Thanksgiving is all about being thankful, but one of the things Americans are thankful for on the holiday is having a good Thanksgiving dinner with family and loved ones. There's a lot of chemistry in the whole Thanksgiving dinner part of the holiday, plus there are a variety of fun chemistry projects you can do that relate to Thanksgiving. Here are some ideas to get you started.

November 22 marks the passing of Hans Adolf Krebs. Krebs was a German chemist who was awarded the 1953 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of the citric acid cycle or the Krebs cycle. The Krebs cycle is a series of chemical reactions that take place in cells where food is broken down into carbon dioxide, water and energy. The reactions take place in the mitochondria of cells as part of the process of cellular respiration. At the beginning of the cycle, an acetyl group broken down from food combines with a four-carbon molecule called oxaloacetate to make a six-carbon compound, citric acid. The citric acid molecule is rearranged and stripped of two of its carbon atoms during the process releasing carbon dioxide and 4 electrons. At the end of the cycle, a molecule of oxaloacetate remains, which can combine with another acetyl group to being the cycle again.

Find out more about Hans Krebs and what else occurred on this day in science history.

If you've been wanting to make colored fire, but weren't sure quite what to do or what to expect, then watch my new green fire video tutorial. You can make the fire in pretty much any color you like simply by substituting one of the other colored fire chemicals for the boric acid used to make green fire.

If you have suggestions for other chemistry videos you'd like to see, please post a reply describing your idea.

November 21^st is Hieronymus Theodor Richter's birthday. Richter was a German chemist who discovered the element indium with Ferdinand Reich. They discovered the element using the relatively new technique of spectroscopy. When a substance is heated, the light it emits can be passed through a prism to separate individual bands of color that are unique to each element. They isolated a substance that turned out to be a new element that gave off a vivid indigo spectral line and named it indium.

Indium is a shiny, silver-white metal with element number 49. It is a very soft metal that when bent emits a 'cry' that is a high pitched squeak when bent. It is commonly used in semiconductor electronics, mirrors and as a coating for high performance bearings. It's most common use today is in liquid crystal displays and touchscreens.

Find out more about Richter and what else occurred on this day in science history.