How does this blue flower tea change color

Reactions Science Videos | September 24, 2020

This beautiful, color-changing tea is all over TikTok and Instagram. This week Sam and George add different things (some not drinkable!) to the tea to play with its spectacular colors.

Important note: One way to figure out whether all of the chalcone molecules were destroyed by bleach would be to add acid to the tea—to make sure we couldn’t change it from clear back to blue—BUT adding acid to bleach is dangerous, so... we didn't do it. Another option would be to use very expensive lab equipment to figure out the structures of whatever molecules are in the bleach/tea mixture. We don’t have a lab, so we'll stick with our chemical intuition on this one.


Sources:

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Butterfly Pea Flower

Towards Green Titration: Batchwise Titration With Reusable Solid Sorbed Indicators

Anthocyanins: naturally occurring fruit pigments with functional properties

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