particles can become airborne, undergo long-range transport, and potentially influence atmospheric processes. One critical but poorly understood pathway involves the heterogeneous freezing of supercooled cloud droplets, a key process in cloud glaciation and climate regulation. Here, we systematically investigate the ice-nucleating properties of laboratory-generated particles from summer, all-weather, and winter tires. Using optical microscopy as well as Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and Raman spectroscopy, we obtained particle-size distributions (∼100 μm mean diameter) and characterized the surface chemical compositions, confirming close similarity to the pristine tire materials. Ice-nucleation experiments performed with our custom-built IceBox instrument demonstrated that all tire particles consistently elevated the freezing temperatures of supercooled water droplets. The ice-nucleation performances of tire particles are found to be between feldspar and quartz, which are important mineral-based ice-nucleating agents in the atmosphere. Comparable results across all tire types suggest that major components such as rubber polymers or graphitic fillers are responsible for the observed activity. These findings establish tire-wear particles as effective atmospheric ice-nucleating agents, providing a baseline for future studies of environmentally aged tire particles and their potential roles in affecting the climate.

Great paper by @salzmannlab.bsky.social Lab showing that car tire microplastics are nucleation agents for ice crystals in the atmosphere. Their roles in regulating the climate likely to be important given that 1.3 million tons of tyre microparticles per year in Europe: share.google/qoOquT63awT8...

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You can join the Big Plastic Count here: share.google/q1bdJ4OXqcuy...

Tire-Wear Particles as Potential Ice-Nucleating Agents in the Atmosphere Tire-wear particles, generated through tire abrasion during driving, represent one of the largest global sources of microplastic pollution, with current annual emissions approaching 6 Tg. Due to their small particle sizes and low mass density, tire-wear particles can become airborne, undergo long-range transport, and potentially influence atmospheric processes. One critical but poorly understood pathway involves the heterogeneous freezing of supercooled cloud droplets, a key process in cloud glaciation and climate regulation. Here, we systematically investigate the ice-nucleating properties of laboratory-generated particles from summer, all-weather, and winter tires. Using optical microscopy as well as Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and Raman spectroscopy, we obtained particle-size distributions (∼100 μm mean diameter) and characterized the surface chemical compositions, confirming close similarity to the pristine tire materials. Ice-nucleation experiments performed with our custom-built IceBox instrument demonstrated that all tire particles consistently elevated the freezing temperatures of supercooled water droplets. The ice-nucleation performances of tire particles are found to be between feldspar and quartz, which are important mineral-based ice-nucleating agents in the atmosphere. Comparable results across all tire types suggest that major components such as rubber polymers or graphitic fillers are responsible for the observed activity. These findings establish tire-wear particles as effective atmospheric ice-nucleating agents, providing a baseline for future studies of environmentally aged tire particles and their potential roles in affecting the climate.

Could tire-wear particles 🛞 mess with clouds 🌧️? Check out our latest paper with @tfwhale.bsky.social! pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Thanks - many important points and insights! Nobody should ever have to change parameters in submenus on small screens. In other words - all devices should have an integration for Home Assistant. 😀

BBC Radio 4 - Curious Cases, Series 24, Frosty Fractals Hannah Fry and Dara Ó Briain investigate nature's most intricate patterns

Curious Cases on BBC4 about Frosty Fractals. We are trying to make sense about ice freezing on windscreens and many other icy things. ❄️

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Wiener Schnitzel in Vienna - does it get any better? 😀

Every time I eat one of these rum cookies, there is a spike in the VOC data... 😀

Just made my first ever Zigbee device. 101 for lab automation, a status light if things are going okay or not! 🚨

The UCL Chemistry green wall is happening! @uclchemistry.bsky.social

What happened???

What a great gift 😀

Maybe put them in a box with some desiccant?

Isn’t it absolutely cool that TFL provide an integration for Home Assistant? Turn the kettle on once the 6:43 to Waterloo has departed?

