You know how every day I've been posting a collection of factoids about significant events in science history? Of note today is an event which hasn't actually occurred (though feel free to remedy this). November 5, 1955 was the date that Doctor Emmet Lathrop Brown slipped from standing on the toilet to hang a wall clock, hit his head on the bathroom sink, and had a vision of how he could design a flux capacitor, which (as we all know) made time travel possible. Quiz time... what movie is this from?

I wanted to take a before/after photo of what you can expect when you use electrochemistry to polish silver, but... all I had in the house that was silver were some chains and one big silver bowl that has been black since the 1980s. I went with the bowl, which produced a picture that needs some explanation. What you see in this photo is the bottom of the bowl (silver again) and the sides/top (black). I filled the bowl halfway with hot water, sprinked in some salt and baking soda, and added a piece of aluminum foil. If you have silver cutlery, candlesticks, holloware, etc. that needs cleaned (even if it's totally darkened with tarnish), here's what you do:

Electrochemistry Silver Polish Materials

• pan large enough for your items (or the sink)
• hot water
• salt
• baking soda
• aluminum foil

Dip the Silver

1. Line the bottom of the container with the aluminum foil.
2. Add the tarnished item.
3. Pour in sufficient steaming hot water to cover your tarnished silver.
4. Add equal amounts of salt and baking soda (about 2 teaspoons each for silverware, more if you are filling a sink).
5. Allow about 5 minutes for the reaction to remove the tarnish. If you don't see any effect, you may want to add more salt/baking soda and make sure some part of the silver is in contact with the foil.
6. Rinse the silver under clean water and dry it with a soft cloth.

Note that silver-plated items may not get completely clean using this dip (or any silver polish) because it's possible that the thin layer of silver may be so tarnished that it is removed. Having said that, I think this bowl is plated rather than solid silver, and it looks a thousand times better than before using the dip.

A while back I posted about a periodic table sweater and got an overwhelming e-mail response asking where the sweater was available for sale. The sweater is one-of-a-kind, but I've been keeping an eye out for fashionable chemistry apparel that you can get. I'm not a guy, so I don't have much use for ties, but if I did wear them I'd add a periodic table tie or caffeine molecule tie to my wardrobe.

Do you know about other chemistry-related clothing or accessories available online? If so, you're welcome to post a reply.

November 5^th is Léon Teisserenc de Bort's birthday. He was a French meteorologist best known for the discovery of the layer in the atmosphere known as the stratosphere. He was a pioneer of the unmanned weather balloons carrying instruments to collect and record data such as temperature, pressure and wind speed. Typically, as you increase altitude, the temperature falls rather quickly. He discovered a boundry layer of the atmosphere approximately 7 miles up where the temperature would stop decreasing and would remain constant as the altitude increased. He concluded there were two regions of the atmosphere. The first 7 miles was called the troposphere ("sphere of change" in Greek) where the weather was constantly changing and stirring up the different gases in air because of the temperature differences in the air. After 7 miles, he reasoned the gases in the air would layer themselves, heaviest to lightest in strata. He named this section the stratosphere.

Find out what else occurred on this day in science history.