WEBVTT

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We already know that the world is made of things,

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things like cats

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and macaroni salad,

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and macaroni salad is made of things

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like mayo

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and mustard

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and celery,

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which are all made of molecules.

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As we'll see, these molecules

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are made of the same stuff,

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just mixed together in different ways.

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Let's go back to our macaroni salad.

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We've already unmixed things physically

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as much as we can.

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Now, we'll go further and unmix things chemically

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by breaking some bonds.

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Many larger, complex molecules

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are just a bunch of smaller molecules bonded together

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like building blocks.

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Here, again, macaroni salad provides a nice example.

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If you look at the pasta,

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you'll notice it's made of a lot of this stuff,

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starch,

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which is this molecule,

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otherwise known as amylose.

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Turns out, if you break some bonds,

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amylose is made up of smaller molecules

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of glucose, a simple sugar.

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If you take a bunch of these same glucose molecules

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and rearrange them in a different way,

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you get cellulose,

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which is what plants are made of.

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So, while this piece of pasta made of amylose

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and this wooden spoon made of cellulose

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look vastly different,

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they're both essentially made of the same molecules,

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just stuck together differently.

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This type of breaking apart and recombining

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is what goes on when you digest food.

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The complex proteins found in the foods we eat,

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like carrots and eggs,

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can't be used by our bodies

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because we are not carrots or chickens.

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What we can use are the smaller molecules

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that make up these proteins,

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the amino acids.

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During digestion, our bodies break these proteins up

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into their amino acids

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so they can be rearranged and put back together

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to make human proteins.

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But let's keep breaking bonds.

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All molecules are made up of atoms bonded together.

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If some molecules are building blocks,

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atoms are the building blocks

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of the building blocks.

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And you'll notice that with the molecules

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from macaroni salad,

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the same six types of atoms keep showing up:

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carbon,

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hydrogen,

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oxygen,

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nitrogen,

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phosphorus,

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and sulfur,

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or CHONPS.

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There's a few others,

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but the big six is what macaroni salad is made of.

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If we went a step further,

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we could use these same atoms,

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recombine them,

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and make other stuff

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like gasoline

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or sulfuric acid,

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methane,

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and nylon.

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It's all made from the same elements

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that make up macaroni salad.

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So, to recap,

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everything is made of atoms.

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They are the stuff that things are made of.

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Atoms are grouped together in different ways

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to form molecules.

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These molecules are constantly being combined,

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broken apart,

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and recombined.

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They get thrown into mixtures,

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separated,

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remixed

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over and over and over again.

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Stuff that things are made of

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is always in flux,

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it's always changing.

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Macaroni salad is only macaroni salad for a short time.

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You eat it,

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some of it becomes part of you,

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the rest eventually goes into the ocean

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and gets eaten by other animals that die,

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and after millions of years, they turn into oil,

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which is where gasoline comes from.

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And that's why gasoline and macaroni salad

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are not that different -

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they're both made of the same stuff,

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just one tastes better.