Reading up more on Smart Meters. It was never a priority to make the data available to the user. We were always meant to look at the data on little displays with bad menu structures or download the data from the webpages of the energy companies. I want direct access to MY DATA.

It’s a proper scandal that you can’t read the data from your smart meter! Has there been no technology review? It would be so easy to make them Zigbee devices that broadcast the data locally. These devices are rolled out in millions and I can’t access my own data!!!

Turns out my pond is fine with the pump just running a third of the time. That’s a £100 saving over the year!

If set up Home Assistant over the weekend. It’s amazing - super flexible. There don’t seem to be many things it can’t do. The smart meter from Octopus is very easily integrated.

The simple machine that visualised atomic orbitals In 1931, Harvey Elliott White developed a device that traced out the shapes of electron clouds by approximating solutions to the Schrödinger equation

In the early days of quantum chemistry, before we had computers to calculate the shapes of electron orbitals, one man invented a mechanical machine that simulated their shapes. My latest column for @chemistryworld.com
www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/the-...

Tire-wear particles as potential ice nucleating agents in the atmosphere Tire-wear particles, generated through tire abrasion during driving, represent one of the largest global sources of microplastic pollution, with annual emissions approaching 6 million tons. Due to the...

Tire-wear particles as potential ice nucleating agents in the atmosphere | ChemRxiv - doi.org/10.26434/che...

Tube strike - an opportunity to see some London sights on my commute..

Decades ago, Almdudler ran a somewhat questionable ad campaign with Austrians heading straight back home after discovering that you can’t get Almdudler abroad. Still - the stuff is good! 😊

Almdudler is just the best!!

Really great performance by Chappell Roan at Reading Festival.

I recently read somewhere that it makes no difference. Not sure where but it was a reputable source. 😀

Photo of Dame Kathleen Lonsdale.

Don’t miss the Kathleen Lonsdale Public Lecture!

Commemorating 200 years since Faraday isolated benzene, celebrating Lonsdale's contributions in crystallography, activism & science communication.

Free to attend, all welcome.

Register: buff.ly/IIDjsC2

#Science #London #Chemistry #WomenInSTEM

10 months to know the outcome at UCL. New salary is paid with the start of the new academic year which is after 12 months..

Ice Nucleation Properties of Aluminum Surfaces The nucleation of ice from supercooled water droplets plays a critical role across various technological sectors including aviation, power transmission, shipping, and space flight. Despite its importa...

Carlotta did close to 300 ice nucleation experiments during her Master’s project. It’s great to see her work published. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

Hovering a Ping-Pong Ball: A Demonstration Setup for Teaching PID Control Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controllers are essential in ensuring the stability and efficiency of numerous scientific, industrial, and medical processes. However, teaching the principles of PID control can be challenging, especially when the introduction focuses on the underlying mathematical framework. To address this, we developed the PingPongPID, a visually engaging and interactive demonstration instrument designed to make the concepts of PID control more accessible to students. The PingPongPID features a colored ping-pong ball suspended within a transparent plastic tube by a fan, the voltage of which is controlled by a microcontroller running a PID algorithm. The ball’s height is measured in real-time by a laser distance sensor, and the system continuously adjusts the fan voltage to maintain a set target height. The PingPongPID also connects to a computer, allowing real-time data logging and visualization through a custom-built Python graphical user interface (GUI). The process of obtaining the three PID gain constants using both the trial-and-error and Ziegler-Nichols methods can be illustrated very nicely with the PingPongPID. In summary, the PingPongPID serves as a powerful educational tool, allowing students to explore both the conceptual and practical aspects of PID control before delving into its mathematical foundations. We provide a complete assembly and user guide for the PingPongPID as well as the codes for the microcontroller and the Python GUI.

Did you ever wonder how PID control works? Or how you can hover a ping-pong ball with a hairdryer? Check out our new paper in J. Chem. Edu. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...