Chemistry

Better crafting through chemistry: Esters – thickeners (part 1) (updated)

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Esters are well known to be efficient thickeners. You’ll have encountered a few on your bath and body adventures – glycol stearate, glycol distearate (or EZ Pearl), Crothix – when making surfactant systems or looking for options for emulsifiers. (Crothix isn’t an emulsifier, the others are!) These are all PEG esters or polyethylene glycol based...

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Gels: Hair styling products

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In my excitement about esters, I totally forgot about hair styling gels! I don’t use them much myself – my hair doesn’t really do “style” that well – but I do like to make them for my mom, who has really spiky hair. Gels are a perfect vehicle for conditioning agents. Sure, you can make...

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Better crafting through chemistry: Esters

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So what the heck is an ester and how or why would I want to use them in our bath and body creations? An ester is a molecule that has undergone esterification. (Wow, that was clear, eh?) Esterification is a chemical reaction – for our purposes between a carboxylic acid (like a fatty acid from...

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Gels: Ooey gooey fun!

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I love making gels – they aren’t hard to create and they have so many uses. There are a few ways to make gels – with a polymer like Ultrez 20 or with cellulose – but I’m going to concentrate on the polymer method as I haven’t had a chance to play with cellulose yet...

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There’s a new element in town…

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And it’s name is ununbium, number 112 nestled between Uub and Uuq . It’s super-heavy – the heaviest, in fact – made from fusing zinc and lead. While I’m pleased for the new element and all that, I need an E element for my mental periodic table of the elements Scrabble! (From the category of...

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