#phenolphthalein

[scribbly-sun-socks]

doing a bunch of small drawings of ocs to make into new toyhou.se pfps for them. here's the first 12. out of 144. that already have toyhou.se profiles

not to scale at all, the scale is "whatever the fuck i wanted"

[rtmkff]

chilling in da basement with my autistic child

[whats-in-a-sentence]

The colour we then observe is that of the base form of the indicator (figure 11.24).

"Chemistry" 2e - Blackman, A., Bottle, S., Schmid, S., Mocerino, M., Wille, U.

[mumblelard]

the three year old who squats in the too small cavity around my throat sings this every afternoon for a month and that's when i know or saving the world one couch nap at a time

[bokunodumbassery]

As a BNHA fan, I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out why Mina’s skin is bright pink.

And like many other BNHA fans who rationalise everything a little too much, I am a strong believer in the “secondary mutations” quirk theory, which I’ll explain in another post, but I have also come up with a less believable but more interesting theory.

In chemistry, phenolphthalein is used as an acid indicator; meaning, it gets put in liquids to cause a colour change depending on the liquid’s pH so that scientists can tell whether or not something is acidic.

As far as you’ll learn in grade 10 chemistry (which is as far as I got before deciding I was more of an art kid), when phenolphthalein is mixed with a basic substance, it turns pink. When it’s mixed with a neutral substance, it is generally faint pink/colourless. When it is mixed with an acid, it is colourless (chemistry-speak for clear).

(Image: photos arranged in order of low pH to high pH. High pH liquid is the most pink, as explained in the paragraph above.)

How does this relate to Mina’s skin?

To determine that, it’s best to start with Mina’s acid. It’s colourless (the art style depicts it as a milky-white, but it could just as easily be clear; also, phenolphthalein doesn’t change the colour of an acid, it only changes its own colour, so yeah). Therefore, since it is acid and has a low pH, it stands to reason that it could contain phenolphthalein and still remain colourless.

Mina’s skin, on the other hand, is not acidic as far as we know . It would actually make sense for her skin to be a bit basic to counteract her quirk, so her skin still protects her from her own acid (because basic and acidic substances neutralise each other). So if her skin contained phenolphthalein, it stands to reason that her skin would have a pink-like hue. In that sense, it’s actually quite cool that her skin is pink; it implies that her quirk has an inbuilt indicator to tell her when her skin isn’t basic enough to protect her properly, and when her acid is no longer acidic. Could she also create basic substances, rather than just acid? Is that why her acid contains phenolphthalein? Who knows!

Does this theory have a shit ton of holes? Yes. Is it likely that Horikoshi made the active decision to make Mina’s skin pink to hint at a second aspect of her quirk as an indicator? Nah, he’s too misogynistic to pay close attention to a girl’s character design like that. But it’s fun to think about. Chemistry is cool.

[reidslibrarybook]

chem makes me wanna jump off a cliff

[phenolph-thalein]

Commissions are open!

Hello everybody, a lot of people have been interested in owning some of my molecular embroidery for themselves! So I am happy to announce that my commissions for small biochemical embroidery pieces are open :-)

Emails me at [email protected] or DM me for more details!

[unsympatheticchemprof]