The world is watching with a mix of great interest and fear as workers at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in 
Fukushima Japan struggle to control a series of nuclear reactors on the verge of meltdown.
The series of events leading to the present difficulties – an unprecedented 9.0 earthquake centred offshore producing a massive tsunami – represent a perfect storm of conditions which were worse than the proverbial “worst-case scenario”.
The 25th anniversary of the meltdown, fire, and subsequent contamination of thousands of square kilometres of the Ukraine and Belarus from the Chernobyl disaster was marked with an announcement by officials that they will be opening up the site for tourism this year. 
If you are teaching MYP science now, your students will likely have been born at or well after Chernobyl’s 10 year anniversary. Suffice it to say they’ve probably never heard of it, which is a shame because it provides a rich vein of scientific issues and concepts that could be mined in your science classroom.
Turns out, just about the only substance we can use to give glass it’s pink tinge is Erbium Oxide.
But why?
We all love the beautiful solutions that transition metals produce but why do the produce such colours (or why do non transition metals not produce colours?)
Well, it’s all to do with the d-orbitals and electrons gaining and losing energy
Following on from yesterdays posting….
Flame colours provide a relatively easy way to identify the possible identity of a number of ions, but what causes the different colours?
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